Venezuelans start a new life from New York shelters

From a public shelter room with room for two beds, a baby crib and a chest of drawers, the five members of the Venezuelan Bonilla-Medina family start a new life in New Yorkwhere they have arrived fleeing misery in their homeland and discrimination in other countries in the region.

Thousands of Venezuelans have come to the Big Apple like this family, attracted by its fame as a land of opportunity. Most of them “encouraged” by the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, who has been filling buses with immigrants on the border with Mexico for two months and sending them to various cities, from where they later end up in New York, although the Bonillas arrived from Arizona.

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FLEEING FROM XENOPHOBIA

Aurimar Medina, 38, remembers precisely the day his family’s life took a 180-degree turn: “It was July 16 at 11 in the morning. We crossed (the border) and surrendered” to the authorities in the US, after a journey of one month and four days after leaving Ecuador.

The couple and their three children – aged 14 and 13, plus an 11-month-old baby – now live cramped in a room in a municipal shelter, but she is not complaining: her husband Andrews has already found a job as a dishwasher in a restaurant and the teenagers are already they are schooled; her daughter has even won two swimming competitions in these few weeks.

The family left Venezuela in 2016 and first settled in Ecuador, but in the following six years the situation became very difficult.

The Venezuelan Aurimar Medina travels by bus with her baby in New York (United States). (EFE/ Angel Colmenares/)

“We left Ecuador because xenophobia was very great. You go to rent an apartment and you come across a big sign: ´No Venezuelans´ and when you go to look for work they tell you ‘we don’t want anything with Venezuelans’. They told me to return to my country”Medina commented to Efe.

So Aurimar and his offspring decided to push their luck and cross Colombia, Central America and Mexico: they sold everything they had and on June 12 they left Ecuador, with their seven-month-old baby in their arms.

To avoid encounters with the police from all those countries, they traveled by bus, “from town to town.” To choose the best route, he consulted through WhatsApp with other emigrants who had already made the trip.

“We made the journey from Ecuador to Colombia, then through the Darién jungle, Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua and Mexico, until we crossed the border with the US.”in Yuma County (in the extreme southwest of Arizona), “where there was a space without bars,” he says.

“We were very scared but we always went with God ahead,” he says. After several days in shelters in Arizona and feeling exhausted, they asked their relatives (resident in the United States) for help to buy plane tickets and travel to New York, where they were placed in a municipal shelter in Queens County.

DO NOT DEPEND ON ANYONE

Aurimar, the driving force behind the family, has managed to get his teenage children into a public school with a bilingual program, where they learn English without losing their schooling.

While her 30-year-old husband works and their children go to school, she takes the opportunity to carry out various errands such as going to a nearby laundromat.

“Today I went to the driver’s license. We want to buy a car because I want to work,” she says. In Venezuela, Aurimar owned a pizzeria and a radio station, and later worked as a television producer. In Ecuador, she adapted to the market and worked as a kitchen assistant.

Venezuelan Aurimar Medina walks the streets in New York (United States). (EFE/ Angel Colmenares/)

He affirms that he does not want to depend on anyone: “I don’t have a job but I can sell anything, I look for options. We are in the land of opportunities.”

“I am very much against all immigrants who, after going through everything we’ve been through, stand on a corner to ask for money. I’ve been studying the situation. If I don’t have money, I grab a garbage bag and collect bottles (to recycle them) so I have some money,” she says firmly.

“It’s very hard because I have a small baby who needs fresh food and the ones here are frozen, you have to heat them in the microwave, like that for breakfast, lunch and dinner”In addition to the fact that they cannot receive visitors and there are very strict rules, the Venezuelan indicated.

However, despite the difficulties, she says she is grateful “for the help they are giving us in this chaos” such as the municipal identity card, medical insurance for their children and education, and because they were allowed to enter the country “where there are better opportunities both for work and for a better life.”

He remembered that they were Venezuela to Ecuador because their children’s school was kidnapping children. “I come running away from all that. I feel a little safer here knowing that my children are going to be in a much better place, with more vision of the future, ”she affirms and says that she is already preparing for the first winter for the family.

Medina dreams of having a house. Meanwhile, they are “little by little collecting” money to move.

“I close my eyes and visualize myself in a house with my children, stable, with both my husband and me working. It is possible to have a dignified and calmer life”she says hopefully.

Source: Elcomercio