THE NEW YORK America symbolized promise for one 29-year-old Venezuelan woman who left her two children and partner behind in her own nation to travel six months to New York City. She believed that she would find security and a way to support herself there. She claims that four months after landing in the United States, it’s not at all what she had anticipated.
The woman, who wished to remain anonymous for the sake of her safety, told Yahoo News that it was too difficult to travel to a country where the language was not your own.
The woman was standing next to the granite wall of a busy restaurant next to the Roosevelt Hotel in midtown Manhattan, which has recently been turned into the city’s migrant intake center.
The woman added that because of Venezuela’s corrupt and oppressive regime, she had little options at home, much like many other Venezuelans who have immigrated to the United States in recent years. She set out on the treacherous voyage to the United States by herself, traveling by foot and public transportation across the perilous Darién Gap that connects Colombia to Panama, then through many nations, including Nicaragua and Honduras. She would pause for weeks at a time, working only long enough to earn enough money to continue her journey. She has had difficulty making money since moving to New York and acquiring basics while navigating the city’s shelter system. She claims that she eventually hopes to bring her family to America, but she is unsure of how to go about doing so.
“I just want a job,” she proclaimed. “Having nothing makes it very difficult to get somewhere,”
The woman is only one of the 57,300 migrants who are reportedly looking for shelter in New York City right now. The majority of them were bused in from Texas as part of Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s political strategy to put pressure on the federal government to bolster border security. Others have traveled independently to New York.
The likelihood of finding a respectable career and safety is sufficient for the majority of migrants to warrant the taxing and frequently perilous trek to the United States. Some claim that the United States is not what they had anticipated it to be now that they are here.
A 48-year-old Ecuadorian woman who was also staying at the Roosevelt stated, “I thought of New York differently, but now I also see that New York is in chaos.” The woman, who wished to remain anonymous, told Yahoo News that she, her husband, and their 2-year-old child fled violence in Ecuador and spent two months traveling before arriving in New York.
She remarked, swaying her toddler back and forth in a stroller on the pavement. “In my country right now they are stealing, they are killing and there is no longer security, there is just desperation,” she said. We are here to hunt for employment. We won’t be taking anything with us when we pass away. However, we desire some kind of stability so that we can survive in this world.
Immigration issue in NYC
Nearly 3,000 migrants joined the city’s shelter system in just the first week of August. City officials estimate that it costs roughly $10 million per day to care for all of the estimated 1,000 migrants that arrive in the city every day.
Mayor of New York City Eric Adams has warned that the city’s immigration problem will quickly turn into a catastrophe in the absence of major financial support from the state and federal governments. Adams predicted that housing asylum seekers might cost the city more than $12 billion over three fiscal years at a press conference earlier this month.
According to the mayor, “the city is running out of money, appropriate space, and personnel” to care for immigrant families. Nearly 100,000 migrants have entered the city since 2022, he continued. Thousands of people have already relocated, but many are still in the city’s custody.
“This country’s immigration system is dysfunctional. Adams proclaimed: “Today, New York City has been left to pick up the pieces. It has been broken for decades.”
While Adams and other municipal authorities have committed to help migrants in need, hundreds of migrants have been seen sleeping on sidewalks in recent weeks, according to the city, because there is nowhere else for them to go.
Unreliable system
Advocates for immigration claim that the migrant problem has been building for years.
There is just no more capacity, a City Hall aide told Politico. “No one wants anyone sleeping on the street or being used as a pawn in a political fight, but it’s just plain reality that there’s no more room,” the source said.
Theodore Moore, vice president of policy and programs at the New York Immigration Coalition, told Yahoo News in an email that the arrival of asylum seekers “exposed how broken the system is and has been for all those New Yorkers who have been stuck for upwards of a year.” “There has never been enough political will, under this administration or any other, to change the situation.”
Others have charged that, despite having more services available, the city is using the refugees living on the streets as a ruse to increase its federal funding.
According to Joshua Goldfein, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society in New York, “there’s no doubt that the city could provide additional spaces for the people who are on the sidewalk.”
The mayor’s office, however, disputes those assertions and adds that officials are acting “with humanity and with compassion.”
