From 2023-2024, Hester Street partnered with Make the Road New York (MRNY) to design a borough-wide community survey in Queens to determine which outreach strategies best serve New York’s community of asylum seekers.
With the support of MRNY’s key organizing staff, Hester Street’s team distributed the survey to 766 asylum seekers and then collected and analyzed the data in order to create a preliminary report of survey responses released in June 2023. Immediately after the report’s publication, MRNY presented the preliminary survey results to the New York City Council to advocate for more resources for asylum seekers in the midst of a historic surge in migrants to New York City from border states.
In February 2024, Hester Street, Make the Road NY, and Afrikana conducted a second survey of New York City’s migrants that identifies the challenges they encounter while navigating immigration services, and seeking access to housing, education, and labor and workforce development. Based on evidence of increased migration from regions outside of Latin America highlighted in our 2023 survey, we worked to expand our outreach and surveyed 121 African migrants, collecting 586 responses in total from migrants across backgrounds.
The preliminary survey results can be found here, and the full report, titled “Leaving Behind the Newest New Yorkers” is online here.
In addition to developing the survey instruments, HST collaborated with MRNY to develop training tools and materials to equip staff and volunteers to field the survey with asylum seekers.
NYC ASYLUM SEEKER SURVEY TOOLS: