While the media’s focus these days is on the influx of immigrants in New York City, a recent New York Times article points out that there are plenty of business owners who would love to be able to hire these new arrivals to New York State.
The problem? Federal government policy stands in the way.
“Across the state, many large and small employers have expressed an overwhelming willingness to hire recent asylum seekers; migrants are even more eager to work. But bringing the two sides together is far harder than it might seem,” write Jesse McKinley and Luis Ferre-Sadurni in the New York Times article.
They note that migrants are prohibited by federal policy from securing work permits until 180 days after an asylum application is filed, “a process that has resulted in monthslong backlogs and has frustrated both business and elected leaders, especially in upstate New York, where farms and small rural towns mix with a series of often hard-strapped Erie Canal cities.”
In related news, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul Gov. Kathy Hochul recently “called on the federal government to provide New York State relief in the midst of the migrant crisis by speeding work authorizations for asylum-seekers arriving in regions that include Buffalo,” reports Harold McNeil in the Buffalo News.
The Immigration and Refugee News Digest 