Results 1 to 3 of 3
Like Tree1Likes

Thread: Newark Is Seeing a Surge of Brazilian Asylum-Seekers

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

  1. #1
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2008
    Location
    PARADISE (San Diego)
    Posts
    99,040

    Newark Is Seeing a Surge of Brazilian Asylum-Seekers

    Newark Is Seeing a Surge of Brazilian Asylum-Seekers

    Listen 4 min Queue

    Brazil Square in Newark's Ironbound neighborhood has been a welcoming home for new arrivals from Brazil for decades.
    ( Paula Moura / WNYC )

    i

    May 13, 2019 · by Paula Moura

    For four months now, Adriana has been sharing a room with her husband and two children in a one-bedroom apartment in Newark. It's the first apartment they've ever lived in — much different from their rural home in Brazil's southeastern Minas Gerais state, where she cooked meals in a wood burning stove


    "In Brazil, we ate only the basics," she said, meaning rice and beans, and meat only once in a while. Since they arrived in Newark, she said her family eats meat every day.


    Adriana, 32, and her family crossed the U.S.-Mexico border and surrendered to border agents, hoping to pursue asylum. She did not want to reveal her real name because she fears it could hurt their chances. To finance the trip, her family sold their small rural pasture. They saw no future in Brazil. Last year, she said, life became harder as food and utilities became more expensive.

    More and more Brazilians are fleeing an economic hardship — including unemployment, inflation and poverty — and coming to Newark, where they are welcomed by an established, Portuguese-speaking community, and have access to jobs and other resources. The New York City area has one of the largest populations of

    Brazilian immigrants in the U.S. — about 48,000 as of 2017, according to the latest U.S. Census data compiled by the Migration Policy Institute.

    At Newark's Brazil Square, people can find restaurants, cafes and supermarkets selling Brazilian goods.
    (Paula Moura/WNYC)


    Many have settled in Newark's Ironbound neighborhood, where Brazilian immigrants have lived for decades. On Ferry Street, they can find Brazilian supermarkets, restaurants, food carts and cafes, as well as dishes from back home, such as a chicken specialty called coxinha.
    They can also find counseling professionals who speak their mother tongue. Psychotherapist Viviane Wilkens said she is the only one she knows of offering free mental health services to children in Portuguese.

    "It was here in Newark that I realized I was needed, that my work could be crucial in somebody's life," Wilkens said.


    The counseling services are available in the same building as Mantena Global Care, a nonprofit that offers education, health and immigration services — mainly to Brazilians. Co-founder Solange Paizante said she volunteers seven days a week, listening to people as if she was their mother.


    "Sometimes it's not about money, but about information, the warmth," she said.

    When the Consulate General of Brazil in New York offers services to Newark's community, it usually does so at Mantena's building, too. Recently, consulate employees received requests for all types of Brazilian documents, such as power of attorney letters and passports.

    Consulate employee Vanessa Lucena (R) helps people with requests for Brazilian passports.
    (Paula Moura/WNYC)


    Paizante said she is surprised by the number of new arrivals from Brazil looking for her organization's services — an average of eight families a week.

    Shirley Cusick, an immigration attorney and consultant in Newark and Long Branch, said her firm is now hearing from an average of 50 Brazilians per day asking about asylum in the U.S.

    She said many come with families and are released after they surrender at the U.S. border.

    "They are victims of human trafficking," she said. "They [human traffickers] really lie to them, because catch and release, which in Portuguese is ‘cai, cai’, is not a way which they are going to get legal from Brazil applying for asylum," adding that they may need to show evidence of persecution to win an asylum case.

    Cusick said smugglers in Brazil also deceive migrants by saying the courts in the U.S. will favor them. In reality, she said, their cases could take up to 7 years to complete because of the extensive backlogs in the immigration court system.

    In Brazil, researchers are also noticing a surge of people seeking to leave the country. Duval Fernandes, a demographer at Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais, cited the area around the city of Governador Valadares, widely-known for driving immigration to the U.S.

    "The way people measure how many are leaving is by number of buses. Before, two buses would leave the city. Now, residents are seeing five buses a week," said Fernandes.

