Sanbetou Sanbetou took out a neatly folded piece of cardboard with stiff, cold fingers, which he carried in his pocket like a wallet and treated like a precious piece of jewelry.
“Looking for a job as a carpenter,” the phone number was written in magic marker.
The 45-year-old huddled with other African immigrants at the entrance to a Lowe’s store in Brooklyn, expecting a few dollars in tips from customers as they loaded sheet metal, lumber and insulation into their cars.
Sambeitou never learned to read or write in the West African country of Mauritania, where he left three months ago on a journey through Senegal, Turkey, Nicaragua and Mexico.
he told the Post, stopping in French. His first language is Hassaniyahe Arabic. Hassaniyah Arabic is the Arabic spoken by everyone in the struggling village where he worked as a carpenter and where his wife and three children still live.
When asked why he came to New York City, Sambeitu said, “It’s a little difficult here, but I didn’t have any other choice.” “I had no idea what to expect or where I was going. I just came for work.”
Sankitou is one of more than 157,000 immigrants who have arrived in New York City since spring 2022, and 68,000 are currently in city-run shelters, according to the city’s Department of Social Services. It is said that he is holding it. Unable to work legally, they seek employment in the burgeoning underground immigrant economy, including as food delivery drivers, day laborers on building demolition sites, cooks, subway candy vendors, and janitors. I have a job.
Most are paid in cash. Also, while app-based delivery drivers are paid minimum wage, they are independent contractors and their employers do not withhold taxes from their wages. Whether or not to file a 1099 is up to the individual.
Recently arrived immigrants typically cannot work for delivery apps because they must provide a Social Security number and some form of government-issued identification to prove they can legally work in the United States.
But some immigrants admitted to the Post that they are more likely to share the identification they need to get delivery jobs. Therefore, it is virtually impossible to track who is paying taxes.
“The biggest impact would be a reduction in city tax revenue, because the city is primarily a cash-based, unreported market,” said economist Daniel Di Martino, a graduate fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Ta. “And the city is offering all these benefits to immigrants…It will lead to deterioration of social services and a decrease in quality of life.”
Experts say some of the new arrivals are taking personal delivery jobs at certain restaurants and are paid in cash under the table.
Employers often receive “no match” notices from the Social Security Administration, said Andrew Riggy, executive director of the New York Hospitality Alliance, a trade group representing the restaurant and hospitality industry. An Employer Correction Request Form is sent to an employer when a federal agency detects an information discrepancy with a Social Security number (such as a name that does not match records).
“This situation is still ongoing,” said Riggy, whose organization has launched training for employers who receive the letter. “The federal government’s failure to manage immigration responsibly has created chaos in the city. Good employers want to hire immigrants to do jobs that most Americans don’t want to do, but they want to do them legally. “The failure of comprehensive immigration reform is exacerbating the crisis.”
“The myth is being pushed by the left that the immigration crisis is not bad because we need workers. That’s the problem,” Di Martino said. [without the ability to work legally,] These are not the workers we need. ”
Immigrants are also barred from most construction jobs because they must be legal to receive safety certifications and union membership, although some sites employ them for demolition and cleanup work. , contractors and migrants told the Post that they were paid in cash.
“Legal contractors won’t hire them, because God forbid anything happens to them on site. We’re not covered by insurance.” said one local home builder. “It’s too much responsibility. If we pay in cash, we have to report it, but immigrants don’t report cash payments.”
Many new immigrants have built their own underground economies within their communities, selling homemade food to other immigrants and providing services such as haircuts.
“They don’t go to the barbershop or the deli,” Di Martino said. “They generate cash business and pay no taxes.”
Monica Yamaira Arias, 43, hawks roast pork, rice and fried plantains from a perch outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown. The city turned the hotel into a reception center for recent arrivals. Arias, 43, arrived in New York from Venezuela more than a year ago and now sits in a cooler in a blue igloo every lunch break, selling home-cooked meals packaged in aluminum containers for $10 each.
“It’s something we’re used to eating in our country,” Arias said. Arias makes the hour-long train trip to Port Chester in Westchester County every morning at 6:30 a.m. to cook meals in her friend’s kitchen.
Arias returned to the hotel around 11:30 a.m. and announced, “Almuelzo!” Almuerzo! ” (“Lunch! Lunch!”) to a passerby.
