GOING GREEN See Arts & Life Page 18 Chicago, a welcoming city to migrants ‘only on paper’

As asylum seekers continue to arrive, city faces strains on resources, lack of comprehensive solutions, say city leaders

By Kevin

In the back of a storefront Adalberto United Methodist Church in Humboldt Park, a 29-year-old man, his wife and young daughter live in a small crowded room in a new city where they hope to carve out a better future.

Like many newly arrived migrants, Dennis Ferreira said he did not make enough money to properly feed his family in Venezuela. Ferreira earned $30 a month as his home country struggles with an economic crisis. So Ferreira decided it was time for him and his family to migrate north, in search of a stable job.

“I was lucky enough to have the chance to be transferred to a refugee shelter in San Antonio, where social workers bought me and my family plane tickets to Chicago,” he said.

Ferreira and his family may be luckier than most migrants that recently arrived in the Chicago area. More than 5,000 asylum-seekers -most of them from Ven - ezuela have been bused to Chicago from Texas and Colorado since August, according to officials.

Unlike other migrants, Ferreira and his family found a welcoming home. They landed at the Adalberto United Methodist Church, which was turned into a haven for asylum seekers over the last months.There have been recent reports of migrants sleeping in police stations, hospitals and spending their day in warming centers, waiting to find a shelter that has beds available as they’re wait to file their asylum case or find a job.

City officials said that most shelters are full as the Lightfoot administration has constantly advocated for more funding from the state and from the federal government.

The church’s pastor, Jacobita Cortes, said she has welcomed more than 140 recent arrivals into her humble storefront location on Division Street. Despite its cramped quarters, Rev. Cortes makes sure, “every migrant gets a bed.”

The influx of migrants from Venezuela and other Latin American countries has led advocates to plead for the city to supply sufficient resources to support them.

When city officials announced that more than 200 migrants would be housed for up to two years in a former elementary school in Woodlawn, some residents of the predominantly Black neighborhood, opposed the move.

Though since, churches in Woodlawn have offered to provide social services to the newly arrived. Residents and faith leaders from the neighborhood created the initiative called Chicago 4 All, which will offer migrants bilingual services, and tours around the area to get involved with community projects.

Some migrants are also being housed at a hotel just off of Chicago’s Magnificent Mile and fed at a food pantry sponsored by Chicago’s Fourth Presbyterian