Dem ex-Gov David Paterson says Staten Island GOP Rep. Nicole Malliotakis is spot-on with her criticism of the migrant crisis and Biden administration, which he ripped for creating the “self-inflicted wound.
“When they planned this, where did they think we would be in September 2023? Where did they think that all these people would go?,” the incredulous Democrat asked WABC 770 AM’s “Cats Roundtable”host John Catsimatidis, referring to the federal government.
Paterson, 69, who has become part of an increasingly vocal group of Democrats criticizing the Dem White House for its handling of the asylum-seeker “catastrophe,” praised the Republican Malliotakis for how she has called out the administration.
“[Malliotakis], I think, explains the whole situation and how it all happened better than anybody,” Paterson said of the congresswoman — who is so upset about even a relatively small percentage of migrants being housed on Staten Island that she recently renewed calls for the borough to secede.
“She’s talking about the fact that had they planned for this prior to sending the migrants, how the federal parks service and all the, a lot of the service agencies, could have prepared for it in the states where the migrants were going to be sent,” said the former gov of New York — where the Big Apple has been slammed with more than 100,000 asylum-seekers since spring 2022.
“This is one of those situations … where ideologically, probably, if, if there was a safe way to do this, I think the overwhelming number of people have a lot of sympathy for some of the countries that these migrants are immigrating from, and some of the dictatorships and the drastic measures that are taking against individuals, the drug cartels and the whole thing,” Paterson said.
But “what [the federal government] also failed to do is think about what the migrants would do once they get here,” the ex-governor said.
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“So what if [federal government officials] sent some money to set up some programs to train people in some of the skilled areas that they would need?” Paterson continued as he compared the situation to the 1.3 million immigrants who arrived at Ellis Island at the turn of the last century.
“The difference between now and then was the jobs were already available, they had planned to allow the immigration during that particular time,” he explained of officials at the time.
“It’s a self-inflicted wound issued by the federal government, who has yet to explain why they would do this in the first place without any real means of giving these people a chance,” Paterson said of the migrant crisis.
“It’s as much a disservice to the immigrants themselves as it is to the populations they are moving into.”
Paterson did have kind words for the actions of Gov. Kathy Hochul, who like himself was improbably elevated to high office during a sex scandal.
“Gov. Hochul … has now challenged the federal government, [going] this past Wednesday … to the White House to seek assistance and has even been critical of this whole idea of how we got to this point in the first place,” he said.
Paterson, who lives in Harlem, said New York City Mayor Eric Adams is doing a good job, too, of trying to take White House officials to task but noted that Hizzoner has to walk a political tightrope in the hopes of convincing them to cover most of the up to $12 billion tab for sheltering the new arrivals over the next three years.
