Tuesday, May 14, 2024
Year : 2, Issue : 20
Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday suggested migrants should be hired to fill the city’s lifeguard shortage — because “they’re excellent swimmers.”
Hizzoner dropped the comment after being asked during a City Hall briefing about lifeguard staffing at the city’s beaches and pools, which have increasingly had issues in recent years, ahead of Memorial Day.
Going off on a tangent, Adams indicated that Gotham’s lifeguard shortages could easily be fixed if migrant work visas were being expedited for those jobs that needed to be filled up quickly.
“How do we have a large body of people that are in our city, our country, that are excellent swimmers and at the same time we need lifeguards — and the only obstacle is that we won’t give them the right to work to become a lifeguard,” the mayor said.
Scores of migrants wade across the Rio Grande along the US-Mexico border every day in a bid to enter America, an out-of-control situation that has flooded the Big Apple with immigrants needing shelter, food, medical care and other necessities.
Adams also rattled off a slew of other jobs that could be filled if the red tape was cut and work permits were sped up for skilled migrants.
“If we had a plan that said, ‘If there was a shortage of food service workers and those who fit that criteria, we’re going to expedite you,’ if you have experience that you are a nurse and we have nursing shortage, we would expedite you,” he said.
“It’s the same for lifeguards. We have all these eligible people waiting to work, with the skills we need to do the jobs, but we unable to allow them to work because bureaucracy is in the way.”
Source: New York Post
