As Public Support for Migrants Fades, Private Donors Confront the Crisis

A group of New York’s most powerful philanthropies will spend millions to help make migrants more self-sufficient.

More than two years after the first buses of migrants began arriving from the southern border, New York is running short on time, money and public sympathy to support the hundreds of thousands of migrants who have settled here.

The city is facing a budget crunch and a once-in-a-generation affordability problem and cannot indefinitely provide asylum seekers with shelter, housing and other services. At the same time, migrants desperate to work have struggled to find jobs.

Enter one of New York’s pillars of power: big money.

After largely staying on the sidelines of the migrant crisis, a group of influential philanthropies is planning to spend millions of dollars this fall on efforts to make asylum seekers more self-sufficient and eventually able to contribute to their new home.

On Thursday, the Carnegie Corporation of New York plans to announce a $4 million donation to the city’s public libraries, in part to expand English language classes popular with migrants.

“The faster immigrants are integrated and can speak English, the sooner they will be able to work” and pay taxes, said Dame Louise Richardson, the group’s president. “It’s a virtuous circle.”

Two other philanthropies — the Robin Hood Foundation and the New York Community Trust — will together spend at least $4 million on a separate effort to bolster nonprofits that have been on the front lines of the crisis, connecting migrants stepping off buses at Port Authority with shelter, food, schools, legal assistance and job training.

While the funding signals a new phase in philanthropy’s interest in migrants, the migrant crisis remains a profound challenge for the city.

Public polling shows that the vast majority of New Yorkers are worried about accommodating migrants into a city already saddled with problems. Some donors still consider the migrant issue fundamentally unsolvable and have avoided weighing in.

And the new donations account for a small fraction of the billions of dollars Mayor Eric Adams has said the city will need to spend on migrants in the coming years.

But philanthropy’s newfound involvement is not only about money; it is part of a broader plan that is more strategic than simply benevolent.

Donors are hoping that they can help convince New Yorkers that migrants can be a boon for the city, rather than a burden, by focusing on making them more independent.

Some philanthropy groups said Mr. Adams’s doom-and-gloom warnings about the crisis have driven away wealthy donors and made regular New Yorkers more wary of vulnerable people for whom they otherwise might have more sympathy.

The philanthropies are also tacitly acknowledging what many New Yorkers already believe: that the mayor and Gov. Kathy Hochul have struggled to assert control over the crisis and that they need help. (Mr. Adams is facing multiple federal investigations into his administration that threaten his ability to govern the city effectively, much less manage one of its most complex problems.)

Still, even a scandal-free government would need help handling the chaos of the unexpected influx of migrants.

Of the myriad obstacles facing migrants, donors say, finding work and learning English are among the most vexing.

Migrants have overwhelmingly said they want to work, but federal restrictions on work authorization, coupled with the fact that many migrants barely speak English, have complicated their job searches.

Carnegie’s grants to libraries will pay for more staff who will help connect migrants to basic services and to work through job fairs and coaching, along with more staff members to teach more classes; there are about 6,000 people on wait-lists for English classes at city libraries. The gift will also have an earmark for more library programming for teenagers.

The funding from Carnegie, which was instrumental in creating the city’s modern library system over a century ago, comes at a pivotal moment for libraries after City Hall threatened huge cuts. Libraries were ultimately spared in the most recent budget, but are now on the defensive, bracing for potential future cuts.

The Robin Hood and Trust grants are aimed at tackling what is widely seen as a lack of coordination between local government, the organizations that support migrants and the philanthropies that help fund those nonprofits.

“Up until now, with a few exceptions, there has been no visible collaboration between larger private philanthropies and the work that has been done with immigrants,” said Ruth Messinger, the former Manhattan borough president who has become involved in migrant services. She added, “the city is not there at all.”

The faster that changes, she said, “the surer I am that migrants will help pay my Social Security.”

Robin Hood and the Trust are reviewing over 300 proposals sent by nonprofits in recent weeks and will begin to disperse the funding soon.

Still, the vast majority of nonprofit support will continue to be funded by the city, which has come under scrutiny for relying heavily on no-bid emergency contracts with some organizations.

“My issue is not private money going to help migrants, my issue is with $5 billion of taxpayer money going mostly to nonprofit organizations,” said Joseph Borelli, the Staten Island city councilman who serves as the Republican minority leader.

The philanthropic world’s relative lack of involvement in the migrant crisis so far has been a notable aberration. The city’s wealthy donors and the philanthropies they support have long played a significant role in shaping policy and have pitched in to help when New York faced fiscal crises and previous waves of immigration.

Then, late last year leaders of Robin Hood, the city’s largest charity focused on poverty, were approached by members of Mr. Adams’s administration and other city officials, asking for help in bridging the gap between government and nonprofits.

Migrant children can often be seen in the middle of the school day, going from car to car, selling candy. Groups that work closely with new arrivals and identify children in need of support don’t always have the right contact at the Education Department, potentially delaying children’s enrollment.

“Those kids can be our next M.T.A. workers, nurses, teachers, mayors,” said Eve Stotland, a senior program officer at the Trust. “If we do what we need to do as philanthropy, as New Yorkers, as government, if we all do our part, they will revitalize our city.”

It will now be up to private philanthropy to get the right people in a room together, a seemingly straightforward task that has so far presented a major obstacle in the push to integrate migrants into the city.

That challenge is exacerbated by policy disagreements between City Hall on one side and philanthropy and nonprofits on the other, particularly over Mr. Adams’s decision to limit the amount of time migrants can stay in a given shelter.

“There have been big moments of tension, and those continue, to be honest,” said Beatriz de la Torre, the chief philanthropy officer at Trinity Church, which is part of the effort to fund nonprofits. Trinity, one of the most active philanthropies involved with migrants, has given about $3.6 million to support asylum seekers. Now, Ms. de la Torre said, “at least there is intent to work together.”

A recent English class held at the Brooklyn Public Library’s Sunset Park branch showed how much work is left to be done.

The mood was optimistic in the bright basement classroom, where a dozen or so students speaking Spanish, French, Turkish, Chinese and Vietnamese learned how to ask for directions to the nearest grocery store and hospital. One woman whose native language is Chinese chatted in Spanish with a woman she’d recently befriended in class, and students exchanged shy smiles as they read aloud.

When class was over, the instructor asked each student if they had applied for a city-issued identification card, which helps connect migrants with services and is considered an essential resource for immigrants across the city.

One by one, nearly everyone shook their heads no.

Our Coverage of the Adams Administration

• A Mayor in Crisis: As federal investigations swirl around Mayor Eric Adams, his political influence, his agenda and his re-election effort are at risk.
• N.Y.P.D. Turmoil: The resignation of Commissioner Edward Caban plunged the New York Police Department into uncertainty. The new top police officer will take over an agency that Adams has seeded with loyalists.
• Adams’s Pick for Top Lawyer Withdraws: Randy Mastro, a former federal prosecutor and aide to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, said he had been denied a fair hearing by the City Council.
• Illegal Police Stops: Two years after Adams ordered the Police Department to revive specialized units focused on getting firearms off the streets, the squads are illegally stopping, frisking and searching too many people.