Now it's free cash: Hochul and Adams' never-ending migrant-money spigot

[Deport !]

Hochul and her other Democrat incompetents are criminals. Really,
they are. They are enabling invading criminals at the expense of
American citizens.

Another week, another migrant-mismanagement bombshell: Gov. Hochul and
Mayor Adams have been quietly handing out cash to thousands of migrants
for nine months.

The governor and mayor have learned nothing from the mess they’ve made.

The federal government, which funds most cash-welfare benefits,
prohibits “asylum seekers” from collecting such benefits, which pay $336
for a mother with two children and $252 for two adults (along with even
more in shelter and energy subsidies).

But New York has its own state- and local-funded parallel “safety net
assistance” program for those not eligible for federal welfare: people
who have exceeded the federal five-year welfare time limit and singles
without children.

Hochul stealthily expanded this program to include “applicants for
asylum” and “applicants for temporary protected status.”

The governor did this, a social-services spokesman told The Post’s Rich
Calder, “at the request of New York City.”

How many migrants are receiving these benefits?

Hochul won’t say, with the spokesman estimating only 10% of new arrivals
will collect.

That would be about 17,000.

But there are ways to guess.

The governor’s updated state budget allocates $26 million for this new
cost for the current fiscal year, up from zero the year before.

For the fiscal year starting April 1, the proposed state-taxpayer cost
is $67 million.

The expanded eligibility will “result in more households becoming
eligible for Safety Net Assistance and increase state costs,” the budget
warns.

The state pays only 29% of normal “safety net assistance” costs, though;
the city pays the other 71%.

That means the “asylum seeker” benefits’ full cost for the upcoming
fiscal year is $231 million, with $164 million paid by the city — and
likely to rise.

This is a major increase.

In January 2023, before the city had requested these changes, it planned
to spend $891 million of its own money (not federal or state) on “public
assistance” grants in this fiscal year, not much more than the $850
million budgeted annually before the pandemic.

Turns out the real amount this year is $974 million.

The city expects it to fall to $875 million in the upcoming fiscal year
— but how and why?

As of December, there were 358,000 city recipients in the nonfederal
“safety net assistance” program, up from 314,000 a year earlier.

It had already risen from 217,000 pre-pandemic, but the increase had
been abating.

How many of the new recipients are “asylum seekers”?

Is Gotham encouraging people to apply for these benefits, as the city
helps them with their asylum applications, or discouraging it?

We have no idea.

You’ll read some generic narratives about “public assistance” costs in
budget reports but nothing about how much of that is migrants.

The mayor didn’t mention it in his budget speech.

(Nor can you arrive at the number of recipients by simply dividing the
expected annual budget by the average annual benefit per recipient, as
safety-net assistance typically comes with those noncash shelter and
utility stipends, and it’s not clear if the state is offering those to
the city to defray shelter costs.)

Has Hochul learned nothing from two years of the migrant crisis?

A unique benefit — California doesn’t offer “asylum seekers” welfare —
will attract more people, as the city’s unique “right to shelter” has
demonstrated.

But at least the right to shelter existed before this crisis.

And just like with the “right to shelter,” the state and city have no
exit strategy.

Normally, beneficiaries can receive two years of “safety net assistance”
cash; after that, it converts into a grant directly to a landlord or
utility provider.

The normal goal for people on that assistance is to get a full-time job
— and yes, people who have formally applied for asylum can legally work
after six months.

But with the number of migrants in city shelter expected to rise from
about 70,000 to 90,000 later this year and remain there indefinitely,
the state has effectively created a new, permanent rolling welfare
benefit for newcomers, assuming most “asylum seekers” do find
on-the-books work quickly.

The most startling thing about all this is the lack of transparency.

If New York state and city are proud of the aid they’re offering “asylum
seekers,” why haven’t Hochul and Adams said, “Just like we’re offering
shelter to the world, we’re proud to offer cash benefits.”

They must have understood what the public reaction would be.

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s
City Journal.

https://nypost.com/2024/02/11/opinion/hochul-and-adams-never-ending-migra
nt-money-spigot/

[Deport !]

