1532762
NY.- The government of New York, USAcarries out transfers of Venezuelan migrants to Canada, the neighboring country. According to statements collected by the agency EFEtransfers They are paid by the municipality. of the city and the migrants go voluntary.
A first bus with immigrants left on Monday, February 6, and another is preparing for the night from Monday to Tuesday, EFE was able to verify.
Step by step | How to get the passport for the first time in Saime?
In the terminal de autobuses de Port Authorityin central New York, a Venezuelan who identifies himself as Alfredo prepares to travel tonight for seven hours on a bus that will take him to Plattsburghin upstate New York, located 30 minutes south of the border with Canada and only 96.5 km from Montreal.
The subsidized trip ends in Plattsburgh. There, he says, he will have to take a taxi, to which he will pay 50 dollars to take him to the canadian border.
«I am leaving because I left three children in another country (Bolivia) and here the immigration process is slow, it takes a long time and a lawyer charges $10,000 so that you get a work permit and Social Security, and it doesn’t even guarantee you anything. A paralegal is cheaper, but he can’t defend you in court”, commented Alfredo, sitting in a corner of the huge station building.
Other Venezuelans who accompanied him said they were leaving the city for the same reasons: the difficulty and slowness of the migratory process.
Alfredo -as he prefers to be identified for security reasons- arrived on Sunday from New Jerseywhere have you been working six months as a painter and today, advised by compatriots, he went to the bus station.
Indeed, at the station he found officials from the mayor’s office, to whom he told that he wanted to go to Canada. After showing them the immigration documents, which he had been given upon arrival in the US at the southern border, the officials gave him the free ticket for the triphe explained.
He also told EFE that they are making the trip to Plattsburgh from there to look for a secondary crossing to Canada, because if you enter that country through a “regular border crossing, they will apply thea Third country law» and they will expel him.
That law specifies that a potential refugee who arrives at an official border crossing and who has entered from the US will be automatically turned away, since You must process your asylum application in the first host country.
He assured, like other immigrants, that in Canada he can obtain a work permit in two months and that while he waits, the authorities will give him financial aid.
«I have always known regarding Canada, what I did not know was the option to get to Plattsburgh and although there are immigration agents they let you in. The process is that you turn yourself in to the authorities, they send you to a hotel and there in two months you receive a work permitYou don’t pay anything,” explained the immigrant, who plans to apply for political asylum in Canada.
Venezuelans with parole for the US: this is how they can travel with their pets
Plus, they give you a financial assistance while you wait for the permit and when you start working, you report it”, following which “they do a socioeconomic study” to determine if you still need the help or reduce it, argues Alfredo, a former soldier in the Venezuelan Navy.
Alfredo is part of some 43,000 immigrants who have arrived in New York since the spring, mostly Venezuelans, from the Texas border. Although the city has embraced all of them, Mayor Eric Adams has declared a “humanitarian emergency” over the problem.
For months, the municipal administration has paid for free trips to other American cities and, since the last few hours, also to Canada.
EFE
EFEMigration
EFEMigration
