It's the Brian Lerichot on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. We begin today with some things

that did not destroy New York City. The 1929 stock market crash did not destroy New York

City. Neither did the 1970s fiscal crisis, you know, Ford to City dropped dead, the 70s

and 80s crime wave. The 1987 stock market crash, oh 9-11, the financial crisis of 2008,

Hurricane Sandy did not destroy New York City, neither did the pandemic, or Donald Trump.

Here's some things that definitely did not destroy New York City. The Irish immigration

wave of 1845 to 1855, and the Ellis Island era that followed. The Great Migration from South

to North during Jim Crow, the arrival of so many US citizens from Puerto Rico over the decades.

Let's look back at a couple of these. At the peak of Irish immigration from 1845 to 55,

about 100,000 Irish immigrants per year came to the city more than 900,000 in one decade,

according to the website Irish Central. That's about the same number of migrants per year as

are arriving now. And Ellis Island, according to the History Channel website from 1900 to 1914,

around 700,000 people per year were admitted through Ellis Island. The record year was 1907,

with nearly 1.3 million people, a quarter of whom, or more than 300,000,

settled in New York or New Jersey. Nobody looks back at the Ellis Island era and says it

destroyed our city. I'm flooding you with numbers here, right? Sorry, but they provide the

context for today's headline about Mayor Adams, which we'll get to. Here are just a few more,

bring us up to the present. From Crane's New York business, in February of this year,

headline, a 56% drop in immigration is hampering New York's recovery. The resulting labor shortage,

the article says, has played out across the economy as a silent headwind to the city's

plotting recovery. That was this year when the migrant freak out was already underway.

And an article about population on Bloomberg News in March says, quote,

...