New York City Mayor Eric Adams called for illegal immigrants to be allowed to work as lifeguards as the city faces a shortage, claiming that many are “excellent swimmers.”
Adams was asked at a press conference about a lifeguard shortage in the city as Memorial Day and summer months approach.
“How do we have a large body of people that are in our city, and country, that are excellent swimmers and, at the same time, we need lifeguards — and the only obstacle is that we won’t give them the right to work to become a lifeguard,” he said.
“That just doesn’t make sense.”
“We have all these eligible people waiting to work with the skills we need to fill the jobs but we are unable to allow them to work because bureaucracy is in the way,” he said. “That just does not make sense.”
In January 2024, American Faith reported that New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) added millions of dollars to the 2025 fiscal year plan to combat illegal immigration.
Now, the state has $2.4 billion set aside for illegal immigrants, up $500 million from its original $1.9 billion allocation.
In total, New York’s budget is $233 billion.
“The city is the home of untold new arrivals each and every day and the governor is not going to leave the city hanging,” Blake Washington, the state’s budget director, told The New York Post. “We’re sort of meeting the problem where it is, not what we’d like it to be.”
Hochul announced the plan in an address, saying, “We’re going to continue focusing on securing work authorization, and put the migrants and asylum workers to work. Put them to work. That’s exactly what they came here for.”
