Migrant mothers at Upper West Side shelters surprised with Mother’s Day gifts
At two migrant shelters on the Upper West Side, volunteers surprised the mothers staying there with a gift.
Alice Pesantes was one of those mothers. Last year at this time, she was in Ecuador.
She traveled thousands of miles to seek asylum, arriving in New York City this past December. And she admits -- making it in this country, as a mother of a young girl, is hard.
She is one of the many migrant mothers staying in two hotels, now city-designated emergency shelters, on the Upper West Side.
Many of them travel the dangerous journey alone with their children, hoping a better life waits ahead. But according to Upper West Side Council Member Gale Brewer, these women are not swiftly shaking off the chains of poverty.
"You cannot get work," Brewer said. "You can't get any benefits, because you don't have papers."
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Every single room in the Belnord Hotel Shelter on West 87th is full of mothers and their children. With no chance of finding legal employment, food stamps or housing, this hotel will be home for the foreseeable future.
Taxpayers foot that bill, but on Mother's Day, Upper West Side volunteers took on the cost of making these women feel special, each receiving a bag full of luxury face products and chocolates.
Alice thanks God she and her daughter made it to the U.S. And while she really liked the perfume in her gift bag, what she and the other migrant mothers want is work, something that can happen only if the federal government grants them temporary protective status.
"They want to participate in our society badly, otherwise they wouldn't have made all those sacrifices," Brewer said.
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These 200 families are only a fraction of the 65,000 migrants that have come into New York city this year alone – and it's only Mother’s Day.
It's a number that's only expected to grow in the coming week.