New York overwhelmed by the influx of asylum seekers

(New York) Gustavo Mendez thinks he has “fulfilled his dream” since he arrived in New York in August and immediately found a temporary home and a black job in the restaurant business.

But this Venezuelan asylum seeker is an exception in this city symbol of the history of immigration, overwhelmed for six months by the influx of illegal Latin Americans.

The forties made this summer, like many Venezuelans and nationals of authoritarian regimes in Central America, a grueling trip to the Mexican-American border.

Once in the United States, he was paid for a one-way bus fare by one of the conservative republican state governors in the south (Texas, Arizona, Florida, etc.) to eastern states, strongholds of democratic elites.

In a country where immigration is an explosive subject, migrants and asylum seekers thus serve as “pawns” in the battle between Republicans and Democrats for the mid-term legislative elections on November 8, where President Joe Biden could lose. its narrow majority in Congress.

But Mr. Mendez does not care about political contests.

He can’t work legally in the United States, so this cook and television technician in Venezuela has found an undeclared job at a restaurant in the huge working-class borough of Queens, and travels all over the country to work in the truck kitchens of his boss during sporting events.

“I wanted a job”

“I wanted a job in a kitchen or on TV, that’s why I came” to the United States, he told AFP, who has been following him since his arrival in New York in August.

He claims to earn 800 to 1200 dollars a week against 600 dollars a month in Venezuela, where he left his two teenagers.

He found himself a foster family in this incredible cultural mosaic that is Queens and posted on his WhatsApp account the slogan “if you want to realize your dream, you can! “.

But asylum seekers are not all housed in the same boat in New York.

In this “world-city” which has always been a magnet for migrants of all origins, 17,000 have landed in the past six months, according to its Democratic mayor Eric Adams.

Most are Venezuelans, and there are also Colombians, as well as Nicaraguans and other nationals of Central American countries experiencing civil and political unrest.

“Unsustainable” influx

Faced with the “untenable” influx of these “asylum seekers (who) do not know where they land or what awaits them at the end of the chain”, the city councilor of New York, a former African-American policeman with strong , decreed a “state of emergency” on October 7 in its megalopolis.

The municipality estimates the bill between 500 million and a billion dollars to temporarily house these undocumented foreigners.

Eric Adams called for help from other major Democratic “sanctuary” cities in the eastern and western United States and urged the federal state to act “now, not six months from now.”

Washington responded on October 13 that Venezuelans who would henceforth cross the US border illegally would be automatically sent back to Mexico. In return, there will be a humanitarian program to emigrate legally directly from Venezuela.

It must concern 24,000 Venezuelans.

Joe Biden hopes to slow down the pace of arrivals. Since last October, 155,000 Venezuelans have entered through the Mexican border, a number that has tripled in one year.

A roof, a job

In New York, “since August, the number of asylum seekers has increased sharply,” notes Jay Alfaro, who heads social services at the Church of the Holy Apostles in Manhattan. And “the first question we ask is ‘do you know where to find a job? “”, he told AFP.

Like Naisary Angulo, a 29-year-old Venezuelan with her husband and their three-year-old daughter, who came to ask for food, medical care and advice on finding a home and a job.

But getting a legal job is an obstacle course for an undocumented foreigner. And without a fixed job, no housing with a lease in a city with delirious rents.

According to CNBC television, a blue-collar earning the legal minimum in New York of 15 dollars an hour must work 111 hours a week to afford a two-room apartment in a working-class neighborhood.

In addition, asylum seekers must wait 150 days before submitting their files to the immigration authorities and then possibly applying for a work permit.

Gustavo Mendez will have his first appointment in… 2024.

So New York organizes itself as best it can. Unoccupied hotels are requisitioned and a huge tent erected on Randall’s Island, an islet in the East River wedged between Queens and Manhattan, to accommodate 500 men. There is even a project to fit out a cruise ship at the quay.