A record number of Russians have fled their homeland and sought asylum in New York amid Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine — adding to the Big Apple’s massive migrant crisis, data obtained by the Post show.
The number of Russians with cases in New York State Immigration Court — which rules on asylum/deportation cases — has jumped 158% over the past year, data show.
There were 3,098 cases involving Russian nationals in New York immigration courts for the federal fiscal year covering October 31, 2021 to September 30, 2022.
As of Sunday, the number of asylum cases involving Russian citizens jumped to 8,002 for the current fiscal year starting from Oct 1, 2022 to Sept 30.
Meanwhile, data shows there were only a few hundred cases of Russians in asylum/repatriation proceedings each year until 2001 — meaning the number has jumped nearly 10-fold since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
The US Department of Justice’s immigration court statistics were retrieved by Mayor Eric Adams’ Office of Immigrant Affairs from the Syracuse University Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. City Hall is monitoring immigration court proceedings to track migrant flows.
A Russian immigrant woman with her baby in Manhattan on September 2, 2023.GNMiller/NYPost
Mayors, immigration experts and city lawmakers representing the post-Soviet diaspora say the Russia-Ukraine war is driving the migration of citizens from both countries to the US
Waves of Russians have headed to the Mexico-US border in search of asylum – and have ended up in New York City, which has the largest population of Russian-speaking immigrants, including many Jewish refugees, officials said.
“Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, New York City has seen a significant surge in the number of Russians and Ukrainians seeking asylum in the midst of this global humanitarian crisis,” said Mayoral spokeswoman Kayla Mamelak.
A record number of Russians are seeking asylum in New York City since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.GNMiller/NYPost
“We have welcomed these individuals and families, just as we have welcomed the more than 110,000 asylum seekers who have sought refuge in our city since spring 2022.”
Russians are the sixth largest group of asylum seekers, or 3% of the total, tracked by the city — behind the Central and South American countries of Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru and Mauritania in Africa, the mayor’s office said.
Ukrainians seeking asylum are tracked separately by the federal government’s special parole program Uniting for Ukraine, which is not accounted for in the city’s country-of-origin data, city officials said.
Russian immigrant couple Natalia Subbotina and Maksim Subbotin outside a shelter at the Roosevelt Hotel on August 2, 2023.Robert Miller
According to Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that advocates for stricter border policies, the Russians have joined the throngs of others arriving at the Mexico-US border seeking asylum.
But Krikorian said opposing the war or avoiding the military draft in Russia are not necessarily grounds for asylum – and many are here illegally.
“Conscription is clearly not a basis for asylum,” he said.
Krikorian said many Russians do not like the authoritarian direction their country is heading, adding, “This is more of, ‘strike while the iron is hot.'”
“There is no doubt that it is related to the war with Ukraine,” he said.
There were 8,002 asylum cases involving Russians in New York City for the current fiscal year.Robert Miller
The Post reported last week that there were six Russian families staying at Paul’s hotel on West 29th Street, which was converted into a migrant shelter.
“We came here to avoid mobilization for war,” said Leila Usmanov, who fled Russia with her husband Ruslan Usmanov and their three children, aged 16, 10 and 3. “We don’t want to fight ourselves. Ukrainians and Russians are the same people.”
Ukrainian-born Councilwoman Inna Vernikov, who represents southern Brooklyn’s Russian-speaking enclaves of Brighton Beach, Manhattan Beach, Sheepshead Bay and Midwood, said she was “not at all surprised to see an increase in Russians and Ukrainians fleeing to the US.”
“There is a horrific war going on in the region and our asylum laws are actually designed specifically for this situation. Unfortunately, below [President] Biden’s open borders, we have people taking advantage of our “generosity” and claiming asylum where no valid claim exists,” Vernikov said.
“To date, New York City has accepted more than 110,000 immigrants from Haiti, Mexico, Columbia, and Venezuela, with the vast majority of their asylum cases rejected.”
Councilwoman Ari Kagan, a Belarusian who immigrated to the US as a Jewish refugee and now represents heavily Russian-speaking communities including Coney Island, Bensonhurst, Gravesend and Sea Gate, said those who “came from the Russian Federation are against Putin. They are against the war.”
Kagan added that while men try to avoid being drafted, other Russian immigrants see America – and especially New York – as an opportunity to improve their quality of life and economic conditions in cities with a network of social service support groups.
Although Kagan said she sympathized with the plight of Russian immigrants, she insisted that they – and all other immigrants – come to the US legally, noting New York is already overrun with immigrants.
“Everything should be done according to the law,” he said.
Additional reporting by Jared Downing
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
