Let’s rewind it back to Jan. 10, 2017. The setting: Common Council Chambers, crammed to the gills with more than 350 people. The event: The council is set to vote on a resolution declaring Kingston to be a “sanctuary city” — a move made at least in part as a response to the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the man who will be sworn in as president in 10 days, Donald J. Trump.

The public comment period is as heated as any over the past several years when hot-button issues have come before the council. It takes three hours to complete, and pro-sanctuary city opinions outweigh the antis by a 3-1 margin. “We are here to work with you to make Kingston bigger and better,” Kingston resident Marco Ochoa, an immigrant, citizen and business owner told lawmakers. “We are not here to take anyone’s job, I promise you. We are just following the American Dream.”

“This may seem like a hip and altruistic thing to do, but it will end up being a liability in the long run,” said resident Leo Schupp, speaking against the measure.

The council went on to approve the resolution 6-2. The grumbles of some predicting that the Trump Administration would punish Kingston turned out to be, for now at least, unjustified. From 2017 until now, Kingston has done more than many cities for its newcomers, documented or otherwise, including establishing a municipal ID program to make it easier for those without acceptable papers to get a driver’s license, open bank accounts, etc. Not-for-profits like the NoVo Foundation and the Ulster Immigrant Defense Network have also helped in ways large and small. While not everyone in town is pro-immigration, by and large the community has indeed made Kingston a sanctuary for strangers trying to navigate a strange and sometimes dangerous land.

Fast forward to May 23, 2023. Claiming that his city has no other choice, New York City Mayor Eric Adams has begun busing asylum-seeking migrants bused to him by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and others to some upstate locations. A hotel in the Town of Newburgh was the first; the next, just this Saturday, was a hotel in the Town of Poughkeepsie. If the northward trajectory continues, Kingston and Ulster County as a whole may see the buses any time now. Which brings us to the question of the day: How should we react if migrants do come?

Let’s take a look around the region to see how other communities are handling the matter. In Orange, County Exec Steve Neuhaus declared a state of emergency and sued New York City to prevent them from sending more. In Dutchess, much the same reaction — “you’re not welcome” is the message their county government wants migrants to get. Same deal in Greene and Sullivan. (But For the Many were there at the Red Roof Inn on Route 9 in Poughkeepsie Saturday, greeting arriving migrants with smiling faces, welcoming signs and applause, as well as donations.) Westchester County Executive George Latimer seemed to strike a notably different tone, according to Mid-Hudson News. In one of those cases where, journalism-wise, the drapes definitely do not match the carpet, the website now owned by ex-GOP state senator Mike Martucci last week provocatively headlined a story: “Westchester ready to accept migrants with open arms, says county executive.” There was, however, nothing in the 136-word story that followed to back up the headline; just Latimer saying that migrants should be allowed to work, and that housing and satellite field immigration courts be set up for them. U.S. Rep. Marc Molinaro challenged Gov. Hochul’s assertion that upstate counties were ready, willing and able to welcome migrants, asking her to provide a list of these counties. We haven’t heard that such a list has been released, but if one was, would it include Ulster County?

The impression your Editorial Team got from our own county executive was … maybe? A statement Jen Metzger released on May 18 managed to walk the fine line between informative and cryptic; it also included some positive words which, when added up, test negative for clarity. After stating that as of that date no one from New York City had contacted her office — which would be courteous, but not required as Adams’ people make the deals with the hotel proprietors directly — and promising that the county is getting ready and “actively monitoring the situation,” the statement ends like this: “Ulster County is committed to protecting all of our residents and providing them with the safety, respect, and dignity they deserve. I will continue to engage with every level of government to ensure that we are meeting that commitment.”

Parse that any way you want — how long does a person have to be here to qualify as a “resident” is one question which leaps immediately to mind — but to us, it doesn’t sound anything like a warm invitation.

Which brings us to Kingston. If Mayor Noble has said anything about this issue, we must have missed it. But back on Jan. 10, 2017, Kingston in a sense wrote a check that it may well have to cash any day now. It’s a complex situation — for the migrants to come, there has to be a place to put them, and as tourism season ramps up, we do not have the impression that there are dozens of vacancies in local hotels these days, especially after the evacuation of 30 Department of Social Services clients from the dilapidated Rodeway Inn in the Town of Ulster.

One way of dealing with this, we suppose, is to sit tight and hope Kingston’s already-crowded status will get the city off of this particular hook. We wouldn’t be surprised if migrants came to somewhere in Ulster County, but we think Kingston’s one of their less likely destinations.

But should Kingston even be trying to get off the hook? Does it not behoove a sanctuary city to proactively offer … sanctuary? Or was all that talk six years ago mostly virtue signaling? While traditional lodging options may not exist, we know there’s a good deal of vacant space here, in Uptown Kingston especially. Could the criminally underused former BSP space on Wall Street be converted into emergency shelter? Or the Cioni Building? Perhaps the Andy Murphy Center and Rondout Community Center would work, or even the former Kingston Hospital. If Kingston was willing, the city could potentially house hundreds of migrants.

The border crisis is far beyond the scope of one city to fix and no one can predict how it will, or if it will, be resolved in any sensible way. But one thing seems quite clear to us: it’s a national problem. While many of us may be thankful that most of it is happening in other states, as residents of these United States, we all need to pull up our communitarian britches and help with this national emergency. Or as Mayor Adams put it recently, “There are 108,000 cities, villages and towns [in the U.S]. If everyone takes a small portion, it’s not a burden on one city.”