DENVER – In the conference room of a Denver hotel, Dallenis Martinez attended an orientation with hundreds of other migrants on Monday for the city’s ambitious new migrant support program, which includes six-month apartment stays and intensive preparation for the work for those who cannot yet work legally.
It’s a turnaround from the strategies that Denver, New York and Chicago used as the cities struggled to support thousands of migrants and slashed budgets. Support strategies, largely improvised, included shelter stays lasting days to weeks or bus tickets to send migrants to other locations.
Now Martinez, 28, and her two young children, along with about 650 other people in Denver, are getting an apartment with six months’ rent, food and utility assistance, a free computer, a prepaid cell phone and and metro bus passes. .
Next, the city, working in coordination with several nonprofit organizations, plans to offer courses in English language, computer science, financial literacy and workers’ rights, while also helping migrants obtain credentials in specific industries, such as construction, retail, hospitality, health and early childhood education. . Martinez said she will take any job to support her children.
Support will also include help with documenting asylum applications and, potentially, work authorization.
The aim of the new program is to serve as a buffer for newcomers who must wait six months for a work permit after applying for asylum under federal law, using that time to prepare migrants for their new lives.
“This means investing in people to prepare them to be independent and thrive,” said Sarah Plastino, who oversees the program. “We know that when we set people up to succeed, they actually succeed.”
The city hopes to enroll 800 migrants in the coming months, although only those who do not yet qualify for a work permit will be able to enter this program.
Martinez, who is Venezuelan but lived in Peru when she began her journey north, didn’t know she would end up in a program like this. She didn’t even know what her orientation was about when she first sat down.
Martinez, who traveled with her 11-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter, arrived in the US with nothing. On the Guatemala-Mexico border, what little money she had was stolen from her. Then it happened again and she had to hide in a river with her children for two nights.
“I was hungry, cold and scared,” said Martinez, who turned himself in to U.S. immigration shortly after crossing the border. “I couldn’t take it anymore.”
Halfway through orientation, Martinez was excited.
“Faith is the last thing you lose,” she said, a smile widening on her face. “I feel more hope with this program.”
The mood was upbeat at the Denver Quality Inn; where most of those who attended the orientation were staying. The city has rented several hotels to support the roughly 42,000 migrants who have arrived since the start of 2023. Now the hotels are closed or in liquidation as the number of new migrants dwindles.
Over the past year, the newcomers have drained the city’s resources, as they did in Chicago and New York, leading mayors to slash city budgets after unsuccessfully asking President Joe Biden for more federal aid.
“We were losing money. We had over 5,000 people a day in our shelter system and it was completely unsustainable financially,” Plastino said. “We knew we had to shift from reactive to proactive.”
New York City officials said 197,100 immigrants arrived there. About 65,500 are currently in shelters. Since a federally sponsored Asylum Claim Help Center began helping with immigration applications, nearly 50,000 applications have been filed, including asylum, work permits and other forms of immigration assistance.
Even though Denver’s new program is intensive, Plastino said it is still more cost-effective.
The city’s costs for supporting migrants will be about half of what was initially expected in January. Services such as recreation centers will open again after their funding was cut to help fund the city’s previous migrant housing strategy.
Renting hotel rooms and paying for pre-prepared meals is more expensive than providing market apartment rental support and food assistance to grocery stores, Plastino said, adding, “It’s also the right thing to do.”
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Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to cover undercovered issues.
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