Illegal immigration badly affects New York as it subsequently leads to other issues, according to Michael Zumbluskas, the Republican candidate who is running for New York’s 12th Congressional District.
Zumbluskas will be squaring off against two opponents in this November’s midterm elections, including longtime Democratic congressman Rep. Jerry Nadler and Mikhail Itkis, a member of the progressive left’s Working Families Party.
“One of the biggest problems right now is illegal immigration, because that’s affecting everything," Zumbluskas said in an interview with The Epoch Times on Nov 3.
“It’s increasing the crime because fentanyl is coming in,” he said.
“It is produced in China … [then] shipped to the cartels in Mexico.”
Another issue stemming from illegal immigration is the rise of human trafficking, as cartel leaders turn the aliens into laborers and “make them work for almost nothing,” the Republican district leader in the 76th Assembly District in New York City pointed out.
The increasing number of illegal aliens also contributed to the city’s surging population, triggering housing shortages.
“And that’s one of the reasons the prices are so high ... one of the things that a lot of people don’t get is the interconnectivity of all our problems,” Zumbluskas noted.
Yet, in Zumbluskas’s opinion, the city’s gentrification plan did not work as expected.
“I actually don’t believe that you should put low income housing in those luxury buildings” because higher-income residents then sent the rents soaring, he said.
As the leases in the area went up, service providers also increased their prices, he noted.
“Then, what happens is the neighborhood gets unaffordable for the people that used to be living there,” he said.
He took his own situation as an example. “I’m living in an area where everything else has just risen, sometimes 100% more than what I was paying,” he said.
Infrastructure ‘Falling Apart’
The Congressional nominee further stressed the need to rebuild the city’s infrastructure, which he said “is falling apart.”“We need to rebuild some of our manufacturing back in New York City. We need to build energy plants, power plants,” he said.
“We can go to them and say, ‘We won’t charge you for our garbage for 15 years. So you‘ll be getting the raw materials for free. You can come and build here, and we’ll give you a couple of tax breaks,” he said.
In his opinion, this approach could solve a couple of problems.
“We save money on getting rid of our garbage … It also lowers our energy costs in New York City,” he explained.
“It was stupid to throw close the upstate power plant ... because people are afraid. Nuclear energy is actually really safe. And it’s actually one of the cleanest energies,” he said.
Nuclear reactors do not produce carbon emissions while operating.
The close partly undermined local energy security, Zumbluskas said.
Consequence of Ban on Fossil Fuels
As the Biden administration has cut off domestic production of fossil fuels, choosing instead to rely on imports from foreign countries, Zumbluskas noted that diesel fuel is still essential for America.“Most of farmers’s tractors and farm equipment use diesel fuel, [while] very few use regular gas. Most of the trucks that transport our food and products across the country [to New York City] use diesel fuel,” he said.
“A lot of our fertilizer is produced [from] fossil fuels, the nitrates in the fertilizer,” he noted.
As a result, the ban of fossil fuels, in his opinion, will lead to a drop in U.S. crop yields.
“Since we embargo the stuff from Russia, we’re not getting the fertilizer,” he said.
“The cost is going up tremendously because fuel costs for the farmers to run their lights, to run their farm equipment to harvest has doubled. That hurts everything,” Zumbluskas said.
