New York City Mayor Eric Adams, facing an influx of economic migrants and asylum seekers starting in 2022, called on the federal government on Thursday to issue more work permits so these undocumented immigrants can pursue their “American dream.”

“The American dream is the right to work, the right to support your family,” the mayor, an African-American former police officer from the right wing of the Democratic Party, said at a rally in midtown Manhattan, surrounded by representatives of unions and employers’ organizations, especially from the hotel and restaurant industry. restaurant industry, as well as NGOs.

“It is necessary to accelerate the issuance of work visas. This is logic. There are thousands of jobs that need to be filled to provide the services needed by the city, New York State and the nation,” he insisted.

Along with him, Andrew Righi, director of the New York Hospitality Alliance, an organization of restaurant and bar owners, estimated at “10,000” the number of jobs available in the sector, for which “there are neither Americans nor enough people (foreigners) authorized to work “.

At a time when many fast-food and food-delivery businesses in New York rely on cheap — and sometimes undocumented — labor, Righi said it’s “the moral right” to speed up the work permit process.

In addition, he told AFP, it would have a “strong economic impact to help small businesses recover from the pandemic”.

In early August, Adams put a figure of $12 billion over three years for the potential cost of the migration “crisis” in his metropolis, where 100,000 refugees, economic migrants and asylum seekers from Latin America and, more recently, West Africa, are expected to arrive starting in April 2022.

New York, a city that built its legend on successive waves of immigration, has a legal obligation to welcome and feed all new arrivals, regardless of their status. Currently, almost 108,000 people are accommodated in hostels, hotels and vacant apartments. About 56,000 are asylum seekers.

But the city of 8.5 million people warned New York state and the federal government within a year of a “national crisis it cannot handle alone.”

The state’s governor, Democrat Kathy Hochul, was met Wednesday night by the White House, which announced “supportive” measures for New York to identify all “immigrants who are eligible for work authorization.”