NYC Mayor Says Migrants Can Help Lifeguard Shortage Because They’re ‘Excellent Swimmers’

New York City Mayor Eric Adams appeared to suggest Tuesday that migrants could solve the city’s lifeguard shortage because they need work and are adept in the water.

“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,” Adams said during a City Hall briefing regarding lifeguard staffing at New York City’s pools and beaches. The comments were made as the city deals with both a lifeguard shortage and a substantial migrant crisis.

“That just doesn’t make sense,” the Democratic mayor continued.

For months, local reports have highlighted the lifeguard shortage plaguing New York City, forcing the government to ease up on qualifying metrics for applicants.

Adams went into further detail on his idea to fix the city’s staffing issue.

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“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 are unable to allow them to work because bureaucracy is in the way,” he continued.

As the immigration crisis continues to rage on in the U.S., New York City has been hit particularly hard.

The city has taken in around 160,000 asylum seekers since April 2022, forcing leaders to make substantial budget cuts in order to deal with the burden. Last year, Adams announced sweeping cuts for government services in order to pay for the influx of illegal immigrants taking residence in the city, and at the time said the city was reaching a “breaking point” from the sheer volume of migrants.

Other major cities such as Chicago and Denver have also been forced to devote large amounts of taxpayer resources in order to deal with the migrant crisis in their jurisdictions.

Border Patrol agents have made roughly six million encounters at the southern border since President Joe Biden assumed office, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data show. However, it’s not clear how many of these encounters came from migrants who chose to swim across the Rio Grande.

The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.