Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
Some of the last of the Nepali-Bhutanese refugees resettled to the Bronx by the IRC are now out-migrating. An article in the New York Times in September 2009 reported that the IRC had placed the Nepali-Bhutanese refugees in a Bronx apartment building with a weed-choked front courtyard and grimy staircases (here). The refugees’ apartments were only furnished with a couple of bureaus and several beds that doubled as couches, and little else The IRC declined an interview for the documentary The Refugee Syndrome about these refugees. The current New York Times article tells more.
For two years, a five-story walk-up apartment building in the Bronx has served as a small beachhead for a new immigrant community: refugee families from the South Asian nation of Bhutan. From this new home on University Avenue, where they were placed by a resettlement agency, the families have made their first, tentative steps in an unfamiliar culture and language.
But now they are on the move again. In the year since The New York Times profiled the building and the eight Bhutanese families who were living there, four of the families have left for other states — Virginia, Pennsylvania, Vermont and North Carolina — and most members of a fifth have moved to Albany…
…Yet the experiences of the families on University Avenue also say something about New York. Often portrayed as an ideal spot for new immigrants, with its array of public services and advocacy groups and its fertile mix of ethnicities, the city may not necessarily have all that a newcomer needs to build a future. Indeed, a trove of census data released in December shows how immigrants to America in the last decade have spread out from the big cities where they have traditionally clustered, or bypassed them altogether.
This is especially true for new immigrant populations like the Bhutanese, who, numbering more than 250 since 2008, have arrived in New York in small numbers and lack established social networks to turn to for support. Some are improvising, creating those communities elsewhere — in smaller, less expensive cities where relatives have already been resettled.
Those who have left the Bronx building said they were driven out of the city mainly by the high cost of living, particularly rent.
During his year in New York City, in the throes of the economic downturn, Mr. Mishra and his two sisters struggled to find jobs and were barely able to cover basic expenses, including the $975 monthly rent for their one-bedroom apartment. While new refugees have immediate access to financial support and other services from government and private sources, that aid often begins to dissipate after several months…
…Officials at the International Rescue Committee, the resettlement program based in New York that brought the Bhutanese to University Avenue, acknowledged the difficulties that the city posed for many refugees. While New York offers extraordinary advantages, they said, including an extensive public transportation system and a network of organizations accustomed to working with immigrants, it could also be costly and, for some, emotionally overwhelming…
…Abhi Siwakoti, another Bhutanese refugee, decided to leave New York City after trying for months to cover his family’s expenses, including the $1,200 rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the University Avenue building… Read more here
The question that remains however is why the IRC placed these refugees in the Bronx to begin with. The rents were sky-high before the refugees arrived. Crime was rampant. Although the IRC refers to the area’s extensive public transportation system, refugees report never having been to Manhattan. Burmese refugee clients of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York reported that they had never been to the Statue of Liberty.
