"Sometimes I dream that I'm back there, crossing that river or back in the jungle. All those things haunt me," recalls Giranny Colmenares of her journey to the United States.
She and her three children fled chaos and hunger in Venezuela—a nation destroyed by the socialist strongman Hugo Chávez. When her mother died from a brain tumor and couldn't get treatment, she decided she needed to leave before the next calamity.
In New York City, Colmenares finally found a semblance of security, and she received support from the non-profit Una Carta Salva Una Vida. "At least [in the U.S.], you can go out somewhere and find something to eat. In Venezuela, no. If you didn't have anything, you had nothing. You couldn't ask a neighbor, a cousin—no one. No one was going to help you," says Colmenares.
New York City was once known as the "Golden Door" because of its long history of welcoming immigrants like Colmenares. Nearly 40 percent of Americans have at least one ancestor who entered the U.S. through the city. However, today's migrants may be shut out and deported, a humanitarian tragedy that would profoundly damage the U.S. economy.
