Migrants are overloading American cities’ capacities to serve them. They deserve our help anyway.
‘Por favor, Dios, ayúdame” — “Please, God, help me,” Rebeca cries before an imposing statue of Jesus in one of the historic churches on Olvera Street in Los Angeles. A woman approaches. “¿Qué te pasa?” — “What’s the matter?” she asks. Rebeca explains that just yesterday, she arrived in America with her husband, Calixto, and two young sons, ages 4 and just a few months. She explains that they need food and shelter. “I am going to help your family,” the woman says. Her name is Alejandra, and she drives the exhausted family to Dolores Mission, a small Catholic church nestled in one of L.A.’s poorest neighborhoods.
Church staff offer Rebeca and her children a tiny room with only a cot and small coffee table. Calixto will sleep in a separate room, with other immigrant men.
Gracias a Dios, gracias a Dios, Rebeca says to herself as she sets down her belongings — diapers and children’s clothes, mainly — and then explores. She finds that there are about 20 other families crammed into similarly small rooms. Shared bathrooms are outside. A school is nearby.
The boys are sent to the church’s child care center, Calixto goes in search of work, and Rebeca, eager to be helpful, joins a group of women who are preparing a chicken and rice stew for all families living at Dolores. The meal, served at long cafeteria tables, has the air of a celebration.
The next morning, Calixto, who got a lead to take the bus to the San Gabriel Valley, where day workers are snapped up for jobs, is up and out before sunrise. He wants to be the first person in front of the Home Depot. As the sun comes up, a Mr. Tin waves Calixto over to his pickup truck. “Work?” he says. “Sí, trabajo,” Calixto replies to the one English word he made sure to know.
For $3 an hour, he spends the day loading and unloading milk crates throughout the city for a mom-andpop distributor. Tin, impressed, asks him to come back the following day. Over time, Calixto becomes his trusted employee, earning the right to drive Tin’s pickup truck and even to operate heavy machinery that moves all those milk crates. On most days, Calixto returns to Dolores just in time for dinner in the crowded church hall.
A migrant crisis we can fix
In the 1980s and 1990s, hundreds of thousands of Central Americans like Rebeca and Calixto, who are my parents, fled to the United States to escape violent wars, including the Nicaraguan Contra war, in which my father fought. Despite US involvement in many of these wars, President Reagan opposed granting asylum to many displaced by the conflicts. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 introduced civil and criminal penalties to employers who knowingly hired undocumented immigrants like my dad.
Fast forward several decades and living conditions throughout Latin America have only worsened, exacerbating the migration crisis here. In 2023 alone, more than 2.4 million people fled to the southwest border of the US seeking refuge. Many migrants are in limbo, living in airport lounges, hospital waiting rooms, and shelters, and on the streets.
The Biden administration has begun deporting Venezuelans to Caracas, even though crime, civil unrest, and kidnappings make the city unsafe. Senate Democrats are considering GOP deals that would institute stricter asylum standards. New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson announced a 60-day limit on the time that immigrant families with children can stay in their cities’ shelters. Here in Massachusetts, Governor Maura Healey capped the number of family shelter spots and created a waitlist for migrants after the state crossed a threshold of 7,500 families in the emergency shelter system. Republican-led states have continued anti-immigrant policies.
There is no question that the influx of migrants is stretching American cities to a breaking point. Even liberal politicians who have long supported a more open immigration policy concede that cities don’t have the budgets to accommodate a sudden increase of millions more people.
My parents were fortunate to have come here during the height of what came to be known as the Sanctuary movement, when religious and community leaders organized the use of church buildings as sanctuaries for Central American asylum seekers. By 1987, there were more than 420 sanctuaries hosted by churches, synagogues, ecumenical religious groups, secular groups, and universities in dozens of cities.
A revived Sanctuary-like movement that leverages the strength of community organizations, religious groups, academic institutions, and private companies could be one form of collective action that helps alleviate the strain on government-run programs for migrants. And the federal government would do well to give lawabiding refugees temporary work permits and place them on a path to citizenship.
Investment in the Shelter and Services Program, jointly run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and US Customs and Border Protection, can also help cities struggling to provide services for migrants. So can tapping into FEMA’s Public Assistance Program to reduce the food insecurity that migrants disproportionately face. States can invest in their emergency-response shelter systems, as Massachusetts lawmakers recently did, and expand the crucial social worker and case manager workforce.
As it did for Afghan refugees in 2021, the Biden administration should recruit the private sector to help respond to the migrant crisis through Operation Allies Welcome. Through this partnership, Airbnb committed to provide temporary housing for 20,000 refugees, and Bain Capital, Google, JP Morgan Chase, and various other companies donated funds to relocation and resettlement efforts including legal assistance.
An America built on promise
Dolores Mission opened its doors to house refugee families on Dec. 12, 1988, five years before my parents and older brothers landed there. While the lack of federal support for immigrants meant that my mother and father could not access public services such as food stamps, their yearlong stay at Dolores enabled them to save about $600. These savings allowed them to move out of Dolores and into a small apartment as they waited for the decision on their asylum applications.
I became their first US-born son in 1995, and we welcomed my little brother in 1997. Given my parents’ low wages and the lack of government support, we spent some of those early years in shelters and others in tiny apartments we could just barely afford. In 2001, my parents’ asylum applications were approved, making them and my older brothers permanent residents of the United States. Around the same time, we qualified for a Section 8 housing voucher and found a kind landlord who welcomed us into an apartment with beds because he knew that among our few donated possessions, we did not have them. I still remember how well we slept that first night.
My family was uplifted from an impossible situation by a group of people who believed that no human should suffer in their time of greatest need. Without their support — from the churches my parents slept in, the shelter homes in which we celebrated our birthdays, and the caring social workers — I don’t believe my family would still be in America today. I don’t believe that the 4-yearold boy who hugged the toys he received at Dolores on his first Christmas in the States would have become a deputy sheriff for Los Angeles County, that the monthsold baby who spoke his first words at the church would
Thirty years ago, my parents found sanctuary and a reason to dream in America. Today, those fleeing impossible circumstances should have the same shot at new and better lives.
have coached high school runners and worked on an Air Force base, that I would have become a doctor at one of America’s most revered medical institutions, and that the baby who took his first steps in the apartment our social worker found for us would have served this country as a Marine.
America was built on the promise of opportunity for immigrants fleeing violence, persecution, and atrocious living conditions. For my family and the countless others at Dolores who found a home, this meant hope for a better future. For this country, it meant cultural richness, a growing workforce, and a stronger economy.
I recently found myself inside Dolores Mission almost 30 years after my family found refuge there. In the courtyard between the church and child care center, community members were cooking and selling tortas, empanadas, horchata, and other Hispanic delicacies. I imagined my mother once standing in their place, and I recalled her plea before the Jesus statue all those years ago. “Please, God, help me.”
Inside the church, I sat on a pew and closed my eyes, thinking of the fellow church members around me, many of whom are migrants just beginning to find their way in America. I thought of the unhoused migrants in New York City waiting in front of the Roosevelt Hotel, the migrant families waiting for a slot in a Boston shelter. And for the first time in a long time, I prayed, “Please, God, help us.”