Photo: David Dee Delgado/Getty Images
By: EFE Posted Jun 21, 2023, 17:28 pm EDT
The authorities of NY said this Wednesday that they are turning, without help from the federal government, into facilitate the asylum application process for migrants, who arrive at a rate of 2,000 a week and in which the city is investing millions of dollars to cover their basic needs.
Several officials from the Mayor’s Office indicated today that the recently announced Asylum Application Help Center to provide free legal services to these newcomers, the majority of whom are Latin American and who in many cases do not speak English, with the aim of speeding up their obtaining a work permit.
The head of local Health and Social Services, Anne Williams-Ison, revealed that lLast week more than 2,200 migrants arrived at the public accommodation systemwhich covers 174 spaces -many emergency, in hotels or school gyms-, and assured that some 2,000 a week are arriving at a “consistent” rate.
The city currently has about 98,400 people in that system, including the local homeless plus 48,700 migrants who are usually described as asylum seekers.Although few have actually started the administrative process to obtain this status due to its high cost in the private sector and because the public alternative is slow and very limited, something that the new center seeks to alleviate.
The person in charge of Immigration, Manuel Castro, said that since the beginning of this year the city has helped some 5,000 migrants in the asylum application process, a very low number that the authorities “want to increase in the coming weeks and months” to relieve pressure on the system.
Castro criticized that the federal government “does not provide free legal services” for asylum seekers and “they are essentially left to navigate an incredibly complex and what many would call broken immigration system.”
The more than 78,000 asylum seekers who have arrived in New York City since last August they have had to seek “their own legal representation, a service that can cost tens of thousands of dollars in the private sector,” leading many to rely on NGOs, public programs, or do it themselves, he said.
New York has invested some 60 million dollars in providing this assistance free of charge.”taking a step to support asylum seekers with their legal needs because the federal government does not, so we are going to lead and set an example, but this is not sustainable,” he added.
The immigration crisis began in the summer of last year, with bus shipments from southern US states governed by Republican politicians, especially Texas, but has worsened recently with the end of Title 42 border policy, that blocked their way for sanitary reasons.
Since the start of the crisis, the city estimates that it has welcomed some 78,700 asylum seekers.
Keep reading:
– New York mayor says that almost half of the rooms in the city are occupied by immigrants
– New York plans to house migrants in at least 20 school gyms
– New York City will open the first arrival center for asylum seekers next week