Once one of the best hotels in the Big Apple City, but now the Roosevelt gets a bad rap: The hotel didn’t survive the coronavirus pandemic and closed.
Photo: Alexander VLADIMIROV
The gloomy building of the New York Roosevelt Hotel occupies an entire block in the heart of Manhattan. One minute walk from chic Madison and Fifth Avenue, the same amount from the Grand Central train station, behind – the office skyscrapers of the largest financial corporations, which are located on Park Avenue.
Once one of the best hotels in the City of the Big Apple, but now the Roosevelt has a bad reputation: the hotel did not survive the coronavirus pandemic and closed, and the building was leased by the New York City Council, which placed it en is a reception center for illegal immigrants.
The number of illegal immigrants who have crossed the US-Mexican border in recent years, the US border service does not even try to determine. Only approximate figures are known: during the time that the Biden administration was in the White House, which abandoned any control at the border, more than a million immigrants from all over the world turned out to be in the United States. They did not pass any due diligence checks.
The number of illegal immigrants who have crossed the US-Mexican border in recent years, the US border service does not even try to determine.
Photo: Alexander VLADIMIROV
Many of them ended up in New York. First thousands of people, then tens of thousands. And New York, the perennial stronghold of American Democrats, spent millions of dollars to take them in and resettle them, often to the detriment of needy citizens, and often against their will. But when only in 2023 the number of illegal immigrants who wanted New York’s hospitality exceeded 100,000, the mayor of the City of the Big Apple, Eric Adams, who yesterday had promised to warm everyone, said that the city entrusted to him was on the way. On the verge of crisis and chaos: the city’s shelters and reception centers for immigrants are overwhelmed, the money in the treasury ran out.
And now, for a week, volunteers from human rights organizations, journalists and onlookers have been on duty near the Roosevelt, and illegal immigrants are located around the perimeter of the building in cardboard boxes and mattresses, whom the former hotel, and now one. of the main centers of immigrant-receiving cities, supposedly cannot accept.
The mayor’s office explains the “full house” by the need to give families with children an advantage. But the tail does not move. Also, by looking at images and photos from media reports from a week ago, it can be determined that the same characters spend their days on the sidewalk near the Roosevelt without much care. Furthermore, the vast majority are African and Asian, while the main stream of illegal immigrants entering the United States from the South are Hispanics.
The gloomy building of the New York Roosevelt Hotel occupies an entire block in the heart of Manhattan.
Photo: Alexander VLADIMIROV
The volunteers insistently ask not to make contact with the “extras”. But she is very willing to talk, most of the time in exchange for a couple of dollars, a cigarette or a joint of marijuana. And these conversations only convince that the staging element is definitely present in all this action.
Salim, he said, came to the United States from Mauritania.
– Why not to Europe? It’s closer there.
– There is more freedom in the United States. At least that’s what I thought. Now I’m sorry. It’s right.
– And yet, how did you get to the United States? On the ship? Or first to Mexico?
Leave me alone, don’t ask me…
Ahhur from an even more distant Bhutan.
– But after all, Washington has long agreed with Bhutan that it will receive thousands of refugees from their country every year. I know for sure that this agreement is being implemented, I myself once met a plane with Bhutanese refugees at the airport in New York … How did it end up in America? How much did it cost? How long did it take you to get there?
Achur, who had previously been explaining himself tolerably in English, suddenly pretends that he doesn’t understand a word and hides behind other people’s backs.
But there are still Latin Americans, and the Venezuelan Jorge, apparently, has already gotten used to the attention of the press. Droningly he tells a typical illegal immigrant story: everything is wrong at home, life is hard, he’s fine in America, so he hits the road. All holes on the American border have long been known to those who want to get to the United States (and they have not been watched by anyone for a long time), so the trip went smoothly. And in New York, Jorge decided to stay because “it’s good here and you can find work.”
Volunteers in T-shirts bearing the logos of a good dozen human rights organizations also refuse to communicate with journalists, forcefully repeating stereotypical phrases that the United States is a country of immigrants, and it is the common duty of New Yorkers to help immigrants. newcomers to the best of their ability. But when they hear the question “what exactly do your organizations help with?”, they start to give general answers: “we distribute water… we help with the English translation… we follow the order…”. And this despite the fact that only from the New York City Council these types of organizations receive millions of grants annually.
The mayor’s office explains the “full house” by the need to give families with children an advantage.
Photo: Alexander VLADIMIROV
But apparently even wealthy New York ran out of money, and Eric Adams opened a reception center for illegal immigrants in midtown Manhattan specifically to make a fuss around the world and admit that the crisis had really arrived. But the New York City Council is one of the largest real estate owners in the metropolis: it owns residential buildings, indoor arenas, school campuses, hospitals, shelters, nursing homes in various parts of the city. All this time, it was in the suburbs and suburbs that Adams hid illegal immigrants from greater attention, but now everyone sees the dire state of affairs. Such a disgrace is unlikely to be tolerated in Washington, and he can be sure that soon the government will allocate a sizable amount to New York to accommodate illegal immigrants. Meanwhile, the mayor says that the townspeople will have to get used to hundreds of homeless illegal immigrants, “if the situation is not resolved at the federal level.”
One more thing is interesting: Will the justification for renting a huge and inadequate building in midtown Manhattan specifically for the reception center for illegal immigrants be questioned? By the way, the owner of the old hotel is… the government of Pakistan. The mayor of New York does not say anything about it.
