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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. New York is still digesting Governor Hochul's reversal on congestion pricing and also this other big thing from last week that not only New York, but the whole nation is still digesting and maybe the whole hemisphere. Last Tuesday, President Joe Biden announced an executive order to shut down the border to asylum seekers. Here's 17 seconds.

President Joe Biden: Today I'm announcing actions to bar migrants who cross our southern border unlawfully from receiving asylum. Migrants will be restricted from receiving asylum at our southern border unless they seek it after entering through an established lawful process.

Brian Lehrer: The policy kicks in once the seven-day average for daily illegal crossings hits 2,500. We are at that point now, so it takes effect immediately. The border would reopen only after the figure drops to 1,500 for seven days in a row and stays that way for two weeks. The policy had been under discussion since February, we're told, after a bipartisan bill to restrict asylum failed in the Congress. Now, issued as an executive order, the policy may face legal challenges. Joining us to discuss the executive order and with reaction and to be transparent opposition about how it might impact New York City is Murad Awawdeh. He is president and CEO of The New York Immigration Coalition. Murad, always good to have you. Welcome back to WNYC.

Murad Awawdeh: Always good to be back. Thank you for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Put your group's reaction on the table. What do you think?

Murad Awawdeh: This is another action that we're seeing President Biden take straight out of the Trumpian playbook on anti-immigrant policies. Biden's asylum ban is a cruel and restrictive measure. His primary concern is politics, not the safety of people fleeing violence and persecution. The real thing that we need to do here is reform our immigration system by creating pathways to legalization and permanence for newly arrived folks as well as established immigrants. Despite border concerns, the majority of the public maintains strong support for balanced solutions.

We should be prioritizing fair and orderly and efficient treatment for those seeking refuge in our country and at the same time reform our country's antiquated and arcane immigration system.

Brian Lehrer: You call it Trumpian. The New York Times put it this way, "The measure is the most restrictive border policy instituted by Mr. Biden or any other modern Democrat and echoes an effort in 2018 by President Donald J. Trump to cut off migration that was blocked in federal court." We'll discuss the legal challenges in a second, but you know Biden would bristle heavily at this comparison to Trump. He'd probably say, "Trump says today's immigrants are snakes," I saw a video where Trump used that word at his Bronx rally, "and are destroying our country and come from s-hole countries," all of that because of who they are.

Biden says yes to Latin Americans, yes to Africans as the moral equivalent of any other immigrant, but too many all at once for social services and budgets to absorb, then we have to limit it for a while as just a matter of reasonable common sense. Is it fair to compare Biden to Trump really?

Murad Awawdeh: Yes, because he's literally doing worse than Trump on asylum. In this moment, what we need is real leadership and real courage. We need our president who-- Biden of 2020 was running a campaign and came into office saying he wanted to reform our system. We know that the real solution here at the border is not more restrictive measures, but actually creating more pathways, which to his credit, he created the one amazing pathway called the Parole Program for Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Haiti. We saw the populations from those countries drop at the southern border and people started coming in through that program.

The reality is that he may be saying nicer things, but he's implementing even more horrendous policies than Trump did. We expect this to be sued in court and for it to actually fail there.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, I want to open up the phones in a certain way. Anybody can call, but if you're among those who support President Biden's border closure because our guest is an opponent, tell us why. Engage in dialogue with our guest Murad Awawdeh from the New York Immigration Coalition. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Specifically, I'll ask you to answer this question, listeners, are you directly affected by the number of recent asylum seekers arriving in New York or in America, if not, what's the source of your opposition to them? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

I'm trying to get at whether-- so many people list this as a top issue, if not the top issue in the issue polling in this election year. Is this just an abstraction for you or are you somehow affected by the number of immigrants coming into the country all at once? 212-433-WNYC. That, of course, assumes that you're not one of them yourself, and recent immigrants, you may call too, always, asylum seekers or others. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Let me continue on that line of questioning about Biden not being Trump and the way I framed the caller question.

A lot of people who are not Trump or MAGA on immigration who support robust asylum and refugee programs and don't think Latin Americans or people from the Caribbean or from Africa are somehow lesser or to be feared as a group like Trump tries to make us all nonetheless think there has to be a limit based on how much the country or one city can resettle and how much is our responsibility all at once. 200,000 to New York City in the last two years. A lot of non-MAGA New Yorkers and other Americans might think this 2,500 a day average or 1,500 a day limit is reasonable.

What would you say to people who identify with that kind of description?

Murad Awawdeh: Well, I think the reality is that we've had people migrating to New York for decades at this point. The only difference in this moment is that a small percentage of the people who are migrating here need a little bit of support with shelter. This is also at the same time that we have been dealing with an affordability crisis for the past six years, and then couple that with the housing crisis, I think that people in large part because some of our elected leaders scapegoating our newest arrivals feel this scarcity mentality when we live in the richest city in the richest state and the richest country in the world.

