“I’ll end up on the street”: Venezuelans in Denver manage occasional jobs, amid demands

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February 19, 2024, 5:20 pm

Emily Borges wants to work, even if not as a police officer, a decades-long career she said she gave up after facing threats within her own police agency for doing her job amid widespread corruption in Venezuela.

By The Denver Post

After a perilous journey to the United States, Borges and her two-year-old daughter, Aranza, crossed the southern border in December and then traveled to Denver, where they stayed at a shelter hotel. She has tried to get any job, like cleaning houses. But to unlock a regular job opportunity – your ticket to earning money and finding a place to live – you need a work permit.

Time is already running out. Borges, 30, is just three weeks away from the deadline Denver has set for migrant families in its shelters, and it often takes more than six months for asylum seekers to receive federal work authorization.

“It’s hard to be here, to be here without papers and start from scratch,” he said in Spanish as he waited his turn this month at a clinic organized by the city to help immigrants apply for work permits. “We hope (the city) will help us. Not to give us freebies, but to help us… open doors so we can work.

Millions of migrants like Borges have fled Venezuela’s volatile political, economic and humanitarian situation in recent years. Tens of thousands have come to Denver, and many of them have begun building their lives in the city, seeking asylum in the United States. It is a long and complicated process that will allow some, but not all, to obtain legal status.

As they wait for cases that can take years to resolve in overloaded federal immigration courts, the job is their lifeline and their path to self-sufficiency — a path that can also ease the pressure on local governments like Denver that support newcomers. Federal law allows immigrants to obtain work permits while their cases are pending, but they face significant waiting periods that vary depending on how they apply for asylum.

Read more at The Denver Post