Thursday, September 21, 2023 10:59AM
NEW YORK CITY (WABC) — The federal government is clearing the way for a large number of New York City’s asylum seekers to live and work in the country legally.
President Joe Biden is granting temporary legal status to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who are already in the country.
It is a game changer and something Mayor Eric Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul have asked the federal government to do for months.
Officials estimate about 40% of the migrants in New York right now are Venezuelan.
This temporary protected status applies to all Venezuelans who came to the U.S. before July 31 of this year.
This extends the TPS that is already in place for some Venezuelans who arrived before March of 2021.
It clears the way for them to be given temporary legal status and as a result make it quicker for them to be able to work legally.
DHS estimates this will apply to more than 470,000 people across the country. Venezuelans make up a significant number of migrants who have come to the U.S. in the last several years, due to the political, economic and humanitarian crisis unfolding there.
The effort now turns to identifying the people who are eligible for this.
“This is an important first step for the mayor and I to be able to manage the scale of people who are in shelters and get them jobs,” Hochul said. “And I’ve deployed already state government as of an hour ago. I have 16 agencies sending volunteers, identifying the individuals who can benefit, and let’s get them into the jobs we have.”
Various groups and agencies will start the process on Thursday.
On top of that, 50 DHS employees will be here in New York to help process work authorization applications.
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