Jamestown Doesn’t Have Migrant Crisis – It’s Up To The State, Feds To Keep It That Way
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News that Colombian immigrants have made their way to Jamestown isn't news to the Rev. Luke Fodor or Mayor Eddie Sundquist.
Their presence in the community didn't so much as raise their eyebrow a couple of weeks ago when Post-Journal reporter Timothy Frudd talked with Fodor about the city's refugee efforts. Sundquist told The Post-Journal reports that migrants are coming to Jamestown by the "bus load" are unfounded.
"That's no real change for us," Sundquist said.
Rather than putting his head in the sand and pleading for state and federal help, Sundquist has handled the situation well. He has met with the families. He has found some federal help to help pay for some services. The Jamestown mayor is doing his best to make sure the migrants have suitable housing and access to the services they need while they wait for the asylum cases to be heard and documentation necessary to get jobs arrives. It's perhaps the shining moment in Sundquist's time as mayor.
It appears some of the hackles raised in the Jamestown area over the past week were a bit unnecessary. Jamestown is dealing with the same issues it has always had in terms of both migration into the city and the decades-long trend of population loss. Jamestown is seeing migrants -- including five families from Colombia who are seeking asylum -- but Sundquist isn't handling anything close to the true migrant crisis being faced by New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
Adams said in a statement earlier this week New York City has averaged more than 400 new migrants a day over the past week, with 835 asylum seekers arriving on one single day alone. The city has opened 74 emergency shelters and four humanitarian relief centers to deal with the new arrivals, but said the city is at a "breaking point." A recent New York Post article also seems to corroborate something Adams found in a recent tour of the border in El Paso, Texas -- that people are being given the impression that they should come to New York as they look for a place to settle.
"There are websites that are advertising that in New York City streets are paved with gold, that there is automatic employment, that you are automatically going to be living in a hotel," Adams told reporters at a Sunday briefing.
Not only is Jamestown not in New York City's league when it comes to migrants, Jamestown is barely playing the same sport. But, Sundquist and Adams have something in common. They need the state and federal government to back their pretty pro-immigration promises with cold, hard cash to carry out those promises. The migrant crisis is pushing New York City to a breaking point. Jamestown has a ways to go before it gets to that point -- and state and federal officials need to make sure it doesn't.