We'll be talking about her actions to get federal help for New York with the influx of asylum seekers, also about the prospect for government shutdown at the end of this month with House Republicans wanting to attach things like a Biden

and impeachment inquiry to a bill to keep the government running and more and we'll talk about what you call about if you're a New Yorker call your senator with your questions relevant to the work of the United States Senate at 212433 WNYC non-New Yorkers may call to Senator Gillibrand is your senator to your during these call-ins 212433 9692 you can also text a question to our that same call on call-in

number 212433 9692 or tweet at Brian Lair Senator Roy always appreciate that you do this welcome back to WNYC thanks Brian on the asylum seekers I see you're working on a bipartisan bill with Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana want to start there sure obviously our immigration system is broken and as a result

we are doing everything we can in New York to solve a very significant humanitarian crisis and so a lot more needs to be done first of all the federal government should be working very hard to provide resources for New York since this is not a problem they've caused themselves

and so the senator Schumer and I've been working very hard on that we got about 800 million dollars to address these concerns and about 140 million went to New York New York spent much more than that so we are hoping to get more resources we're also working I'm working very hard on a number of pieces of legislation and we're trying to get Republican members of the New York House delegation we have 11 of them to focus on how we can do bipartisan common sense legislation

legislation to begin to solve the problem these are all laws that were created by the federal government we have the power of the purse and so Congress has to do their job and actually legislate but we need Republican allies in the house who are willing to do the work so one idea is to make sure that we have TPS status for the people that are coming temporary protective status that would let them work faster

I have the bill to change the amount of time people have to work to start working once they filed their asylum claim that they can work in 30 days as opposed to 180 days that would help a lot and we want to ask the federal government to help more with support centers to use the support centers that we created for the Afghan refugees to be used for all refugees and asylum seekers and those are just a couple of ideas

but I have other legislation to just change the immigration courts we don't have enough we need I have legislation to make title one court so it's not just in the hands of the administration but that we can have congressional created courts I also have legislation to increase a number of lawyers so they can actually adjudicate these cases

these asylum claims are taking two years three years in some cases far more than the law requires and so we need more lawyers and more judges to do that

and so I think we just have to work on an bipartisan basis to get it done we need comprehensive immigration reform and one of the bipartisan ideas was that of Bill Cassidy's and he wants to work with me to right size immigration

we have the same number of visas that we've ever had 675,000 over the last several years and apparently we don't even use all those visas every year because the processing is not effective

so if we right size immigration increase the number of visas for different types of workers where we're desperate ag workers, healthcare workers, restaurant workers, tourism and hotel workers maybe you can do industry by industry because we have 200,000 unfilled jobs in New York right now that I could tell you a lot of employers would love to fill if they could do so legally

and so these are our challenges it's a huge huge huge challenge but we need people of good will from both sides of the aisle especially Republicans who aren't coming to the table to solve this problem

on the length of time that people have to be here for a work authorization you said it's currently 180 days 6 months you want the government to make it 30 days so they can start supporting themselves more quickly

I know that's a major priority of Mayor Adams as well have you asked President Biden to do that with an executive order? Does Biden have the authority to do that with an executive order?

When I've talked to people and I guess I've asked I've asked many times they have said they don't have the legal authority to do it that the law as written requires 180 days and that it requires an act of Congress to change the law to reduce it to 30 days

I don't know if there's any emergency power that the president has that can change that the people from the White House I've spoken to have said they don't

so we're going to ask for other types of help we can ask for a whole of government solution we can ask Homeland Security DOJ DHS State Department to all work together HHS on meeting these asylum claims quickly getting more lawyers to do the work asking DOJ to increase the number of immigration courts asking them to do whole of government surge of lawyers

so at least we can review these cases quickly and those who do not qualify for asylum can be sent home and those who do qualify asylum can work because we have worker shortages in all these industries as I mentioned.

So I spent the all of all guys traveling across New York I did a bunch of rural counties and when I talked to people who worked on farms who worked at breweries who worked in hotels all of them said they had a worker shortage.

So if we could fix our immigration system we can right size immigration and people can be working which means they will not need the support of shelters and food assistance they'll be able to pay their own bills pay their taxes pay into Social Security as they wait for their asylum claim to be determined.

The people that are here are seeking asylum that is a law that has been in place since the 80s that would need to be changed if people do not want people coming here who are seeking asylum.

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