‘I feel like I’m going to stay’ in NY
Some migrants from recent wave settling in as others struggle
NEW YORK — The wave of migrants who began arriving in New York from the southern border last year was unusual in many respects. Unlike most immigrants who make their way to the city, people were arriving in buses en masse, many with few local ties and little more than the clothes on their backs. More than 36,000 have come to the city since the spring, Mayor Eric Adams said Friday, and roughly 24,000 have remained.
As the Biden administration looks for ways to contain the southern border, those who arrived in 2022 are beginning to build new lives. Some are struggling. Others are making strides.
New York has been a first stop for immigrants for centuries, and the city offers some unique protections. It is one of the few places to guarantee a right to shelter for those in need, and it has strong legal and social safety-net protections in place for immigrants. New arrivals have also benefited from the help provided by an extensive network of relatively well-funded nonprofit organizations.
There are still obstacles. The busing began partly as a political gambit by the Republican governors of Texas and Arizona to draw attention to the border crisis. Many recent migrants have been largely dependent on formal aid, and nonprofits, volunteer groups and the city all say they were overwhelmed by the surge. While most migrants hope to petition for asylum, immigration court backlogs mean the process could take years.
Much of the recent border debate has revolved around
the use of Title 42, a public health provision that was used during the coronavirus pandemic to deny people from some countries the right to seek asylum at the border. Just after Christmas, the Supreme Court left the provision in effect for now.
President Joe Biden said Thursday that Cubans, Nicaraguans and Haitians would now also be kept out using Title 42, a policy extended to Venezuelans this fall. Adams praised the move Friday, calling it “one of the steps that we need,” but warned that the city still required much more help to cover the cost of caring for asylum-seekers.
In the meantime, migrants not subject to Title 42, or those who arrived before its expansion, are still making their way to New York. Adams said this month that the governor of Colorado would be sending migrants to the city. A local volunteer said three buses from that
state arrived late last week.
Finding work so they can be independent is key for these new New Yorkers; dozens have said their main priority was to support themselves and send money home. While they are not authorized to work because of federal rules, many are still finding gigs in sectors such as construction, restaurants and the service industry.
About eight years after leaving his native Venezuela and moving to Colombia, then Mexico, Ismael Guevara, 48, feels like he’s finally in the place where he’s going to stay. And he’s been in the city for only a little over two months.
“I’m used to New York already,” he said in Spanish outside a cafe in the Queens borough, while on his lunch break from the nearby salon where he was working at the time. “I don’t get lost anymore. I’m good. I get where I need to go.
“Every day more and more, I feel like I’m going to stay here to live in New York,” Guevara added.
He left Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, because of instability and threats to his safety. When he eventually arrived in New York, he was sent to the winterized tent shelter on Randalls Island that the city erected in October.
After that closed — following a few weeks of operation — he was transferred to a hotel in midtown Manhattan, which is operating as a city shelter for single men.
Just over a month ago, Guevara landed a job at a hair salon — he had once been an award-winning stylist.
Every day, he left early for work, taking a train to Times Square and then transferring to one going to Queens. He worked seven days a week and had a full roster of clients. He could make a few hundred dollars in a day.
Occasionally, he stopped into a Manhattan bar with live music for a beer after work.
Recently, Guevara quit his job. He is working to improve his English and hopes to rent his own apartment soon.
“The next step is to open my own salon in the future,” he said. “My salon, with my name.”
Things have not gone as well for Akon Dieudonne, 41, a Haitian who had been living in Brazil for the past decade. He said he was a filmmaker and activist fighting for Black and Indigenous rights.
He left Haiti because of threats against an uncle who was a politician and pastor, he said. He moved again, he added, because of threats from supporters of President Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.
Like thousands of others, he crossed through the Darien Gap, a dangerous and undeveloped stretch of land connecting Colombia and
Panama that has emerged as a main migrant route. Along the way, he met a Salvadoran woman. The two continued on together, entering the United States in San Diego and then flying to New York with help from an aid group. She is now pregnant with their baby. He is living with her and her 13-yearold daughter at a hotel in Manhattan.
When Dieudonne arrived in the city in October, he thought he would land work quickly. He hoped to get a job in film or TV production. But for now, he’s hoping for odd jobs. He is trying to remain positive.
“I see there is a future outside,” he said. “But it’s very hard. Some days, we don’t eat anything.”
Loiseth Colmenares, 31, a migrant from San Francisco de Tiznados, Venezuela, arrived in New York four months ago with her husband and two sons. The family has spent three of those months living at a hotel in Queens that was converted into a shelter recently to house newly arrived families.
At first, Colmenares’ two sons, Omar, 10, and Sebastian, 2, were not eating enough, because the packaged, reheated meals served at the hotel were so different from what they were used to back home. The shelter was staffed with people who didn’t speak Spanish, so the family had trouble finding resources. They worried about Colmenares’ mother, sister and nephew, who made it to the border but were turned away after Title 42 was extended to Venezuelan migrants in October.
Now things seem to be looking up.
“We’re more stable,” Colmenares said.
The food is “the same, but we’re adapting,” she explained. Life at the hotel has improved: A new director has implemented lots of helpful changes, Colmenares said.