Immigrants began lining up at dawn. After traveling to New York from all over Latin America, young people and families headed to an elementary school in Manhattan to be welcomed, in Spanish, by immigrants who had preceded them.
Most of those receiving them were Venezuelans and many had made the same trip just a few weeks before. They guided newcomers to tables covered with clothing and shoes, connected them with legal services or offered them a haircut and hot meal.
Yicel Rondón arrived in NY earlier this year with his partner and two children, after fleeing Venezuela and Colombia. “We came here with nothing — just the clothes we were wearing and our documents,” she said.
The makeshift welcome center that operates weekly in the cafeteria of Anna Silver Public Elementary School 20 on the Lower East Side has become one of the first stops for new immigrants as they orient themselves in a new country. Many arrive with few ties to New York and have ended up in homeless shelters, which authorities say are overcrowded.
The city has recently stepped up a campaign to encourage immigrants to leave the shelter system — or leave the City altogether.
But the center is also a sign that some people are settling in and, in some cases, becoming self-sufficient.
Before the latest surge, the Venezuelan diaspora in New York City was tiny, estimated at 21,000 in 2021, including about 14,000 people born in Venezuela. In the last year and a half, the number has approximately tripled. Authorities have estimated that at least 40,000 Venezuelan immigrants have arrived in New York City since 2022.
While other migrants may have a consulate to turn to, Venezuelans do not. Its consulate is closed, a result of bad relations between the US and Venezuela.
The City opened an intake center at the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown earlier this year to help place migrants in shelters and connect them to services, months after the City declared a crisis. Mayor Eric Adams’ Administration created an assistance program for asylum applications in June. It helped migrants complete more than 5,600 applications by mid-October, officials said.
But the City has received more than 130 thousand newcomers and their needs are enormous. Various volunteer groups and nonprofit organizations have also provided clothing donations and other assistance. But migrants trying to apply for asylum or protection from deportation need help gathering documents and navigating a complex court process.
Since July 2022, Jesús Aguais and his nonprofit, Aid for Life, have been trying to fill the gaps. Aguais, Venezuelan, has been living in NY for decades. His organization grew out of a sister organization, Aid For AIDS, which he created in 1996 to provide free antiretroviral medications to people with HIV in Latin America.
“We began providing nutrition to Venezuelans with the Venezuelan humanitarian emergency,” he said. “Then we expanded to migrants. Everything is linked. We helped them in Venezuela, then in Colombia, then in Peru, then in Panama and now in New York.”
In addition to the weekly sessions, Aid For Life holds legal workshops that explain the asylum process and has clinics with volunteer Venezuelan paralegals.
The sessions have served more than 20 thousand migrants, he said. Selitza Castro, 51, a volunteer, explained that she has come every week since she arrived last year. A few months ago she left a shelter and moved to a rental apartment in Brooklyn.
“Those of us who have been here a little longer are a little more established — not a lot, but a little,” Castro said. “We feel like a family, helping others who have arrived more recently.”
By: Nina Agrawal
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/7015372, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-12-05 20:40:07
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