Talk of Staten Island secession is back in the news. Nicole Malliotakis, the Republican congresswoman representing the borough and parts of southern Brooklyn, said that the migrant crisis should prompt Staten Islanders to break away from New York City entirely.
“If you’re not gonna do your job, mayor, then let Staten Island secede,” she said at a rally last week opposing a small shelter for asylum-seekers that city officials opened on the island. “We didn’t vote for your policies. We should not be subjected to your policies, and we’re gonna keep on turning out. Let Staten Island secede.”
You are wrong, this is about seceding from New York City. NYC is currently composed of five boroughs, and Staten Island is one of them. So they want to separate from the city (and all that sweet Wall St. Tax revenue) and pay for their local government themselves.
Although I wouldn’t be surprised if they thought about leaving New York State, too. Maybe New Jersey would take them. Not sure if they would consider that an improvement though. Perhaps they should become an exclave of Florida, most of them will retire there anyway so it saves a step.
New Jersey would never take them, trust me.
OK, so this is even less like Texas. There’s a pretty big difference between “We should secede from the US” and “We should be our own city outside this other cities jurisdiction”.
It’s obviously a difference of scale, but the point I was trying to make is that both groups talk about secession because they don’t like specific policies that are affecting them in ways they don’t like, while seemingly ignoring the broader macro-scale problems that they would cause for themselves if they actually went through with it. (The article is specifically about these problems as they relate to Staten Island seceding from NYC.)