When Silvana arrived in New York with her husband and daughter after a nearly two-month journey through the jungle from Ecuador, she immediately began looking for work.
The 33-year-old man, who used to work as a baker in his hometown, initially tried to apply for jobs at restaurants and bakeries. But without her work permit or Social Security number, she was out of luck.
“It’s a beautiful country with so many opportunities,” said Silvana, who has been in New York City for a year and a half. “But there should be more opportunities for undocumented immigrants.”
Silvana now sells rice and soup platters from a white cooler outside the shelter where she lives, earning $60 for four hours of work each day.
Silvana is one of more than 182,000 immigrants who have arrived in New York City since spring 2022 as part of a historic surge in immigration to the United States under President Joe Biden. The issue has become a top priority for voters in an election year.
Caught between are business owners struggling with a post-pandemic labor shortage and immigrants desperately trying to find work. According to federal law, people who apply for asylum must wait at least 150 days before applying for a work permit.
Nuala O’Doherty Naranjo, a lawyer at the Jackson Heights Immigration Center, said her clients are primarily people fleeing gang violence in Ecuador, and while asylum cases are processed after they are filed, some The process can take from six months to a year. Colombia and Peru.
The impasse in jobs and legal status has forced many migrants into informal work in the city’s underground economy. Leaders of a New York-based charity that works with immigrants say popular jobs include construction work, landscaping, moving, food delivery, house cleaning and selling candy. Employee salaries are paid in cash or prepaid debit cards.
“Everyone is working behind the table,” O’Doherty Naranjo said. “Everyone has to eat, so everyone has to do something. I mean, do you have half a year’s worth of cash to not have to work?”
Jesus, a 40-year-old man from Venezuela, told the Financial Times that he would wait outside a hardware store from 5 a.m. to 3 p.m. to do chores such as painting or remodeling. I worked every day.
Border security and immigration have become some of the most controversial issues in American politics. For months, Republicans put plans for military aid to Ukraine and Israel on hold over border policy, while red states like Texas bused migrants into Democratic strongholds in urban areas like New York and Los Angeles.
According to Gallup in February, a majority of Americans polled said large numbers of illegal immigrants are a “grave threat” to the country, the highest since at least 2004. There is.
As of March, an estimated 64,000 migrants were living in city-funded shelters but still need to earn money to buy food and other necessities. Many also want to work to send money back to their families in their home countries.
When asked about his future plans, Jesus replied: “It’s about mother and son getting what they need. That’s my future.”
Skeptics of New York City’s “sanctuary city” immigration policy argue that an underground labor market of immigrants deprives the city of income tax revenue and job opportunities from native-born workers.
But economic research shows that waves of immigration have had little impact on wages for mainland-born workers.
Illegal immigrants are a significant part of New York state’s economy, accounting for approximately 10% of construction, hospitality and health care workers, according to the state’s Regional Economic Development Council’s 2023 report. Illegal immigrants in New York also pay significant taxes, amounting to $3 billion, according to 2021 data estimates from the American Immigration Council.
More broadly, hundreds of service, construction and agricultural industry owners across the country have petitioned federal authorities to expedite work permits for immigrants in hopes of hiring more workers. There is.
“Simply put, there are too many jobs and not enough workers to fill them,” more than 100 business associations, trade associations and chambers of commerce said in a letter last November. Several lawmakers have introduced proposals to reduce wait times for work permits, but none have passed.
Job openings in the U.S. have soared since the pandemic, but the civilian labor force participation rate (the percentage of the population that is working or actively looking for work) has only recently started approaching pre-pandemic levels. It is. According to official figures for March, there are 8.5 million jobs available in the United States, but only 6.4 million people are unemployed.
The current labor shortage is due to a variety of reasons, including early retirement due to the pandemic, a lack of child care services and an aging workforce, according to an analysis by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The number of children has decreased. At the same time, the foreign-born population is growing, although their numbers are still far smaller than the U.S.-born population.
New York’s hospitality industry “remains in absolute need of labor,” said Andrew Riggy, executive director of the NYC Hospitality Alliance, the city’s industry group for restaurants and bars.
Despite not being able to find enough bussers, dishwashers and line cooks to hire, Lizzie says owners regularly turn away immigrants seeking work at their restaurants because they don’t have work permits. He added that there must be.
“While there are plenty of restaurant jobs available to homegrown workers, hiring remains difficult,” Riggy said.
For now, asylum seekers in New York City who are stuck in legal limbo are forced to work odd jobs as undocumented workers while waiting for their paperwork to pass.
“Sometimes you have to find a way to sell caramels or whatever you have around there for work,” said Eddie Jose, who came to New York from Venezuela four months ago.
Speaking to the FT at a bike park near the midtown Manhattan shelter where he lives, the 26-year-old and six other young people, smartphones in hand, were assigned food orders to be delivered by Grubhub and Uber Eats. I was waiting for it to happen.
The app requires a Social Security number and an annual background check to work as a courier, but Eddie Jose has helped his friends find accounts to use while waiting for work permits. He said he helped me.
An Uber spokesperson said in a statement that the company does not allow account sharing and regularly verifies couriers’ identities in real time by requiring couriers to take selfies in the app.
Grubhub did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“I’ll work for anything. I just want to work,” said Eddie Jose, who worked in construction and other jobs in Venezuela. His four children still live in Venezuela. “I just want to help my family.”