‘Newly Arrived’ and Black: an often overlooked immigrant experience

Black migrants from Caribbean and African countries, often lumped together despite differences in their journeys to the U.S., are increasingly banding together to share their untold stories on immigration and New York City’s ongoing asylum seeker crisis, a conversation they say they’ve long been left out of.

More than 182,000 individuals have sought asylum in New York City since April 2022, officials say. Upon arriving in the U.S., the majority of immigrants have to quickly conform to the country’s legal system and culture, which can be tedious, emotional, and overwhelming. 

Black migrants coming to the U.S. have the additional challenge of confronting pre-existing racial disparities and a prejudiced criminal justice system upon arrival, something unfamiliar and difficult to navigate for aspiring citizens, local advocates and electeds say. Viral images of African migrants sleeping outside of Roosevelt Hotel in the city or a white border patrol agent on horseback cracking a whip at Haitian migrants in Texas are all bitter examples of this disparate treatment.

Amaha Kassa, the executive director of African Communities Together (ACT), said that although the journey to the U.S. can be dangerous and life-threatening, it doesn’t deter people who have crossed oceans and continents for a chance at a better life.

“I am speaking on behalf of the African immigrant. I left my country for security. The journey was not easy,” said one woman from Conakry, the capital of Guinea, who was filled with emotion while sharing her experience at an ACT roundtable with U.S. Department of Labor Acting Secretary Julie Su in Harlem last week. 

“There were obstacles. I have witnessed women that had sexual abuse during my journey. Rapes. Some women have arrived with pregnancies.” The woman spoke in French while a member of the AfriLingual Cooperative interpreted beside her, embracing her as she broke down in tears.

African languages and dialects are so numerous that they are difficult to list in totality. At least 25 are commonly listed, including Wolof, Creole, Amharic, Zulu, Hausa, Yoruba, Arabic, French, Swahili, Xhosa, Igbo, Portuguese, Spanish, Somali, Fulani, and English. 

Aminata Chabi Leke, an Afrilingual worker-owner who helped found the 10-member translator organization, discussed the pressing need for cultural and religious competency, translation and interpretation services, and expedited work permits for Black migrants. She suggested that many native, gifted multi-lingual African speakers can be trained to assist new arrivals. It’s also crucial that these local groups are provided adequate funding to continue this work, Leke said.

“It’s a great way to integrate a professional workforce because just based on my experience that has been a path for me. Just being able to speak multiple languages,” Leke said at the roundtable. “It’s important to have an organization to facilitate the integration of the newly arrived migrant. It allows them a really easy way to navigate the system. It’s a great alternative as well to do something while they are waiting, maybe for immigration status.” 

Senator Cordell Cleare and Assemblymember Al Taylor echoed the need for capable translators and interpreters for Black migrants in their districts in Harlem, and called for more funding in the state budget to be directed to immigration resources. 

“It’s been well over two years now that we’ve been addressing the influx of West African migrants in Harlem, which has largely been an invisible crisis. We have encountered primarily young men from West African countries, who have different food, different dialects, languages, religious and cultural needs other than some migrant populations in the district,” said Cleare. “In my district I have hundreds of African migrants who are eager to work and learn.” 

Taylor recalled a lithium-ion battery fire in Hamilton Heights in February, in which the assumption that the displaced African immigrants at the scene were speaking French caused a delay in care as people scrambled to find a Wolof interpreter to help during the emergency. 

“We’ve come a long way, but we still live in a very polarized, racist society. What we’re talking about here is basic humanity and people being treated with dignity, which they don’t do,” Taylor told the roundtable. “We pivot too slow when it comes to Black people and there’s a language barrier.”  

In a six-hour-long city council hearing on immigration and hospitals headed by Councilmembers Alexa Aviles and Mercedes Narcisse, electeds, advocates, and thousands of migrants showed up to testify to the difficult experiences Black migrants face. 

“After today, the government cannot claim it did not know of the gaps and their profound impacts on people. I will attest we have known, and asked why hasn’t ‘getting stuff done’ in a ‘city of yes’ fully reached newly arrived Black people,” said Councilmenber Alexa Aviles, who helped spearhead the April 12 hearing.
“We see the same patterns of disinvestment, anti-Black media narratives, and disproportionate negative impacts in U.S.-born Black communities as we do with Black new arrivals. We can and must make different choices.”

During the hearing, commenters expounded on additional hurdles for Black migrants. Access to translation services in migrants’ native languages and dialects is slim to nonexistent. New residents from Black countries are more likely to receive 30- and 60- day eviction notices from city shelters. Even before settling in a new city, Black migrants are more likely to be detained in detention centers at the border. Many asylum seekers are from countries that lack Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation, which delays the application and approval process. And Black Muslims struggle with access to religious accommodations and foods. 

“You are visible. You mean something,” said Narcisse, who is a native of Haiti, speaking to fellow immigrants at the hearing. 

The immigration bills reviewed in the hearing,  Introduction 0084-2024 and Introduction 0085-2024, would require the mayor’s office to develop a workforce development survey and an anonymous health survey of migrants and asylum seekers. The Resolution 0340-2024 calls on the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to eliminate filing fees for humanitarian benefit applications and subsequent employment authorization applications. 

The general consensus among African support organizations, like African Bureau for Immigration and Social Affairs (ABISA) and Afrikana (founded by activist Adama Bah), is that newly arrived Black migrants want and need to work, continuing the loud and persistent calls for federal agencies to expedite work authorization permits. At present, asylum seekers must wait six months after asylum applications are filed to begin the work permit process, which could still take years to complete. The lengthy proceedings date back to 1996 when lawmakers wanted to discourage illegal border crossings and fraudulent asylum claims, as was reported in the New York Times.

The city’s crisis has prompted everyone from Gov. Kathy Hochul to Mayor Eric Adams to pressure the Biden administration to reform immigration systems, provide funding, and diminish the wait time for work permits. 

“This question of how we connect people who want to work, in particular immigrants and newcomers, to good jobs in their communities. New York is not the only place that we are doing this, but it really is at the forefront in terms of being the first because of the incredible leadership here in the state and in the city and also because of organizations like ACT, who can make sure that we do this in the right way,” Su said at the roundtable. “And that is why I say we are creating an ecosystem in which the federal government, the state leaders, the cities, as well as organizations, like ACT along with the job seekers, the immigrants are so key to working together.”

Ariama C. Long is a Report for America corps member and writes about politics for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.