A mere 2,100 migrants in the Big Apple’s care have applied for work permits — with not a single one yet to receive federal approval, city officials admitted Wednesday.
City Hall also has no solid figure for how many of the more than 40,000 adult asylum seekers it is housing are even eligible to legally work here, officials conceded at a city council hearing.
The revelation frustrated even Mayor Adams’ fellow Democrats on the council.
“This migrant strategy is going nowhere fast: We have to secure the border,” Council Member Robert Holden (D-Queens) said.
So far, the city’s migrant help center has submitted 444 work applications and another 1,700 were filed with the help of the feds stationed in Lower Manhattan.
None have returned with a federal stamp of approval, officials conceded.
The stunning admissions came Wednesday during the City Council’s Committee on Immigration hearing, which also revealed that the city hasn’t prioritized Venezuelans at the migrant center — or even started telling them of the change — despite the Biden administration’s move last month to clear the way for those from the troubled country to get temporary protective status.
“We [had] booked through all of October when the TPS was announced, so we could not have additional clients come in because we fully book our appointments as much as possible,” said Asylum Application Help Center executive director Masha Gindler.
“So the first week when we can kind of increase the amount of TPS appointments were are doing would be that first full week in November.”
The state-funded center in Midtown is staffed by 75 people handling paperwork and 20 supervising lawyers and it has processed 5,600 applications for asylum since the end of June.
Only 300 of those work applications were for Venezuelans with 300 more having appointments on the books soon, Gindler said.
“We cannot promote bypassing standard immigration procedures and extending TPS without ensuring those in need actually utilize the protection,” Holden said. “The migrant crisis demands both serious attention and consistent follow-through.
The Biden administration extended protections for people fleeing the country experiencing extreme poverty a month ago as long as they crossed the border before August following calls from Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams, who argued working would allow them to move quicker out of New York City’s overwhelmed shelter system.
Those applications are expected to be turned around in weeks while others without TPS status have to wait six months to apply after requesting asylum formally.
But City Hall has still yet to even start outreach to those people, with officials unsure still who should be applying for work permits.
“The assessment… will give us a lot of the information to see who is eligible and who we are able to call back and schedule appointments at the center,” Gindler testified.
The city, which had been criticized by the feds and state for not gathering enough info on the migrants in its care, started a “sprint” to survey the tens of thousands of asylum seekers in NYC, which was said to be finished in a few weeks.
At that time, 800 applications for work permits had been filed.
Five weeks later, Gindler said the city was still waiting on the results and wouldn’t even fully commit to the mayor’s figure on work-eligible Venezuelans of 15,000.
But the city, she said, has set a lofty goal.
“Our goal is to identify screen and schedule appointments for all Venezuelans by the end of the year.”
Since the start of the crisis, 130,600 migrants have come through NYC with 65,400 still in the city’s care.