NYC Will Set Up Help Center For Migrant Asylum Applications

NEW YORK CITY — New York City is opening a help center to help migrants fill out applications for asylum — a process that one top city official recently said "very few" have formally started.

The help center will open in the coming weeks, Mayor Eric Adams announced Tuesday in a release.

Officials plan for it to operate in the American Red Cross Greater New York headquarters in Midtown.

“The Asylum Application Help Center will assist the asylum seekers in New York City through the complex federal immigration process, bringing them one step closer to being eligible for work authorization and the ability to support themselves," Adams said in a statement.

"We must act swiftly to ensure the well-being of the thousands of migrants whose deadline to submit an asylum application is fast approaching, and this center will help us do that."

More than 70,000 migrants — largely people fleeing political turmoil in South America — have arrived in New York City over the past year, officials said.

But while they're largely understood to be seeking asylum, "very few" have actually started the complicated formal process of applying for that status, said Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom during a May 31 news conference.

"Probably people have come here, they've been nervous, they probably didn't know where to get connected to services, didn't know who to give their paperwork to," she said.

Migrants who don't begin the formal process early have delayed their eligibility to get official permission to work, officials said.

The lack of on-the-ground support for migrants has been a source of friction between city officials, namely Adams, and President Joe Biden's administration.

The mayor has pushed Biden for a "national strategy" to help asylum seekers, rather than — in his telling — leaving it to local governments such as New York City.

Indeed, the release announcing the asylum application help center included a pointed barb.

"In absence of national strategy, asylum application help center will provide thousands of asylum seekers in NYC assistance to submit asylum applications ..." it began.