New York City Mayor Eric Adams wants to send migrants to college on the taxpayer dime.
The New York Post learned the mayor “plans to provide as many as 100 migrants with 12 months of classes, room and board in upstate Sullivan County.” It could last indefinitely.
The Office of Asylum Seeker Operations, Adams’s new city agency, will be in charge of the program:
The pilot program — to be overseen by Adams’ newly created city agency, the Office of Asylum Seeker Operations — involves both SUNY Sullivan community college in tiny Loch Sheldrake and The Center for Discovery, a special education school in nearby Harris.The cost to taxpayers hasn’t been disclosed but will likely exceed $1.2 million in the first year, based on the price tag for two semesters at SUNY Sullivan alone.“The mayor’s office is giving us money for things like supplies for people to live on, and the dorms and food,” said spokesman Michael Rosen of The Center for Discovery.
The migrants would start school in the spring with “English, American culture and personal finance” classes and “concurrent training for jobs in fields including healthcare, culinary arts and farming.” They would live on the SUNY campus.
The announcement caught Eleanor Davis, the school’s dean of communications and admissions, by surprise:
The dean of communications and admissions at SUNY Sullivan, Eleanor Davis, said that “this has been discussed for some time” since migrants began surging into New York City last year.But Davis said Adams “caught us a little bit by surprise” when he included a brief description of the “partnership” in a 25-page brochure Tuesday about his Office of Asylum Seeker Operations.“We weren’t prepared for the press release to come out. The mayor kind of scooped us,” she said.Davis said the single adult migrants — all of whom will be specially selected and screened — would “remain New York City residents.”
Rep. Elise Stefanik, who represents upstate New York, lashed out at Adams:
“Mayor Adams is making a permanent welfare system for illegal immigrants in New York State,” upstate Rep. Elise Stefanik, the House Republican Conference chair, said in blasting the plan.“By spending New Yorkers’ hard-earned taxpayer dollars on college classes for migrants, he is incentivizing and rewarding illegal immigration simply to export the crisis of Democrats’ own making out of New York City,” Stefanik added.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has been sending migrants to New York City, Chicago, and DC because their mayors declared their cities as sanctuary cities since last April.
NYC has received over 50,000 migrants. Over 31,000 live in emergency shelters and cost the city $4.6 million a day.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY