Teresa Racua Canales has been staying at this hotel since September of last year when she sought asylum when she arrived from Peru with her two children.
“A little nervous because I hope that one day they will tell me: ‘Look, Teresa, we are going to help you this far and then I will have to see them for myself.’”
When NY1 News interviewed her last year, her biggest wish was to find a permanent job, to rent her own space. Something that she has not been able to achieve.
“Because I work four times a week and sometimes three. And then, imagine, I don’t have enough for rent. Instead, here at least I have milk, fruit, a meal.”
Like this mother, there are currently some 45,000 immigrants seeking asylum in the care of the city, of the more than 70,000 who have passed through the shelter system since last year.
Only the previous week, 2,200 new immigrants were added, according to municipal officials.
Anne Williams-Isom, NYC Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services explains:
“The city continues to do whatever it takes to support asylum seekers, but we’ve reached a point where the system is breaking down and we want to make sure we’re doing everything we can to provide the quality of care we want.”
Overall, he added that there are currently around 95,000 people under the care of the city.
The mayor’s office estimated last week that from the beginning of this crisis until July of next year, a total of 4.3 billion dollars will be spent on shelter. This translates to about $380 per day, per person.
Immigrant rights activists say that to address this problem, the city needs the support of the state and federal governments.
This is how Murad Awawdeh, executive director of the New York immigrant coalition, explains it:
“We shouldn’t be keeping people in emergency shelters any longer than necessary and that’s what we’re seeing. Especially with families. They end up being in a shelter system for at least almost two years or more.”
Meanwhile, these municipal executives announced this Wednesday that the Lincoln State Correctional Facility in Harlem, which closed in 2019, will begin to temporarily house newly arrived immigrants this week.
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2023-06-01 10:38:00
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