On Monday, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced that the City would partner with up to 50 houses of worship to shelter small groups of some of the more than 60,000 immigrants and asylum seekers who’ve arrived here in the last 10 months. Adams has now taken up an initiative proposed to City Hall some months ago by the Interfaith Center of New York.

This is a welcome turn of events. Because until now, spontaneous, volunteer efforts to fulfill the teachings of many faiths and welcome the strangers in our midst too often have been spurned by a City administration sometimes also inclined to unfortunate and potentially divisive rhetoric on this issue.

This new City approach needs to be sustained, guided by humility and wisdom: Being humble enough to know they don’t have all the answers and wise enough to make use of the hospitality of others.

The majority of these newest New Yorkers have come from countries where they experienced oppression, danger, and often death threats, places where their civil and human rights were being denied. They’ve traveled through at least six countries and, in most cases, crossed the Darien Gap, one of the world’s more inhospitable jungles.

They arrived at our nation’s southern border, resilient and determined, eager to make their way in a new country. But instead of welcoming them, the response of Texas Governor Greg Abbott has been to put them on 30-hour bus ride to New York City, a place they do not know.

Here, wonderfully, they’ve often been met by a great beacon of light, a true expression of welcome. People from all over New York have stepped forward to help. 

Last fall, a group of volunteers organized as Team TLC NYC, the New York chapter of the national organization Grannies Respond, Inc., began welcoming the buses at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. The volunteers were brilliantly organized by Ilze Thielmann, Director of Team TLC; Power Malu, executive director of Artists, Athletes and Activists; and Adama Bah, a longtime activist and advocate with extensive connections to Muslim African migrants coming into the city.

I regularly joined this effort (pictured above) to offer a handshake or hug, a meal cooked by a community food group or purchased by volunteers, and used clothing. 

As slightly chaotic as the scene in the terminal could be, the greeting was heartfelt, the atmosphere positive, and the spirit real. Several houses of worship stepped forward to adopt and resettle a family or two. Volunteers ensured that people received appropriate housing (such as LGBTQ-safe housing, or places offering assistance for families with special-needs children). With help from Governor Kathy Hochul, we opened a large clothing storeroom at the terminal to sort donations and help our newest residents get outfitted.

I worked with people donating items who learned for the first time about diaper sizes, who thought to assemble gift bags of essential toiletries, and who helped families get strollers so they could manage city streets. 

The volunteers also hoped to cooperate with the local government agency personnel on hand – to help with welcome interviews, identify people with relatives elsewhere in the US ready to receive them, and ensure no one was moved to a hotel or other temporary shelter without at least a change of clothing, a meal, and/or a toy for each child.

In most cases, however, such cooperation was frustrated by the speed with which people were moved out, and by the apparent decision of the City to engage with volunteers as little as possible. 

And then, astonishingly, the order came down that people would not be allowed to welcome the buses (totally absurd and not actually in the City or State’s control); that those arriving by bus were to be taken immediately to a new intake center at Manhattan’s long-shuttered Roosevelt Hotel; and that it would not be possible for volunteer groups to have access to the hotel or any of the short-term shelters the City scrambled to identify (including such unappealing locales as cruise ship terminals and high school gyms).

Along with this cold shoulder have come some unfortunate statements. While it is critical and correct  for Mayor Adams to speak about the undeniable need for Federal aid in addressing this immigrant influx, it’s also dangerous for him to say that without it, basic services to all New Yorkers will suffer. Those comments drive a wedge between groups, leading to hostility toward new arrivals.

The City has, in short, missed opportunities to accept help while communicating defensive and tin-eared messages. The new partnership with faith-based groups is a step in a better direction. In that spirit, here are more steps the City could take.

• Identify a group of secular and faith organizations most involved with the immigrant and asylum-seeker population. Arrange a meeting every two weeks between them and a representative of the City administration to discuss experiences, share needs and resources, and determine how best to support each other.

• Authorize those organizations to dispatch a small group of welcomers to every bus that arrives, even if only to offer greetings, sandwiches, water, or children’s toys.

• Use City personnel or volunteers to complete within 48 hours the process of getting each new arrival an NYC ID card, as a way of giving them a sense of belonging, a way to identify themselves as they start acclimating to New York, and access to some valuable services, like public libraries.

• Invite volunteer organizations to the larger hotels and shelters where new arrivals are taken. Establish a known schedule, say two days a week, where they’d be on hand to address legal questions and concerns, help people with paperwork, explain the school system to parents, and offer whatever help is needed.

• Replicate the effort in Manhattan Community District 3, organized by the Marlene Meyerson Jewish Community Center, to have schools that have received immigrant families with little guidance from the City share experiences, resources, and needs, so more families get the help they need.

• Undertake a comprehensive review of all apartments vacant in the city (estimates range from 2,000 to 80,000) and proceed with executive and/or legislative actions to make them available now.

• Join private sector and/or labor leaders in sectors short of workers, such as construction, restaurant and food services, and home health care to strengthen and sustain the City’s pitch to Washington to grant the “temporary protected status” that would put immigrants on the path to employment.

• Similarly, identify areas of the state that have workforce needs, and advocate to Washington for work permits for individuals who could be moved there.

• Hold public events honoring New Yorkers and New York organizations that have stepped forward to welcome the stranger.

• Remind all New Yorkers about the endless waves of immigrants who have come to our shores and made new lives for themselves and the city. Ask New Yorkers and their faith-based and secular organizations to join in advocating for Federal funds and policies to provide better for those coming here. In other words, allow New York to live up to our grand tradition as a gateway to dignity and freedom for those escaping oppression. 

The challenge of addressing this immigrant influx is real and big. But, guided by a nascent spirit of wisdom and humility that needs to be encouraged at City Hall, it’s hardly insurmountable.

Ruth Messinger is global ambassador for American Jewish World Service. She is a former member of the New York City Council, served two terms as Manhattan Borough President, and was the Democratic Party candidate for mayor in 1997.

Photo by: Ruth Messinger