    He said smugglers sell packages to residents from small towns, sometimes guaranteeing a job in the U.S. Immigrants travel knowing they will find established Brazilian communities, like Newark's Ironbound, but many are not aware of the hardships they will face.


    Adriana has been wearing an ankle monitor since she was released at the border, and is still looking for an immigration attorney to help her seek asylum.

    "If we are deported, I don't know what we are going to do because we spent all we had to come here," she said.

    Ferry Street in Newark, near Brazil Square
    (Paula Moura/WNYC)


    Not all immigrants from Brazil are fleeing economic hardship. Police killings are on the rise, especially in Rio de Janeiro state. Violence based on gender and sexual orientation are also high.

    Last year, Marielle Franco, a Rio city councilwoman and human rights activist, was murdered. In January, an openly gay congressman from the same party as Franco said he fled Brazil after receiving a number of death threats.

    Brazilians are crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in much smaller numbers than Central Americans, but it's an important trend to watch, according to Jeanne Batalova, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. She said Brazilians began immigrating to the U.S. in large numbers in the 1980s, and more recently they are in the top six of the nationals apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border.

    In 1985, Brazil was transitioning to democracy after 21 years under a U.S.-backed military dictatorship that left the country in high debt.

    After that, Brazilian immigration continued to follow the ups and downs of the country’s economy. In 2015, Brazil drowned in the worst recession of its recorded history as a result of a corruption scandal. Since then, the economy has improved slightly, but the Brazilian real has devalued. One U.S. dollar is now worth about 4 reais — an incentive for Brazilians to seek work in the U.S.


    "Here you work hard, but you see the money," said Adriana. "Back there, you work the whole month and when you get the money, is very little."


    Adriana's new life in Newark inspired other family members to leave Brazil. Her brother arrived with his wife and an 8-month-old baby two weeks ago.

    https://www.wnyc.org/story/more-braz...riving-newark/

    NO AMNESTY

    Don't reward the criminal actions of millions of illegal aliens by giving them citizenship.


    Sign in and post comments here.

    Please support our fight against illegal immigration by joining ALIPAC's email alerts here https://eepurl.com/cktGTn

  2. #2
    MW
    MW is offline
    Senior Member MW's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2006
    Location
    North Carolina
    Posts
    25,717
    "They are victims of human trafficking," she said.
    My B.S. meter just pegged. These folks are not "victims" in any sense of the word! As former AG, Jeff Sessions, made clear .... economic hardship is not an acceptable reason for asylum! As for our current AG, Barr, I haven't heard much more than a peep from him on the immigration/asylum issue.

    "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" ** Edmund Burke**

    Support our FIGHT AGAINST illegal immigration & Amnesty by joining our E-mail Alerts athttps://eepurl.com/cktGTn

  3. #3
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2008
    Location
    PARADISE (San Diego)
    Posts
    99,040
    NO AMNESTY

    Don't reward the criminal actions of millions of illegal aliens by giving them citizenship.


    Sign in and post comments here.

    Please support our fight against illegal immigration by joining ALIPAC's email alerts here https://eepurl.com/cktGTn

Similar Threads

  1. ICE ERO Newark arrests 37 in Middlesex County, NJ enforcement surge
    By JohnDoe2 in forum illegal immigration News Stories & Reports
    Replies: 4
    Last Post: 07-19-2018, 11:43 PM
  2. ICE ERO Newark arrests 36 individuals in Middlesex County, NJ enforcement surge
    By JohnDoe2 in forum illegal immigration News Stories & Reports
    Replies: 3
    Last Post: 10-23-2017, 06:26 PM
  3. ICE Newark arrests 113 criminal targets in 5-day enforcement surge
    By JohnDoe2 in forum illegal immigration News Stories & Reports
    Replies: 3
    Last Post: 06-10-2017, 01:23 PM
  4. ICE Newark arrests 82 priority targets in 5-day enforcement surge
    By JohnDoe2 in forum illegal immigration News Stories & Reports
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: 12-13-2016, 01:47 PM
  5. Arizona sees surge of asylum seekers from India
    By JohnDoe2 in forum illegal immigration News Stories & Reports
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: 09-08-2013, 11:53 AM

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •