Most migrants in NYC struggling to access legal help, other key services: survey

Most migrants in New York City are struggling to access key services like legal help, English classes, transportation and even food, a new survey indicates.

Conducted by advocacy groups Make the Road and Hester Street, the survey — which was exclusively shared with the Daily News on Monday — examined the experiences of 766 migrants who recently arrived in the city.

Only 51 of the respondents — or about 6.6% — have found lawyers to represent them as they try to apply for U.S. asylum, according to the survey, which was conducted between February and last month. To that end, less than two dozen of the migrants polled have secured permits to work legally in the U.S. while their asylum claims are processed, the groups found.

Beyond spotty access to legal services, the survey shows that 197 of the respondents said they aren’t eating three full meals per day, while 446 don’t have access to reliable transportation. Another 197 said they don’t have warm clothing.

The city is supposed to provide free English classes to migrants, but 478 of the survey’s respondents said they had not been able to get enrolled in such courses. Of the 461 respondents with children, only 339 have been able to enroll all their kids in a city public school, the study also found.

“The vast majority are still struggling to meet basic needs,” Jose Lopez, co-executive director of Make the Road, said of the asylum seekers.

A spokeswoman for Mayor Adams said the city does not have enough money to provide legal assistance for the tens of thousands of migrants who’ve arrived since last spring.

“While we do not have the resources to provide direct legal services to 72,000-plus asylum seekers in addition to all the other services we provide, we have been coordinating with legal service providers throughout the city to support their assistance of as many asylum seekers as possible,” the spokeswoman, Kate Smart, said.

She said the federal government should do more to help provide migrants with legal representation and also reiterated the mayor’s call for the feds to expedite work permits for asylum seekers.

“We encourage the comptroller and City Council to join us in calling for these systemic changes that would benefit asylum seekers across the country, instead of a Band-Aid approach that further stretches New Yorkers already thin resources,” she told The News.

The survey comes after Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom acknowledged last week that “very few” of the tens of thousands of migrants in the city have filed applications for asylum.

Migrant advocates and progressive Democrats have said Adams’ administration is in part to blame for the slow application pace because it isn’t allocating enough money for migrant legal services.

Though it had already spent $1.2 billion on the migrant crisis as of May 31, the administration has only earmarked $5 million for asylum seeker legal services. That money had not been distributed to legal service providers as of March, according to Comptroller Brad Lander, who’s among a chorus of politicians urging the administration to set aside more cash for legal services.

This past Thursday, Lander held a rally to call on the mayor to create a $70 million migrant legal fund.

The Make the Road-Hester Street study suggested the ask from Lander isn’t substantial enough and recommended that the city invest at least $140 million in legal services for migrants.

In a statement, Lander said more funding is especially urgent as some of the migrants in the city are likely coming up on one year in the U.S.

“As the first wave of new arrivals approach their one-year deadline to apply for asylum, the administration has dedicated most of its energy toward standing up emergency shelter but very little toward coordinating legal services,” he said.