On Monday, The New York Post reported that New York City Mayor Eric Adams is giving out pre-paid cash cards to illegal immigrants. Maybe I am missing something, but it seems to me that if you want to discourage people from coming to your city, you don’t hand them $10,000 without any kind of an identification check. The possibilities for fraud are endless. Also, what impact does putting $50 million into the New York City economy have on inflation. Didn’t we learn a lesson about that from the Covid stimulus payments?
The article reports:
Earlier this month, The Post broke the story that Mayor Eric Adams is giving out pre-paid cash cards to migrants.
Unusually for the mayor, Adams didn’t publicize this story himself, and his administration for nearly a month has failed to correct several public misperceptions about it.
One misperception is that the program allows the city to give out just $50 million to migrants.
No wonder the mayor has been reticent.
This debit card program — if you read the actual contract — has the potential to become an open-ended, multibillion-dollar Bermuda Triangle of disappearing, untraceable cash, used for any purpose.
It will give migrants up to $10,000 each in taxpayer money with no ID check, no restrictions and no fraud control.
The article also points out that the company overseeing this program is Newark-based Mobility Capital Finance, which also has an office in Harlem. The article explains some of the background of the company and some interesting aspects of the program.
The article notes”
Yes, the city can ask MoCaFi to activate or deactivate certain merchant or spending codes.
But these restrictions are not built into the contract; they are at the city’s changing discretion.
The city can even enable cardholder “consumers” to withdraw cash from the cards at domestic and international ATMs. “ATM withdrawal amounts per day can be restricted as required by the city,” the contract reads. “Should ATM access be included as part of the program, card fees will be subject to the schedule provided.”
The article concludes:
As the mayor told radio host Gary Byrd earlier this month, “it’s important for us to speak directly to you to separate the facts from fiction … Fact from fiction is the migrant cards that we gave out to migrants to purchase food. Just some quick bullets that you need to know about these cards. They are not American Express gold cards, folks. This is a pilot project we’re doing with 500 migrants.”
The fiction is in what the mayor says.
The fact is in the contract documents.
The city has given itself the full contractual and technical authority, under a supposed “emergency,” to disburse billions of dollars in cash to unidentifiable people who otherwise are not eligible to access the American financial system, in untraceable global cash.
Please follow the link to read the entire article. I wish our veterans were treated this generously.