For the first few weeks, he rarely left the house. Abdul got a job at a sugar refinery, and then as a machine operator at a factory producing pharmaceuticals.ĭropping into a new place where he didn’t speak the language or understand the customs left Ally uncomfortable. Ally started working at a plant manufacturing plastic products. The program covered their expenses for two months, enrolling them in classes teaching English, which they didn't yet speak, and connecting them with work opportunities. Over the last two decades, more than 16,000 refugees have made a home in Buffalo, creating magnet communities that have subsequently drawn immigrants looking to settle in an American city with familiar faces, languages, and support systems.Ī refugee resettlement program placed the Sharifus in a house on the city’s East Side, where 85% of Buffalo’s Black residents live. From 2006 to 2013, the city’s population of foreign-born residents nearly doubled. Within two decades, a city that had one of the smallest immigrant populations of any its size transformed, boasting residents from Somalia, Nepal, Yemen, Ethiopia, Myanmar, South Sudan, Iraq, Rwanda, Bhutan, Liberia, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Congo, and elsewhere - a migration pattern that reflected a timeline of the world’s varied conflicts. The next day, they boarded another plane, which took them to Buffalo, the second most populous city in America’s fourth most populous state.īuffalo had become a common destination for refugees since the turn of the millennium, part of the local government’s plan to bolster its declining population with waves of new arrivals who were brought in through four resettlement organizations based in the city. “This place is so good,” Ally remembered thinking. A plane carried them to Washington, DC, where they spent a night at a hotel marveling at the pristine buildings and commercial abundance around them. Then one day, out of nowhere, they learned that the United States had accepted their applications for asylum, though not their aunt’s. Their boss paid them around 16% of each day’s revenues. Ally drove while Abdul collected passengers’ fares. He put on boots and a thick winter coat, trudged through the snowbank rising on his front lawn, stepped into his red Toyota SUV, and drove into the storm. To Abdul, turning down a neighbor in need wasn’t an option. A city long anchored by its past now offers a possible glimpse into America’s future, rooted in its people’s collective belief that while the institutions around them might fail, they can always count on one another. For the first time since the 1940s, Buffalo’s population is growing. After decades of Rust Belt exodus, the city had in recent years opened its doors to refugees, who filled vacant storefronts with new businesses and invited loved ones to join them in their new home. They carry ambitions to help transform Buffalo into a bastion of tolerance and equitable social policies.Īt the center of all the changes were residents like Sharifu, landing in Buffalo from every corner of the globe. Young people from around the region have been moving into the city, drawn by affordable housing costs, a burgeoning arts scene, and an expanding food culture. A socialist candidate who vowed to defund police nearly unseated the four-term incumbent mayor, Byron Brown, in the closely contested 2021 election. The steel mills and their well-paid union jobs were mostly gone, but in their place eventually bloomed one of the most robust labor movements in the country: In 2021, local Starbucks employees sparked an organizing campaign that has resulted in nearly 300 of the company’s branches unionizing nationwide, and in early 2022, workers at the local Tesla plant began efforts to form the first union in the company’s history.
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