Lol! Fuck you starving Democrats who voted for this idiot.

It takes money to make money, as the old saying goes, and, apparently, it
also takes money — as much as $53 million — to give money away.

Earlier this month, The Post broke the story that Mayor Adams is giving
out pre-paid cash cards to migrants.

Unusually for the mayor, Adams didn’t publicize this story himself, and
his administration has for nearly a month failed to correct several public
misperceptions about it.

One misperception is that the program allows the city to give out just $50
million to migrants.

No wonder the mayor has been reticent.

This debit-card program — if you read the actual contract — has the
potential to become an open-ended, multi-billion-dollar Bermuda Triangle
of disappearing, untraceable cash, used for any purpose.

It will give migrants up to $10,000 each in taxpayer money with no ID
check, no restrictions and no fraud control.

Why give debit cards out?
When The Post exposed the mayor’s debit-card program earlier this month,
the mayor’s office spun it as a money-saving program, to solve a problem:
migrants staying in hotels don’t eat all their food.

DocGo, the city’s no-bid “emergency” contractor to provide migrants with
three meals a day, throws away up to 5,000 meals daily, wasting $7.2
million a year.

Some food is inedible — expired or rotten — and other food doesn’t meet
migrants’ dietary needs.

Providing mass-scale meals competently and with options for specific needs
— halal, kosher, vegan, non-gluten — isn’t that hard: the school system
does it, airlines do it, hospitals and jails do it.

It wouldn’t be that difficult for the city to solve this problem: on-site
city auditors could refuse to pay for meals that are objectively inedible,
with visible mold, for example, or with expired labeling.

Solving the old boondoggle with a new boondoggle
Instead of assuring that it’s existing no-bid “emergency” contractor
fulfills its duty to provide edible food, however, the Adams
administration has solved its problem by retaining a new no-bid
“emergency” contractor — to provide a service with far more scope for
waste, fraud, and abuse than stale sandwiches: giving out potentially
billions of dollars of hard cash, few questions asked.

Which vendors did the city’s Housing Preservation & Development consider
for this contract, as qualified to provide this complex financial service?

New York City is home to hundreds of top-tier financial-services and
public-benefits providers, a dream of a competitive bidding pool, to
ensure that the city gets a good price, as well as strong protections
against fraud and abuse.

But HPD considered only one: Newark-based Mobility Capital Finance, which
also has an office in Harlem.

MoCaFi was founded by Wole Coaxum, a former managing director at JPMorgan
Chase, who said the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014
inspired him to serve the “underbanked” and “narrow the racial wealth
gap.”

https://nypost.com/2024/02/19/opinion/inside-mayor-adams-migrant-debit-
card-boondoggle-no-bid-bank-gets-50-million-border-crossers-up-to-10000-
each/

[New York Stupid]

That stupid whore Hochul.

Mayor Eric Adams’ administration will soon start handing out pre-paid
credit cards to migrant families being put up in Big Apple hotels, The
Post has learned.

The $53 million pilot program, run by the New Jersey company Mobility
Capital Finance, will provide asylum seekers arriving at the Roosevelt
Hotel with the city cash to help them buy food, according to city records.

It’ll start with a group of 500 migrant families in short-term hotel stays
and will replace the current food service offered there, according to City
Hall.

The cards can only be used at bodegas, grocery stores, supermarkets and
convenience stores — and migrants must sign an affidavit swearing they
will only spend the funds on food and baby supplies or they will be kicked
out of the program.

The Immediate Response Card initiative appears akin to the state’s food
stamp program, dubbed SNAP, which provides lower-income New Yorkers with a
credit card to cover the cost of meals, and will provide funds based on
the same scale.

The amount on each card will vary depending on the size of the family and
whether any income is coming in, according to the details of the contract.
A family of four, for instance, could be provided nearly $1,000 each
month, which comes out to $35 per day for food. Cards will get refilled
every 28 days.

https://nypost.com/2024/02/02/metro/nyc-to-hand-out-prepaid-credit-cards-
to-migrant-families-for-food/