Paola had to be rushed to the hospital. For some reason, she was finding it increasingly difficult to breathe.
The New York Immigration Coalition organized what it called a “blitz” of legal clinics around the state to connect migrants with attorneys to walk them through the Temporary Protection Status application process.
She didn’t know why. What she did know was that her brother’s birthday month was fast approaching and so were the memories. So was Christmas, which used to be one of her favorite times of the year.
It’s been more than a year since her brother’s death prompted her decision to flee her home country of Peru, to leave her parents and to start fresh with her daughters.
At the hospital, she was told she was having an anxiety attack, which likely is connected to missing her family and recalling past traumas.
It may also have to do with the knowledge that may never be able to go home. Paola – who did not want to use her last name in fear of reprisal from persecutors she escaped – is one of the hundreds of migrants in the Buffalo area seeking asylum in the United States.
Catharine Grainge, director of advocacy at Jericho Road Community Center, which has helped to resettle asylum-seekers in Western New York, said the diagnosis was not a…
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