Summer in the City

Brooklyn’s Migrants – Community and Commerce in effect

By Nayaba Arinde
Editor-at-Large
When the recent inflow of migrants first arrived, there was a sense of welcoming with underlying concern, especially last year. From April 2022, the nation in general, and Brooklyn in particular, experienced a mass influx of migrants and asylum seekers from countries like Venezuela, Ecuador, Mexico, Russia, China, Guinea, Mauritania, Senegal, and Jamaica.
Thousands of African migrants came to New York last November.

Months later, with summer well underway, many of the migrants have been absorbed into the fabric of New York City.

“Over 206,300 asylum seekers have come through our intake system since Spring 2022,” Mayor Eric Adams’ office told Our Time Press. “Last week, from 6/24 to 6/30, more than 1,100 new migrants,” arrived in the city.

As of July 2024, Adams said, “We have over 65,300 migrants currently in our care.”
Many African migrants took what is a torturous journey.
“There is not one person who was not robbed coming across the border. They crossed seven to 15 countries to come here,” migrant advocate Sekou Krumah told Our Time Press. “Hope for a better opportunity will make you do anything.”

A casual stroll down Fulton Street in Brooklyn, for example, will show rows of scooters and bikes used for food delivery. The block between the Mosque Taqwa on Bedford Avenue and the train stop on Franklin Avenue has a decades-long row of successful African and African-American Muslim restaurants, African foodstuffs, clothes, and resource stores. The new migrants and asylum-seekers–a mere block from the Bedford Armory, populate the area and patronize, and are supported by the businesses.

While many have found work, others still linger daily, with no occupation yet found.
“There’s a lot of them that just came at the wrong time,” Amina Cherif told Our Time Press. The Mauritanian-born, American citizen explained, “There are no jobs.

The ones who came earlier are kind of lucky, some of them are stable now. But the ones who just got here are struggling, and some of them are crying to go back. But they really don’t have the money to buy the tickets to go back, and some of them are forced to work illegally because they don’t have the papers.”

The Brooklynite continued, “They still need to survive and the shelter can’t have them forever, so they are stuck between a rock and a hard place. They take on jobs to survive, like selling sneakers by the roadside – exhausting things for a few dollars.”

“We have used every possible corner of New York City to shelter asylum seekers in a compassionate and equitable way,” Liz Garcia, the Mayor’s Press Secretary told Our Time Press.

“It is clear that our efforts are working, as we have already helped more than 65 percent of asylum seekers who have come into our care take the next steps in their journeys and move out of our shelter system as they seek to be self-sufficient.”
They want to work, Cherif reiterated.

“They’re already here, so I guess the government should help them with becoming legal so they can work and have more options and pay rent. They want to be part of the system. They want to be legal and work. They are not here to find shortcuts, and we want to encourage that mindset, so we don’t want to make it hard for them.”

Migrant advocate Sekou Krumah told Our Time Press, “The first generation of Muslim, French-speaking Africans came in 2001-2007.”
Drawing from his own experience when he came from Conakry, Guinea, 15 years ago, he said that he wanted to become a mentor to those who came after him. He created Save My Nation in 2013 to help newcomers avoid pitfalls and bullying and establish themselves in their new neighborhoods.

As for the second wave, who came in the last two years, Krumah said, “They came to be a part of this society. To work and to build. A lot of them died trying to get here, in the ocean, through lack of food, all of them got robbed by the rebels crossing the border.”

Disillusioned by the lack of work once here, some of the new migrants “want to go back home. It’s not what they thought it was going to be,” said Ms. Cherif. “You see the men crying ‘no job, no job.’ They have liquidated all the money they had. They sold their houses and their cars. They sold their gold. They closed up their businesses. The whole family pooled money for them to come here. Some of them were bosses back home.

At the border, they just kept spending money, and then you live off of your savings because you can’t find a job. They were robbed by the drug dealers and the passport dealers. They lost a lot of money.”

Community and commerce have helped those who made it to Brooklyn. As some became food delivery workers and bike messengers, Ms. Cherif said, “There’s some kind of network where some of them rented bikes and phones. But, they work around the clock because some of them raise the price of the bikes or the rents.”

As for some others, Bed Stuy Fulton Street stores, “allow them to sell shoes in front of their buildings, but some of them will not. But, I have seen some new cashiers at the African buffets, at my Mosque Taqwa, and I have heard some new voices. They have given them money, food, and water that’s for sure.”

Ms. Cherif said that she came from Mauritania 20 years ago, landing in Boston first, then New York 12 years ago, working and getting her citizenship. An African clothing and accessories vendor at this past week’s International African Arts Festival, the Fulani and French speaker added, “I found my people here. It’s open to different cultures. I found my food here. There’s a big community here.”

It is self-evident that many African migrants have been able to find some sort of work here; food delivery, working in stores and restaurants, some employed doing road work and construction, and odd jobs.

Krumah said that as they navigate the process of establishing themselves, “I am hopeful that they are assimilating, adapting. These West Africans came with culture, character, education, and experience. They are handymen, carpenters, educators, professionals, and they want to work. I know that New York City is blessed to have them.”