what to know
New York City has hosted 112,000 people since spring 2022, nearly 60,000 of whom are temporarily living in government shelters. Several major US cities have struggled with the influx of thousands of asylum seekers filling shelters to homeless after entering the United States. The huge public school system has about 3,400 teachers licensed to teach English as a Second Language and more than 1,700 certified bilingual teachers who are fluent in Spanish, the language spoken by most families immigrants, according to Education Chancellor David C. Banks.
NEW YORK — Damien, 5, was giddy with excitement as he emerged from a Manhattan homeless shelter, sometimes running and jumping down the sidewalk accompanied by his melancholy mother, a migrant from Ecuador.
“What I want for him is a future,” Kimberly Carchipulla said in Spanish of her son, one of nearly 800,000 New York City public school students who headed to class Thursday for his first day of the new school year. .
That’s what school officials want, too, as city classrooms work to house nearly 20,000 immigrant children recently arrived in the United States, a number that could rise as record numbers of families cross the border from Mexico with the hope of obtaining asylum.
Several major US cities have struggled with the influx of thousands of asylum seekers filling homeless shelters after entering the United States.
New York City’s shelter system has been especially overwhelmed, but Mayor Eric Adams has tried to reassure parents and community groups that the city’s nearly 1,900 schools, which have a long history of welcoming immigrants with limited English proficiency are well prepared to welcome immigrant children into the classroom.
The huge public school system has about 3,400 teachers licensed to teach English as a Second Language and more than 1,700 certified bilingual teachers who are fluent in Spanish, the language spoken by most immigrant families, according to Education Chancellor David C. .Banks. Some schools that were expected to receive a higher proportion of students living in shelters are receiving more funding, with $110 million earmarked for immediate needs.
“We welcome all of these new immigrant students to our schools with open arms,” Banks said Thursday during a first-day-of-school ceremony at a Bronx public school. “We know it’s a broader political issue and the mayor and others have to deal with it. But when they show up in our schools, they’re going to get the best of what we have.”
That is encouraging news for Carchipulla and his son.
In his quieter moments, on his way to school, Damien worried about whether he could easily understand his teacher or make friends.
For the past two months, his family has been living in a room in Manhattan’s historic Roosevelt Hotel, which after years of being closed became a city-run shelter for recently arrived immigrants hoping to find work and a life this year. better for your children.
Carchipulla’s immediate concern was getting Damien to class early, riding the city bus and walking to his school 75 blocks away in East Harlem. Dozens of other families gathered at the school gates waiting to be let in.
In recent weeks, his 22-year-old mother has oscillated between elation and worry, especially worried about her son’s ability to keep up with his classmates. And she hopes there will be good teachers at her son’s new school, teachers who are kind and patient.
It has been a difficult few months for the family after leaving relatives behind in their small Ecuadorian town about 100 miles (161 kilometers) south of the capital, Guayaquil. In recent months, Ecuador has struggled with increasing violence and political instability.
“We arrived at a place where we have no family. It was difficult. There were days that I cried because they were hard and difficult days because I knew that I was not going to return to my family,” said Carchipulla. Nonprofit organizations like New Immigrant Community Empowerment, more commonly known as NICE, have helped families work toward stability.
Illegal border crossings dropped sharply after the Biden administration introduced new restrictions in May. But the numbers are rising again, this time driven by families with children. According to preliminary data from the US Customs and Border Protection, August was the busiest month for apprehensions of migrant families crossing the border with children from Mexico.
Families with children now account for about half of the arrests of people crossing the border illegally from Mexico, with more than 91,000 arrests in August, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to discuss figures and spoke on condition of anonymity.
That number is dramatically higher than the 60,161 arrests in July and 39,305 in June. The August count topped the previous high of 84,486 in May 2019. Overall, arrests for illegal crossings from Mexico topped 177,000 in August, the official said, up from 132,652 in July and 99,539 in June.
New York City has taken in 112,000 people since spring 2022, nearly 60,000 of whom are temporarily living in government shelters.
Advocacy groups are closely watching how city schools respond to the influx of immigrants, but are sympathetic to city officials who continue to ask Albany and the White House for more money.
“Any city would have a hard time receiving the large number of children that are coming in at the same time, who are also learning English, as well as living in temporary housing or temporary shelters,” said Natasha Quiroga, director of education policy for the New School Center for New York City affairs.
“The city has tried to come up with some kind of plan, but there aren’t enough resources to go around yet,” he said.
There were isolated problems on the day of the inauguration, Quiroga said, most of them related to the registration process. There were some reports of long lines at some campuses, but that’s usually part of the normal chaos on the first day of school, he said.
When he recently held a workshop at the Roosevelt, over 100 people attended.
“The American education system and the New York City education system are incredibly complicated and very different from other countries,” Quiroga said.
When Carchipulla’s husband broached the idea of heading north, he suggested going alone. But she insisted that they stay together.
Her husband has only been able to find odd jobs, such as construction jobs. They hope that she can get the work papers as soon as possible. Kimberly also wants to work, but she has two small children that she cannot leave alone.
Carchipulla dreams of his son developing a profession, perhaps one day he will join the masses of rushing people, dressed in suits, ties and shiny shoes.
His mother smiled as Damien spoke, then laughed as the boy rattled off a few words in English.
“It will be easier for him to learn English,” he said. When Damien does, she relies on him to “help me with things I don’t understand.”
For his first day of school, Damien had much simpler plans: “I want to make new friends,” he said. “And I want to learn english”.
Spagat reported from San Diego and Associated Press writer Carolyn Thompson contributed from Buffalo, New York.
2023-09-08 02:12:30
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