NYC Asylum Seekers Should Be Allowed To Work, Officials Say

NEW YORK CITY — New York City’s 70,000-plus asylum seekers — and those to come — should be allowed to work, said a group of city, state and business leaders.

Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul called for federal action Monday to speed up work permits for migrants flowing into the city and across the nation.

Migrants currently can’t receive work authorization for at least 180 days as they wait for their asylum applications to be processed.

“We have one clear message: let them work,” Adams said.

The surge of migrants can help New York’s businesses that have struggled with an historic labor shortage, Hochul said.

“They’re eager to work, they want to work,” she said.

New York City has become the number one destination for asylum seekers who have recently crossed the U.S. border, Hochul said.

The flow of migrants has itself sped up after Title 42, which had effectively restricted the number of asylum seekers at the border, recently expired. Adams said 5,800 migrants arrived in the city last week alone.

“What we see happening at our border is not new, it is a logical and human response to hunger, violence and political instability and other countries,” he said.

The call to speed up work authorizations came a day after Adams suggested that all U.S. cities should take a “small portion” of arriving asylum seekers as a way of providing them help without burdening a few cities.

The nation has 108,000 cities, towns and villages, he said.

“It is not a burden on one city and the numbers need to be clear,” he said. “We received over 70,000 migrant asylum seekers in our city, 42,000 are still in our care.”

Business leaders Kathryn Wylde with the Partnership for New York City and Danny Meyer, who founded Shake Shack, said allowing asylum seekers to work faster will help fill unfilled hospitality jobs.