Immigrants in East Harlem: Progress, Perspectives, and Contrasting Views

Over the last twenty years, immigrants have come to East Harlem in Manhattan from all sides. Puerto Rican Harrt Aponte, who has been working as a taxi driver for 47 years, says he has witnessed how many of his driver friends, Latin American immigrants, have progressed.

“They have all their permits and they even own taxis, that is, I think they work, not live from the government,” Aponte said.

Like Aponte, many disagree with the Siena University poll, which found that the overwhelming majority of New Yorkers, 82%, view the influx of immigrants into the state as a “problem” that has plagued the state. .

The poll questioned more than 800 registered New York voters, 54 percent of whom said they would rate the situation for immigrants “very serious.”

“But that is nonsense, paying attention to a survey of 800 people,” added Aponte. “They are hard-working people whose purpose is to come to work here. They have business positions, they don’t live off the government, they work a lot, I think they are part of New York society.”

According to the poll, another 28 percent say they would call the situation “somewhat serious.”

The survey asked a number of other immigrant-related questions. Thus, 46 percent say that the arrival of immigrants has been a burden for the state not only in the last year, but in the last two decades.

Something that Elizabeth Tolentino, who arrived from Peru more than a decade ago, does not agree with either.

“I have been in this country for 14 years, of which from the first day I arrived in this country I filled out all my taxes, even up to today’s sun, that I am a single mother of six children and I continue to pay my taxes and I do not depend on the government,” Tolentino said.

Tolentino.

Fifty-eight percent of that poll believe the state has already done enough to assimilate new immigrants and should now try to slow their entry into the population.

“What are these people going to contribute? Those people what is being taken from the state here. They are taking what they are taking and taking and nothing, you see, help for them and nothing for here,” said Luis Antonio Negrón, a Puerto Rican from East Halem.

Fifty percent of those surveyed by the university said they support moving immigrants from temporary housing in the city to permanent housing structures across the state.

2023-08-22 19:36:00
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