America’s Migrant Crisis Summed Up In One Preventable Tragedy

What’s the best way to convey America’s migrant crisis? You could approach it from statistics. But estimates of millions and billions boggle the mind. You could argue from the law. But legislative review is not always immediately arresting. Turn, then, to a case study which neatly sums up the effects of mass migration: NYC’s Roosevelt Hotel, named after former President Teddy Roosevelt.

The hotel opened in 1924. It boasted 1,100 rooms, a ballroom suite, six private dining rooms, a women’s beauty parlor, a barber shop, a ballroom, a Turkish bath, and a roof garden for tea and dancing. Guy Lombardo led the house band. A century later, the Roosevelt is no longer a “tower of strength,” but a dilapidated wreck, owing to two years spent as NYC’s premier “migrant shelter.”  It took just 767 days to shutter in that capacity, too. The city’s officials appear to have learned nothing. (RELATED: Joe Biden’s Border Failures Come Back To Haunt Trump At Time Of Crisis)