New York City is offering its migrant inhabitants free one-way plane tickets to anywhere in the world. The city management has initiated such a measure because of the crunch of resources due to the influx of people from the southern border.
According to New York Post, Eric Adams, mayor of New York, has established a new "reticketing centre" for the migrants so that they can secure a free, one-way flight ticket out of the city.
"With no sign of a decompression strategy in the near future, we have established a reticketing center for migrants," a spokesperson for Mayor Adams said, as per the outlet.
"Here, the city will redouble efforts to purchase tickets for migrants to help them take the next steps in their journeys, and it helps us triage operations at The Roosevelt for new arrivals," they added.
Recently, it was revealed that the daily cost of housing migrants in New York was around $394/person - a cost which is only rising. Hence, instead of paying these rates everyday, Adams is pushing migrants to a Manhattan office which is solely devoted to booking flights, since it's cheaper to to fly them away than sheltering for months on end.
Adams has also warned that those who choose to stay back in New York should prepare to sleep outside in the gruelling winter as the shelter homes would be full.
"When you are out of room, that means you're out of room," Mr Adams told reporters Tuesday. "Every year, my relatives show up for Thanksgiving, and they want to all sleep at my house. There's no more room. That's where we are right now," he added.
Some migrants who have accepted the offer have already booked their flights to places as far as Morocco, some media outlets reported.
"Limits on shelter stays, combined with casework services that include 'reticketing' to other places, are necessary to drive down the population in the city's care and make room for new arrivals", City Hall officials said.
Published 29 October 2023, 17:06 IST