(WBEN) - There are still a lot more questions than answers in regards to the likely migrant influx coming to Erie County from New York City.
"It's a situation not of New York State's doing," New York State Sen. Sean Ryan told WBEN. "The Governor of Texas and Florida have decided to put people on the bus without any care and, essentially, give them a one way ticket to New York State. It's not something we created, but we, as a state, have to respond and handle it, so we're going to respond to it."
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Sen. Ryan says that the journey for migrants to get from New York City to Erie County is going to take some time and won't happen all at once. Most Erie County residents won't notice much of the suggested "sudden" spike that we've been hearing about.
"It's going to be chaotic until it normalizes. So we know, there's not going to be any quick onslaught into Western New York. If you remember after the problems in Afghanistan, there was the idea of 'When are the Afghans coming?' But really what happened, it was a slow trickle of people came in and integrated into the community. It's not something people would would ever even notice. Usually there's some some dislocation we expect, like a tidal wave, but it's not really how it works out."
Taking what government has learned from migrants coming from the Ukraine and Afghanistan, Senator Ryan says an assessment is continuing to be made for New York, and from there, they will determine how many migrants Erie County could potentially handle and go from there.
"We did an assessment of how and what groups locally can help, what's their capacity? Where can we find surplus housing? We're trying to gather those numbers now. Once we put those numbers together to the state, we'll go back and say, 'Here's how many we think we could bring into Erie County.' But it's all going to be coordinated, there'll be a plan, whoever is going to come in is going to come in with case management services, we're not going to just dump people anywhere. So we're going to figure it out," said the senator.
Both Ryan and New York State's 140th District Assemblyman agree on the need for the federal government to expedite the process of having migrants being granted work permits and assessed.
"We have folks coming here seeking asylum and we want to expedite that right now. We've seen the crisis of the folks here, let's figure out if they're allowed to stay. If they are allowed to stay, let's get them working. If they're not allowed to stay, let's return them to their home country of origin," said Assemblyman William Conrad. "My concern right now from the federal level is [that] there isn't enough funds and people to be able to process that."
"If the federal government could give New York a waiver to make it so people can work faster, that's going to help the process. You go all around Western New York, there are help wanted signs. We need people into our community and into our economy and we know how to do it. We've been resettling refugees into Western New York for over a decade, it's where our population growth comes from. So we're going to put down the welcome mat," said the senator.
New York City Governor Adams is raising concerns that the money allocated in the state budget, $1 billion dollars, is not enough, claiming they made be spending more than $4.3 billion dollars or more by the end of this year.
"If Governor Abbott keeps shipping people to New York State, we're going to need more money. Maybe Governor Abbott in Texas will will help us resettle some people, but I don't think that's what they're going to do. This is a crisis mostly of political maneuverings that made this happen. We'll figure it out. In New York, we had the capacity, we budgeted a chunk of money. But we'll see what happens if people keep coming there, we're going to have to recalibrate," said Senator Ryan.