They Fled Danger for New York. When Will Their New Lives Start? – The New York Times
That morning, the couple saw two apartments on the edges of the city. Both would cost them around $1,800 a month, and Klein was doing his best to explain that this, in fact, was a very good deal. “Everything is expensive in New York City,” he said. Everything, he added, is competitive.
“Don’t worry,” Jamalzada said. “We get a lot of that. People tell us not to come. They say that New York is like a black hole. You will…….
That morning, the couple saw two apartments on the edges of the city. Both would cost them around $1,800 a month, and Klein was doing his best to explain that this, in fact, was a very good deal. “Everything is expensive in New York City,” he said. Everything, he added, is competitive.
“Don’t worry,” Jamalzada said. “We get a lot of that. People tell us not to come. They say that New York is like a black hole. You will not come back.” She grinned at him. None of this scared her. “If you can make it here,” Klein started, joined midway by Jamalzada, “you can make it anywhere.”
For centuries, New York City has built its reputation on, and been built by, arrivals from all over the world, people who have landed on the city’s shores, earned money and sent for their relatives. Jamalzada and Khurami, however, have arrived at a difficult moment. The city is in the middle of a housing crisis, with inflation driving up prices and a job market that is still recovering from the pandemic.
The country’s immigration bureaucracy, too, remains backlogged post-pandemic, and many of the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies have endured. While countries like Germany and Canada have streamlined programs for asylum seekers and refugees — offering housing, food, work authorization and a monthly stipend to asylum seekers — the United States has strengthened enforcement at the border, while processing times for asylum applications have increased from weeks to months to years. From 2016 to 2020, the number of refugees arriving annually in the United States fell to less than 12,000 from 85,000. In roughly the same period, as budgets were slashed, 134 resettlement sites shuttered their operations, significantly reducing the country’s capacity to place refugees into new homes and neighborhoods. And then, as borders closed with the spread of Covid-19, immigration to the United States continued to drop.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/02/magazine/ukraine-afghanistan-refugees-new-york.html
