But this Venezuelan asylum seeker is an exception in this city that symbolizes the history of immigration, overwhelmed for six months by the influx of Latin American illegal immigrants.
The 1940s made this summer, like many Venezuelans and citizens of authoritarian regimes in Central America, a grueling journey to the Mexican-American border.
Once in the United States, one of the conservative Republican governors of the southern states (Texas, Arizona, Florida, etc.) paid him for a one-way ticket to the eastern states, strongholds of the democratic elites.
In a country where immigration is an explosive topic, migrants and asylum seekers therefore act as “pawns” in the battle between Republicans and Democrats for the November 8 mid-term legislative elections, where President Joe Biden could lose his narrow majority in Congress.
But Mr. Mendez is not interested in political competitions.
He can’t legally work in the United States, so this Venezuelan cook and TV technician has found an undeclared job at a restaurant in the huge working-class neighborhood of Queens and travels across the country to work in trucks. of the head of him during sporting events.
“I wanted a job”
“I wanted a job in the kitchen or on TV, that’s why I came“in the United States, he told AFP, which has been following him since his arrival in New York in August.
He claims to earn $ 800 to $ 1,200 a week versus $ 600 a month in Venezuela, where he left his two teenagers.
He found an adoptive family in this incredible cultural mosaic that is Queens and posted the slogan on his WhatsApp account “If you want to make your dream come true, you can do it!”.
But asylum seekers aren’t all housed in the same boat in New York. In this “world-city” Always a magnet for migrants of all backgrounds, 17,000 of them have landed in the past six months, according to its Democratic mayor Eric Adams.
Most are Venezuelans and there are also Colombians, as well as Nicaraguans and other citizens of Central American countries experiencing civil and political unrest.
“Unsustainable” influx.
Faced with the influx “unsustainable“Death “asylum seekers (who) don’t know where they are going or what awaits them at the end of the chain”ruled on October 7 by the mayor of New York, a tough African-American ex-cop “state of emergency” in its megalopolis.
Council estimates the bill between $ 500 million and $ 1 billion to temporarily house these undocumented foreigners.
Eric Adams asked other big cities for help “shrines“Democrats in the east and west of the United States and called the federal state to act “now, not in six months”.
Washington replied on October 13 that Venezuelans who would henceforth illegally cross the US border would automatically be sent back to Mexico. In return, there will be a humanitarian program to legally emigrate directly from Venezuela.
It must concern 24,000 Venezuelans. Joe Biden hopes to slow down the pace of arrivals. Since last October, 155,000 Venezuelans have entered across the Mexican border, a number that has tripled in one year.
A roof, a job
a New York, “Since August the number of asylum seekers has increased dramatically”says Jay Alfaro, who heads social services at the Church of the Holy Apostles in Manhattan. And “the first question we ask ourselves is ‘do you know where to find work?’“He told AFP.
Like Naisary Angulo, a 29-year-old Venezuelan with her husband and three-year-old daughter, who came to ask for food, care and advice on how to find a roof and a job.
But getting a legal job is an obstacle course for an undocumented foreigner. And without a steady job, no housing on a lease in a city with delusional rents.
According to CNBC television, a worker earning the legal minimum of $ 15 an hour in New York must work 111 hours a week to afford a two-bedroom apartment in a working-class neighborhood.
In addition, asylum seekers must wait 150 days before submitting their file to the immigration authorities and then possibly applying for a work permit. Gustavo Mendez will have his first date in … 2024.
So New York organizes itself as best it can. Unoccupied hotels are commandeered and a huge tent is erected on Randall Island, an islet in the East River wedged between Queens and Manhattan, to house 500 men. There is also a project to set up a cruise ship at the dock.
