Some Venezuelan immigrants who traveled thousands of miles to the US in search of a better life are so distraught, they say they are already going home.
Michael Castejon, 39, told the Chicago Tribune he had had enough after he, his wife and stepson spent five months sleeping in either police precincts or an overcrowded urban shelter in the now brutal Windy City.
He also couldn’t get a work permit or enroll his daughter in a local school — two of the main reasons for what they thought would lead to a better life in the US.
“The American Dream doesn’t exist anymore,” Castejon told the newspaper on the night of his family’s departure.
“There is nothing here for us … We just want to go home,” Castejon told the Tribune of the South American country he had previously fled.
“If we’re going to sleep on the streets here, we’d rather sleep on the streets there.”
More than 20,000 immigrants have traveled to Chicago since August 2022, when Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott began loading them onto buses and sending them to sanctuary cities.
Many of them end up sleeping at O’Hare International Airport, at local police stations or on the streets.
Migrant Michael Castejon and wife Induliz Seville wait for an Uber to the airport to start their journey back to Venezuela.TNS
Fed up with the lack of housing and job opportunities, Castejon eventually followed in the footsteps of other frustrated asylum seekers and turned to Catholic Charities to secure plane tickets for his family to Texas.
From there, they will somehow find a way to return to their home country of Venezuela, he said.
“How many more months to live on the streets? No, not anymore. I better go,” he said.
“At least I have my mother back home,” he said of the South American country he fled to earlier this year.
Yorbelis Molero (second from left), 16, says goodbye to a friend as Molero and his family of five wait to leave a Chicago police station and head to a Greyhound bus station on Nov. 2, 2023. TNS
Castejon and his family are among many distraught asylum seekers who have decided to leave Chicago in recent weeks as the weather in the Windy City grows colder and wetter, the newspaper found.
Some suggest they were drawn to Chicago after mistakenly believing they could be granted asylum status and work permits quickly, paving the way for a better life.
“We didn’t know things would be this difficult,” Castejon said. “I think the process is faster.”
Others said they have realized that Chicago’s limited resources have been depleted by the wave of immigrants that has swamped the Democratic-led sanctuary city over the past 16 months, leaving the latest newcomers with nothing but scraps.
“If we’re going to sleep on the streets here, we’d rather sleep on the streets there,” said Castejon.AP
Jose Nauh, 22, also returned to Texas earlier this month after sleeping in a police station in Chicago for more than two weeks.
Nauh said he came to Chicago because he heard there was shelter, food and other resources for asylum seekers, but “that’s not true,” he said.
In a scathing letter to President Biden in October, Democratic Illinois Governor JB Pritzker accused the federal government of failing to provide Chicago with adequate aid for the immigrant crisis that has brought the city to the brink of collapse.
“The humanitarian crisis is overwhelming our ability to provide assistance to the refugee population,” Pritzker wrote. “Unfortunately, the response and assistance that Illinois provides to these asylum seekers is not matched by the support of the federal government.”
Pritzker noted that more than $330 million has been spent by the state government to house and feed immigrants.
Categories: Trending
Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
