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Ryan Laird on WNYC, studios.

Now as usual on Wednesdays, our lead Eric Adams reporter, Elizabeth Kim,

with excerpts from, analysis of, and to take your calls about Mayor Adams' weekly Tuesday news conference.

Among other things, the mayor was noncommittal yesterday when asked if he supports President

elect Trump's plan to begin a mass deportation

program. We'll play that clip. But by way of historical contrast and historical context, first,

here's a clip of Mayor Rudy Giuliani in a speech in 1997 when Giuliani was in office,

talking about the effects as he saw them of large-scale

immigration to the city. He cites the number 100,000 immigrants a year. Let me see if I can

give you just a few facts about the city of New York. Immigrants who come to the city of New York,

all the new people that you're talking about, work about 10% more often than people who are citizens of the United States and citizens of the

city. They start businesses 2 to 3% more often. They are net contributors in fairly significant

amounts to the economy of the city. When I see immigrants coming in, you know, it used to be Ellis Island

and now it's Kennedy Airport, but when I see them coming in, of course I see some that are

problems, create difficulties, some that commit crimes, but by and large what I see are people

who are going to work, people who are going to establish jobs for other people, people who are going to increase

our tax revenues, and people who are going to rejuvenate neighborhoods that maybe previously

were falling apart. And if you think about it, they come in with an emotion that unifies

them with my grandparents. It's really the same emotion, the same feeling.

The feeling is to create a better life for themselves and their families. Most of the

people that come to the United States come here to work and to work in order to produce

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