People feel that they're not receiving something because someone else is, when we need to move away from that scarcity mentality and into actually one of abundance since this is literally one of the richest places in the world. This just comes down to how our elected leaders are prioritizing investments into our communities across the State of New York, across New York City. How do people feel their elected leaders are supporting them or not? I think that is the real question not necessarily because some folks may need a little bit of shelter help, that that is what is the issue here.

It's that for a long time, people have felt that they are not getting supports and services that they need. Just to put this out there, neither are the newcomers. We're in this place where there's a lot of resentment in a way, but people's resentment needs to be targeted to the right people who actually have the power to make the changes we need to see to ensure that everyone's getting the supports and investment that they need because if we know anything, we know that when we invest in our people, in New Yorkers, the rate of return is a thousandfold.

Brian Lehrer: You're saying yes, there is scarcity of affordable housing right now, but there doesn't have to be, and so the city can be welcoming to this many asylum seekers and not have it affect housing prices even more if only the government would do the right thing on housing. It's a big lift.

Murad Awawdeh: Well, not just on housing, across the board. We're not talking solely about housing. People have been dealing with the affordability crisis, and people have been dealing with it for six years at this point. Depending on where you fall on the socioeconomic spectrum, you may have been feeling it for the past six years or you just started feeling it over the past three or you just started feeling it this year. The reality is that everyone is feeling the affordability crunch in this moment, and that's what we need to be focused on. It's not just with housing, it's with cost of food and everything else.

One thing that can help lower costs is actually more workers. In New York, we have more than enough jobs. There's three jobs for each New Yorker. What we need is actually to get more folks into the state to be our workforce. Historically, immigrant New Yorkers have been a huge driving force and continue to be in our economy. There are nearly $3 million immigrants in New York's workforce. 30% of entrepreneurs in New York are immigrants, resulting in $7 billion in business income and taxes. New immigrants generate $23 million in total wages, and this is just of the new population.

$2.6 million in state and local revenue for each 1000 new arrival per year within their first year. This all amounts to over $60 billion in state taxes that are received because of the contributions of immigrants, and immigrants having over $153 billion in spending power in the state. We know that our communities are a real driving force within our economy. They're the backbone of our local economies in New York City, but also across the state, and have been for a long time. Just a couple of years ago, during COVID, we saw that the majority of folks who were essential workers were from immigrant communities.

We were clapping pots and pans for them every night at 7:00 PM. Now for us to be in this moment is kind of crazy.

Brian Lehrer: I've talked about the weird paradox in the last few years since the start of the pandemic of New York leaders complaining about two things. One, too many people are leaving New York, and two, too many people are coming to New York. Wait, what?

Murad Awawdeh: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: We are with Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, responding to President Biden's border shutdown executive order. Brad in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hello, Brad.

Brad: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I guess my two points are for your guest. One, most data shows that 70% to 80% of the people coming across the border don't qualify for asylum. How do we deal with that? The second thing is in terms of our court system are just overwhelmed. We've been working with somebody for five years trying to get them a court hearing in New York City, they still don't have a hearing. This is before the surge last year. The system can't be that it takes seven or eight years to get a hearing to find out whether you qualify or not. We got to do a couple of things I think.

I'm just curious what they think in terms of the asylum issue because a lot of these people don't seem to qualify for it.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, I saw that stat on Senator Gillibrand's website this morning reading in for this segment as well, Murad, and I think her stat was 90% do not qualify, of the recent wave, do not qualify for asylum, they're really economic migrants, which is a worthy thing to be, but that the asylum claims aren't justifiable in the large majority of cases. What do you say to Brad, what do you say by extension to Senator Gillibrand?

Murad Awawdeh: Well, from the folks that we are supporting here in the city and in the state, that's not the status that we're seeing. Folks who have received legal services through our Welcome New York campaign that we launched last year in partnership with the state, as well as other partner agencies across the state of New York, including in New York City, we're not really seeing that number. Maybe that's just what we'll see down the road, but at this moment, folks who are submitting applications have a clear avenue to move forward, but this also goes back to creating additional pathways.

I mentioned this earlier in the program where President Biden created the parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, and because of that program, there was a 90% drop of people from those countries coming to the southern border, and then they start to utilize the parole program to get in.

Brian Lehrer: Just so people aren't confused by the word, parole makes it sound like they're people who committed crimes and-- [crosstalk]

Murad Awawdeh: It's a humanitarian parole program which allows people-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: It's an ignition program for-- Yes, you explain it. It's an ignition program for people in certain categories from their countries, right?

Murad Awawdeh: Yes, exactly. It provides them with humanitarian parole, which is temporary relief, as well as work authorization. To the second point of the caller's question about immigration courts, the immigration courts have been in a disarray for years. Instead of President Biden continuing to put in more restrictive and unnecessary policies, he should be investing in having a more efficient immigration system. That means making sure that we have immigration reform so that we have a clear way that people are able to get into the country, but also having pathways for long-standing folks to actually attain legalization, and then fixing the court system.

