Migrants in Chicago find ways to adjust to life in their new city

Luz-Marina Niño is enjoying a sense of stability that she sometimes doubted she ever would find in Chicago.For 10 months, the 33-year-old asylum-seeker from Venezuela has been living in a two-bedroom apartment in the integrated South Side Beverly neighborhood with her 10-year-old son Jose and other family members.“When I got here, at first it was very difficult, and I thought that everything I had gone through to get here wasn’t worth it,” Niño said in Spanish.Niño said she and her son spent many nights in makeshift encampments in Central America en route to the United States. When she arrived in Chicago last summer, she was sent to a police station and then to the Chicago Inn, a former hotel turned city-run shelter where she said she felt unsafe and lost.A few months later, Niño connected with Catherine’s Caring Cause, a not-for-profit organization that helped her find an apartment and agreed to pay her rent until she is financially stable. She recently got a work permit and found a cleaning job at a hospital.Niño no longer works peeling shrimp at a market she said paid her less than minimum wage before she was able to work legally. She said her son enjoys school.For the bused or flown in from the Mexican border since 2022, primarily by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, adjusting to life in Chicago has been challenging.Niño has a strong support network to help. The co-founders of Catherine’s Caring Cause — nuns Pat Murphy and JoAnn Persch from the Sisters of Mercy — assigned Niño a mentor who helps her navigate life in Chicago. The organization offers similar rent assistance, a link to other resources and mentorship to more than 10 migrant families.For 10 months, Luz-Marina Niño has been living with her son Jose and her sister’s family in a two-bedroom apartment in Beverly. She connected with Catherine’s Caring Cause, a not-for-profit organization that helped her find an apartment and agreed to pay her rent until she is financially stableManuel Martinez/WBEZ“I hope Luz feels comfortable asking me questions,” said Carol Conway, a retired English teacher who mentors Niño and is another of the not-for-profit’s co-founders. “ And, if I don’t know the answer, I will find it. Because there are a lot of things I don’t know.”Elizabeth, another new migrant, wants to learn English so she can keep up with her kids.Her oldest is a first-grader on the Northwest Side. Her youngest will soon be enrolled in preschool. She wants to learn English because she worries that, while her children learn at school, she won’t understand what they are saying.That prompted her to register for English classes with the help of Onward Neighborhood House, a community organization in Belmont Cragin. She’s also learning new words at the fast-food restaurant where she works.“We need to be more social and not be so afraid of asking questions” in English, Elizabeth, an asylum-seeker from Ecuador, said in Spanish, asking to be identified only by her first name. “Most people don’t speak English because they are afraid of mispronouncing it.”Elizabeth is relying on community organizations like Onward Neighborhood House.“Each experiences their process differently, depending on the context in which each person has arrived,” said Andres Albarracin, an Onward caseworker who grew up in Colombia, has lived in Chicago for nearly two years and understands what it takes to adapt.In some neighborhoods, migrants are adjusting more easily, said Baltazar Enriquez of the Little Village Community Council. Little Village is home to many undocumented immigrants from Mexico who speak Spanish and aren’t strangers to the hyperlocal gig economy.Enriquez said some migrants in his neighborhood are becoming entrepreneurs, selling traditional Venezuelan food on the streets like , round corn-based pancakes, and , thinly sliced fried hotdog meat with french fries.“People are willing to taste new things,” said Enriquez, who is from Mexico. “They’re eating our food. We’re eating their food.”Enriquez said he’s teaching migrants to stay out of fights and out of trouble. One of his own first lessons was to avoid wearing colors that represent gangs.“We want to educate the people,” said Enriquez, who helps migrant parents learn how to talk with their children about gangs. “You’re not going to be safe if you’re out that late.”Many migrants say going back home — to Venezuela or Ecuador — isn’t an option and that most of their relatives have left.Niño is moving to a house near Midway Airport with her son, parents and other relatives.For Elizabeth, adjusting means supporting her children in school, making new friends and taking her kids to the park on her days off.And one more thing: She must learn English. She has given herself a deadline for that, saying she will do it soon, in less than a year.