Pirate's Cove

There’s a simple answer: stay home. You came here thinking you’d get free money, food, housing, medical care, and so forth just because you showed up

Asylum seekers in NYC say America is nothing like they had imagined: It’s ‘chaos’

For one 29-year-old Venezuelan woman, who left her two children and partner behind in her home country to embark on a six-month journey to New York City, America represented hope. There, she thought, she would find safety and the opportunity to make a living. But four months after arriving in the U.S., she says it’s nothing like she had imagined.

“It’s too difficult to come to a place where you don’t know the language,” the woman, who agreed to speak anonymously to protect her safety, told Yahoo News.

Speaking in Spanish, the woman had been standing along the granite wall of a bustling midtown Manhattan restaurant attached to the Roosevelt Hotel, which in recent months has been transformed into the city’s migrant intake center.

Why would someone do this? Leave her kids and husband? What’s the end-game? The idea here is, of course, that she gets asylum so Los Federales allow the kids and husband to immigrate. How long could that take? The system is so over-burdened it could be years. As far as the language, well, she could have learned English. That’s on her.

Like many Venezuelans who’ve come to the U.S. in recent years, the woman explained that Venezuela’s corrupt and repressive government had left her with few options at home. She embarked on the dangerous journey to the U.S. by herself, traveling through the perilous Darién Gap that connects Colombia to Panama, then multiple countries including Nicaragua and Honduras, by foot and public transportation. She stopped for weeks at a time to work only long enough to make enough money for the next leg of her trip. Since arriving in New York, she’s struggled to make money and obtain basic necessities while navigating the city’s shelter system. Eventually, she says, she hopes to bring her family to America, but she’s unsure how she will make that happen.

“I just want a job,” she said. “It is very difficult to get to a place when you have nothing.”

Were there not other countries closer she could have stayed in?

For most migrants, the prospect of finding a decent job and safety is enough to justify the arduous, and often dangerous, journey to the United States. But now that they’re here, some say the U.S. is nothing like what they had imagined.

“I thought of New York differently, but now I also see that New York is in chaos,” said a 48-year-old Ecuadorian woman who was also staying at the Roosevelt. The woman, who declined to give her name, told Yahoo News that she, her husband and their 2-year-old child escaped violence in Ecuador, traveling for two months before they eventually reached New York.

“In my country right now they are stealing, they are killing and there is no longer security, just desperation,” she said, rocking her child back and forth in a stroller on the sidewalk. “We come to look for work. When we die, we are not going to take anything with us. But we want at least to have stability to live, at least while living in this world.”

Is she talking about Ecuador or SCNY? If she, and the others, do not like it, they can leave.

Account of migrants being ‘involuntarily’ bused out of NYC sparks feud between Hochul admin, Adams’ office

Mayor Adams’ office on Friday rejected an accusation from Gov. Hochul’s administration that the city “involuntarily” bused migrants upstate earlier this month — prompting the governor’s team to double down on its explosive claim and accuse City Hall of providing misleading details about the incident.

In other words, forced busing. The same thing Adams and others accused DeSantis and Abbott of doing. Why does the Sanctuary City of New York not want the illegals?

Read: “Asylum” Seekers Whine That SCNY Is “Chaos” »