Dear New Yorkers, About eight months after she first arrived in New York City after escaping her native Venezuela with her two young daughters, Beatriz, 30, has gone from a person alone and adrift in a strange land to a hard-working matriarch for her newly arrived extended family. Like generations of immigrants before them, they are rapidly finding places in New York City’s voracious off-the-books economy. When Beatriz got here last fall, she walked around for two weeks before finding her job as a cook in a Hell’s Kitchen Irish pub. At that time, around 18,000 asylum-seekers were staying in 46 emergency shelters and hotels. Within a few months, she’d managed to save enough money to help her younger brother Jhon, 28, and two of their cousins make their own journey along with their partners. Jhon’s journey, like his sister’s was before him, was terrifying. His girlfriend, overcome by fever and stomach pains, nearly died on the unforgiving, jungled slopes of Central America’s Darien Gap. In Durango, Mexico, the couple and one of his cousins were held captive in a warehouse for nearly two weeks with almost nothing to eat. Beatriz came to her little brother’s aid, paying for their freedom. By May 1, the couple and his cousins had made it across the Texas border. About a week later, they arrived in New York City. By then, 140 emergency shelters and hotels housed twice as many people as when his sister had arrived seven months earlier. Asylum-seekers who have been here for many months are helping newer arrivals find jobs and their way. But many of the early arrivals are still staying in city shelters. Beatriz remains in a midtown Manhattan hotel transformed into rooms for asylum-seekers, with strict rules about who can enter. She has started the apartment hunt in Corona, Queens, a neighborhood brimming with Spanish speakers and with rents she could afford. Jhon, who’s stayed for nearly a month in a crowded gymnasium in Manhattan converted into a “respite center” that offers cots and not much else and isn’t allowed to visit his sister’s room, is already on the hunt for a place of his own. Read more about Beatriz’s journey here. | 
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