Lorimer Gonzalez, 48, also a Venezuelan, helps Arias sell the meals. She arrived in the city from Caracas five months ago with her 14-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son, she said.
The women earn about $300 a day and pocket about $170, not including expenses such as food, transportation and a small rental fee to use a friend’s Westchester kitchen. .
Gonzalez said a police officer recently told him he had 60 days to get a sales permit or face a fine.
“Do you know how to get a vendor permit without ID?” Gonzalez asked the Post photographer and reporter.
Lizzie said there was no good answer. He told the Post that New York City has a waiting list of thousands of people for mobile vending permits, and that it’s not uncommon for people with permits to rent them out to others for up to $25,000.
“Mobile vending is controversial,” Riggy says. “There has been a cap on the number of permits for years. Currently, there is no effective process to obtain a mobile sales permit, so people either sell without a permit or rent someone else’s underground permit for thousands of dollars. Either you are or you are.”
At the Madinah Masjid mosque in the East Village, dozens of Muslim immigrant men from West Africa crowded into the entrance hall last week and sat on the interior steps to escape the bitter cold. Many people parked their orange delivery e-bikes from JOCO, a company that rents shared e-bikes to employees and businesses, on the sidewalk outside.
“They mainly come from Guinea and come here via Senegal, Turkey, Colombia and Nicaragua,” said Hafiz Chaudhry, the mosque’s imam.
Ibrahim Diallo, 18, said he arrived from Guinea’s capital Conakry a month ago and was already working as a DoorDash driver. He told the Post that last week he had to endure the 17-degree windy weather and that he earns $50 on a good day.
Mr. Diallo declined to tell the Post how he got the job or whether he used the identification or Social Security number of a higher-status immigrant.
Mohamed Diallo, 34, also makes deliveries. A former sociology student from Guinea said recent changes to the minimum wage for Uber Eats ($17.96 an hour) and DoorDash ($29.93 an hour) delivery workers mean many delivery workers are making much more than they used to. He said it had decreased.
The changes came into effect in July after the city council passed a bill to improve conditions for drivers.
“They’re paying $29 an hour, but now they’re limited in how many hours they can work,” Diallo said, adding that the app now collects tips after delivery rather than at the beginning of the ordering process. He added that the frequency of tipping has decreased.
Jose Gregorio Chavez Guzman, 35, also works as a food delivery driver for DoorDash. The Venezuelan immigrant told the Post he doesn’t mind the hard work or danger of the job, which allows him to earn about $300 a week.
He has lived in the city for 1 year and 5 months and says he pays $600 a month for a flatbush apartment. However, he is eager to move to Kansas City, where he has friends and where he has heard the cost of living is significantly lower.
“I’m waiting for my wife and three kids to join me,” he said as he waited for a delivery meal outside Cipriani Dolci in Grand Central Station. He said his wife and three children had arrived in Panama and were preparing to cross the Darien Canyon.
“Right now I’m just trying to get warm,” he said.
Smith Escalona also complained of being cold. He and his nephew, Alejandro Rivas, had been waiting for an appointment outside the New York City Registration Center in Brooklyn since 3 a.m. last week. Riggy told the Post that these centers provide city identification that allows immigrants to access government services such as shelter housing, but do not allow them to obtain labor documents.
However, delivery drivers can rent bikes from shared electric bike company JOCO using their NYC ID cards, delivery drivers told the Post.
Escalona said the two arrived from Venezuela a month ago and were working at construction sites cleaning up debris and other odd jobs.
“We will do whatever happens,” said Escalona, 29, who worked as a butcher in Valle de la Pascua, Guarico state, south of Caracas. “Salaries are not that great in Venezuela. If you make $50 a month, you’re lucky.” He added that some months his take-home pay was as little as $4.
Escalona and Rivas, 23, live in a Brooklyn apartment with Rivas’ mother, who came from Venezuela more than a year and a half ago, and currently work as house cleaners, receiving cash in their paychecks. Escalona said he has received it. They spend their days looking for work and getting free meals at a church in Flatbush.
But he had trouble getting an appointment at the registration center, Escalona said. For starters, other immigrants are charging a fee to stand in line, he said, adding that he and Rivas didn’t ask for the price because they can’t afford it.
Among those shopping outside City Hall on Thursday was an Angolan immigrant carrying a backpack emblazoned with the word “Gucci.” When the Post began asking him questions, he said in Portuguese:
Additional reporting by Kirsten Fleming
