Sally Hernandez, 12, sobbed on Wednesday as the New York hotel where she and her immigrant family were sheltering expelled them before she could say goodbye to the Girl Scout troop she belonged to at her makeshift home.
Such painful departures are increasingly more common as the city applies new housing rules for a flood of migrants, while border control and people like Sally who lack residency papers take center stage ahead of November’s US general election.
New York’s city hall, overwhelmed by the crisis, is implementing a new rule under which migrants cannot spend more than 60 days in any one shelter. Some people have been living in the same place for up to two years.
Photo: AFP
They also cannot apply for a new place until the day they leave the old one. So, when their time is up, asylum seekers like Sally and her family have to start from scratch and apply that day for a spot in a different shelter, competing with new people arriving every day, mainly from Latin America.
Sally and her Colombian family — mother Karol Hernandez, father Sebastian Arango and an 18-month-old baby — had to lug heavy suitcases a few blocks away to a hotel serving as a processing center for migrants like them.
And all this messy coming and going is happening amid frigid, rainy winter weather. On Tuesday night, 2,000 people living in tents in Brooklyn had to be relocated because of torrential rains.
“Sixty days is not much time... The legal paperwork takes much longer, to get a work permit or Temporary Protected Status,” said Angelo Chirino, a 22-year-old Venezuelan, who arrived in New York in November last year with his wife and infant son.
More than 160,000 people have come to New York since this immigration crisis started almost two years ago, often in buses chartered by governors in Republican-led border states to protest what they label US President Joe Biden’s lax border policies. Struggling to cope with the sea of humanity, last week New York Mayor Eric Adams sued bus companies that have brought migrants to the city, seeking US$700 million in damages to offset the cost of housing them.
The mayor is also asking for federal assistance money and wants it to be easier for such people to get work permits.
Historically Democratic and liberal New York City by law has to provide housing to anyone who requests it and is the only city in the US to offer this kind of help.
A 35-year-old Central American woman named Blanca faced the same dilemma as Sally on Wednesday: Her time was up at the hotel where she was staying and she had to move on.
Blanca cried as she told Agence France-Presse her 14-year-old daughter did not go to school on that day because she feared that when classes ended she would not know where to find her mother.
Young people would be hit by the new housing rules because changing shelters can mean changing school and longer commute times, critics of the new policy said.
Blanca, who declined to give her last name, also has a baby not yet 1. She said no one is helping her with all the paperwork involved in seeking housing and asylum, and she cannot afford a lawyer because she is not working.
“With work I know I can support my daughters,” she said.
It was unclear where she and her daughters would sleep that frigid night — possibly huddled together in a camp bed somewhere in the hotel that had just evicted her, or on a chair in the administrative center.
Her dilemma illustrates the dire straits that many single parent asylum-seekers are stuck in: They have no money, do not speak English and cannot work because they have no one to leave their children with.
Sandra Gomez of Nicaragua has been more fortunate. After living in a hotel for more than six months she obtained a work permit and is moving with her husband and 17-year-old daughter into a rental house in New Jersey, sharing it with four other families.
“Now I have to go out and find work,” Gomez said with a smile.
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
Hundreds of people in rainbow colors gathered on Saturday in South Africa’s tourist magnet Cape Town to honor the world’s first openly gay imam, who was killed last month. Muhsin Hendricks, who ran a mosque for marginalized Muslims, was shot dead last month near the southern city of Gqeberha. “I was heartbroken. I think it’s sad especially how far we’ve come, considering how progressive South Africa has been,” attendee Keisha Jensen said. Led by motorcycle riders, the mostly young crowd walked through the streets of the coastal city, some waving placards emblazoned with Hendricks’s image and reading: “#JUSTICEFORMUHSIN.” No arrest
RSS