BUFFALO, N.Y. — Over the last few days, asylum seekers from multiple countries arrived in Western New York on two buses from New York City.

State Sen. Sean Ryan, D-Buffalo, said, while New York City is contracted with a local hotel and nonprofit Jericho Road to pay for housing and integration services, the state and Erie County governments have also been working in partnership.

"We sort of agreed to the rough parameters of we'll resettle folks but here's what we need to do it and right now it's all working smoothly but we're just a week into it so we're going to see if there's more people wanting to relocate into Buffalo," he said.

Ryan gave updates following a Tuesday event announcing the formal collaboration of the area's five immigration services agencies, now officially known as the Refugee Partnership. The groups said they have been working together for many years though, including partnering to help the asylees who recently arrived.

Journey's End CEO Karen Andolina Scott said they will start legal intakes this week to determine the needs of this new group of migrants.

"We again are working with one another, with other agencies, with government both here and in New York City on how to best serve that population," she said.

Ryan said he is not anticipating the asylum seekers will have federal permission to work in the near future. He said the state is looking at eligibility for workforce and English as a Second Language training in the interim.

"We want people into our economy as soon as possible. We want kids into our school districts when school opens in September. We want people registered and ready to go," he said.

The state senator said of the new arrivals, all are volunteers and some already have connections to the area that may help them find a permanent place to stay sooner.

"Our hope is that the hotels are just a stopgap measure. There are census tracts throughout the city of Buffalo that have 20% vacancies rates. We want to pull those people out of hotels, get them into apartments, get them paying rent to a landlord. That's where we want to go with this. We don't want people sitting in hotels for any protracted period of time," Ryan said.

He said hotels will not be able to displace already booked customers in the future even if they currently have vacancy.

Despite the county executive last month saying he expected the state would open up local SUNY campuses for migrants, Ryan said that's no longer in the plans, at least until after August.

"Turns out that the SUNY campuses are pretty full in the summers with baseball teams and different groups that already have rented dorms coming in and out and they'll start the turnover for their fall semester soon," he said.

Ryan said the state could explore university housing again once students return and they have a better idea what is available.