New York City to Provide Prepaid Credit Cards to Migrant Families to Buy Food

The New York City administration will hand out pre-paid credit cards to migrant families being put up in the city’s hotels soon, according to a report by the New York Post. The program will be run by the New Jersey company Mobility Capital Finance under which asylum seekers arriving at the Roosevelt Hotel will receive credit cards funded by city to help them buy food and amenities.

These cards can be used only in select places like – local small grocery stores colloquially known as bodegas, grocery stores, supermarkets and convenience stores. The migrants will have to sign affidavits that if they are found using these cards for other purposes they will be kicked out of the program.

These cards are called Immediate Response Cards and are similar to New York City’s food stamp program which provides New Yorkers with a credit card to fund their food costs. The amount will vary depending on the size of migrant families and also will take into account any income coming in. A family of four, for instance, could be provided nearly $1,000 each month, which comes out to $35 per day for food. Cards will get refilled every 28 days, the newspaper said.

If the program succeeds, the administration will expand it to all migrant families staying in hotels. There are roughly 15,000 migrants staying in New York hotels.

“Not only will this provide families with the ability to purchase fresh food for their culturally relevant diets and the baby supplies of their choosing, but the pilot program is expected to save New York City more than $600,000 per month, or more than $7.2 million annually,” New York City mayor Eric Adams’s spokesperson Kayla Mamelak said.

New York City is shelling out about $11 per meal to feed migrant families in hotels but wants to be more inclusive and offer meals that are common to migrants who have arrived from Central and South America, Africa and Europe.

Migrants have also complained that they would rather cook in their hotel rooms because they were provided bad meals.

Meanwhile, a section of New Yorkers want better laws to deal with the influx of migrants as more migrants keep coming to the city. The city has a law that it cannot refuse shelter to those seeking asylum but the policy is now testing the residents of the city as migrants are being housed in schools, gymnasiums and government-funded shelters.

The reports of a migrant mob who attacked a pair of cops near Times Square over the weekend has also led to criticism and called for reducing the influx of migrants to the city.