Many people tend to wait many years to get through the system. What we're seeing right now is the Biden administration just a couple of weeks ago launched what we're calling rocket dockets, and key cities across the state-- not state, nation- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Country.

Murad Awawdeh: -like New York City, where they're hoping to power through everyone's immigration case within six months, which is literally also acknowledging that people are not going to have due process in their immigration cases. There needs to be a balance here, and more restrictive and cruel measures aren't the answer here.

Brian Lehrer: Is there any number of people coming relatively all at once that would make you say, "That's too many all at once. We have to slow it down," because otherwise people will turn around and say, "Oh, they're just for open borders."

Murad Awawdeh: Well, I think that we have to look back in history. I don't even want to go too far back in history. The United States helped resettle over 100,000 Africans within days leaving Afghanistan, and then folks coming into the US. Then, shortly after the war started in Ukraine, many Ukrainians started coming over to the United States. I think that it is part and parcel of this issue that we continue to face where there are certain populations that the US helps and creates systems for and then other populations that they do not. The reality is that, is 100,000 too many?

Well, we helped resettle 100,000 people very quickly not too long ago. I think the reality is that we just have to have a fairer, more efficient, and orderly process for everyone and create additional pathways, similarly to what we've done in the past. This is not a new idea.

Brian Lehrer: One more call. Duke in Jersey City, you're on WNYC with Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition. Hi, Duke.

Duke: Hey, Brian, how are you doing?

Brian Lehrer: Good. What you got for us?

Duke: You can hear me okay?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, we got you, Duke.

Duke: One thing I wanted to say, [chuckles] I was in the shower listening to you. I didn't really catch everything that your guest was saying in-- One of the things I want to say is Governor Abbott-- It's Governor Abbott is in Texas?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, Texas.

Duke: Who started the whole bus mobilizing thing?

Brian Lehrer: Correct.

Duke: I'm surprised that that man didn't end up on the cover of Time Magazine as the Man of the Year last year, or whenever he started this, because strategically, that was one of the smartest moves that the Republicans could do, to start sending these people to these Democratic urban centers. I didn't support it at the time, and I don't support it now, but strategically, look how smart it was to create this problem for the Democrats.

Brian Lehrer: As a matter of political analysis, maybe it was some kind of masterstroke, put this burden so much on New York when it was much more on Texas-

Duke: No question it was a [unintelligible 00:19:07]

Brian Lehrer: - and draw attention to Sanctuary City. Did you also tell our screener that you're directly affected in some way and that's one of the reasons you called?

Duke: I'm going to tell you a real quick story, Brian. During the pandemic, I started working with the delivery apps, Uber, DoorDash. This was towards the end of the pandemic, so let's say around 2022, the end of 2022 I started doing it. It was working out great. I'm kind of semi-retired, so I was making a little bit of money doing that. Plenty of work, steady work, and then all of a sudden, I would say last year really, it just came to a complete halt. Complete stop. This coincided with the time when all of the migrants started flooding the city.

It was very obvious that many of them started doing this delivery app work illegally, figuring out ways to hack accounts and all of that kins of stuff. I don't know how they do it. Right now, it's gotten so bad that I can't even do it anymore. With DoorDash, you can't even get work. You can't schedule to get the work. If you try to schedule weeks in advance, it's pretty much closed, and that's directly from the-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Because of so many recent arrivals. Duke, thank you. I have to go because we're going to run out of time in the segment. I appreciate the call. Murad, this is one of the issues. Duke is telling it as a personal anecdote, but it implies this issue that comes up, which is if there is a group in the already here population who suffers from so many asylum seekers coming in such cluster, it's the lower-income workers who are already here. Some would say lower-income African-American workers who are already here.

There have been some studies that point to that as among those who are negatively affected by a lot of, let's say, low education or low English arrivals in a very short period of time.

Respond to Duke's story and then say anything else that you want as we run out of time.

Murad Awawdeh: Well, first, I want to just say that Governor Abbott is someone who is not a good person. He's actually horrible for using people as political pawns to advance his own career. This also goes back to President Biden not actually leading in this moment and saying, "I will send our agencies down to the southern border and help with resettlement," and actually lead in helping ensure that people get to where they need to go or where they want to go. Again, to the scarcity mentality. I can't speak for New Jersey, but I know that here in New York, we have 2.5 to 3 jobs per person who is currently here.

There are more jobs than people, and we need more people here to actually do the jobs. I think that we really need to continuously think about how we're investing in all folks who call New York home, even New Jersey, let's throw them into the mix, and how we're supporting people because we can know that once you invest in people, the rate of return is a thousand fold. I don't want to get into the back and forth of scarcity because that's literally going to continue to perpetuate the issue. We need to really start moving away from the scarcity mentality and into real solutions that are going to help all of our communities.

Brian Lehrer: Murad Awawdeh, President and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition. We always appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Murad Awawdeh: Thank you. Have a good day.

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