The bright orange Utah State flyers were blunt.
“There is no room in the shelters,” warn migrants who plan to go to Utah. “No hotels for you.”
He continues: “Housing is difficult to find and expensive. Food banks are at capacity.
Faced with a growing number of migrants who are straining its resources, Utah in recent days began urging new arrivals to the border and the United States to “consider another state.”
It’s the latest sign of the challenges facing migrants and the communities they seek to settle in. As more people leave their original destinations in search of better work and stable housing, more cities are struggling to keep up.
By the time Utah began warning migrants not to come, Carmen Selene and Cleodis Alvorado were already there, along with thousands of other migrants who have traveled to Utah in recent months from other American cities.
After traveling to the Texas border from Venezuela with their two sons, Ms. Selene and Mr. Alvorado entered the United States last September and quickly boarded a bus chartered by the state of Texas. On their way to Denver, the couple expected Mr. Alvorado to quickly find a job and begin building a new life. But like so many other migrants arriving in the United States, Mr. Alvorado could not work legally and was competing for odd jobs with other similarly situated migrants.
When their hotel stay, paid for by the city of Denver, ended, the family found themselves on another bus, this one headed to Salt Lake City, considered a welcoming destination, thanks to the abundance of jobs and the deep influence of the Church in Denver. Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
So far, though, the struggle has been the same, and it could get tougher as more people head to Utah. Some days, Mr. Alvorado manages to return to scheduled work painting houses and hanging drywall. The other days, nothing. “We have enough money to feed ourselves, but not to pay the rent,” Ms. Selene, 24, said outside a motel room in Midvale, just outside Salt Lake City.
The number of migrants crossing the southern border has declined in recent months. And, on June 5, President Biden unveiled a policy this allows U.S. authorities to quickly expel many people entering the country illegally.
But countless numbers of people are on the move again after trying to settle in New York, Chicago, Denver and other Democratic-led cities that initially welcomed migrants. When aid ran out in those cities and migrants couldn’t find jobs, they moved to places like Salt Lake City, Seattle, and even a small town in Montana, often aided by tickets bus or plane tickets paid for by the cities they were leaving.
Katie Rane, executive director of No More a Stranger Foundation, a Utah nonprofit group that provides legal assistance to migrants, said her organization has worked with migrants arriving from Colorado, California, Illinois and New Jersey.
“They don’t know anyone and have no money,” she says.
Migrants can only find work if they obtain a work permit. To become eligible for permits, they must apply for asylum, a process that typically requires an attorney and then a wait of at least 150 days. Without stable employment, they rely on charity to survive, as Mr. Alvorado’s family does.
Utah officials said they do not keep records of arrivals. But the number of new cases filed in Salt Lake City’s immigration court, a key indicator of the size of the migrant population, increased almost eightfold between 2021 and 2023, from 2,676 to 21,0745, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse of the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. Syracuse University, which collects the data.
Nearly 19,000 cases were filed in the first seven months of fiscal 2024, and that total does not include migrants whose cases are still filed in the cities where they first arrived.
Gov. Spencer Cox has defended the contributions of immigrants in Utah and last year called for states will be allowed to sponsor workers from abroad and among asylum seekers already present in the country to ensure the long-term prosperity of the State.
But the Republican governor, who is seeking re-election, has taken a tougher line on immigration ahead of the June 25 primary against state Rep. Phil Lyman.
While acknowledging that Utah is “struggling” with the arrival of migrants, Governor Cox made a point of saying that the burden is borne by municipalities, local non-profit groups and faith-based organizations, not the government of State.
“To be clear, Utah does not spend any state resources to house or provide other basic services to illegal immigrants or asylum seekers,” he said.
Poor Venezuelans, fleeing the financial ruin of their oil-rich country, make up most of the arrivals. Unlike Mexicans and Central Americans who have been coming to the United States for decades, most Venezuelans do not already have relatives or friends in American cities to support them.
State, county and local officials in Utah have convened meetings with representatives of homeless service providers, immigrant rights groups and others who said at interviews that they were at a breaking point.
“The asylum-seeking population continues to grow rapidly without state, county or city resources,” said Wendy Garvin, executive director of Unsheltered Utah, which serves the homeless.
“We’re struggling because we don’t have additional funding to dedicate to this new population,” she said.
Unemployment in Utah is extremely low and the economy is booming. But without work permits, migrants must toil in the informal economy, accepting wages below the minimum wage. Rents are rarely less than $1,000 per month.
Fights have broken out in Home Depot parking lots as migrants jostle to be hired by contractors and homeowners who stop to offer a few hours of work — painting, gardening, moving boxes. Migrant families with young children have been seen in encampments alongside homeless adults suffering from mental health and substance abuse issues.
Yet families continue to arrive from the border and from overwhelmed cities, like New York and Denver, which offer migrants free bus rides and flights to other destinations.
A Venezuelan family of nine, including four children, landed in Salt Lake City on a flight from New York on a freezing night, with nowhere to go.
They were among hundreds of newcomers who showed up at Salt Lake County’s only family shelter, a 300-bed facility in Midvale. For many, stays last several months.
The Road Home, a nonprofit group that runs the center, has attempted to house most of the migrant families, but funding restrictions for people who do not reside in the United States coupled with capacity constraints , prevent him from helping them all. There are 100 people on the waiting list.
“We cannot be responsible for this problem,” said Michelle Flynn, executive director of Road Home. “We don’t have the capacity, or the money, or the expertise.”
Some American churches and families welcome migrants. Others collect second-hand items for themselves. And organizations like UnityintheCommUnity, started by Annette Miller, a practicing Mormon, are recruiting dozens of volunteer instructors to teach English to migrants.
“I often turn families away,” said Lisa Fladmo, a caseworker at Family Promise Salt Lake, an interfaith alliance that helps homeless families.
“The root of the problem is they can’t work,” she said. “I am very frustrated with the government allowing people into the country and not allowing them to work immediately.”
She has witnessed up close, she says, how quickly the doors open to people getting work permits.
Luigi Machado, 33; his wife, Genesis; and their baby, Milan, moved to Salt Lake City in November after Mr. Machado’s unofficial work renovating a hotel in North Carolina dried up.
“I heard Utah had jobs and generous people,” he said in an interview.
But no employer would hire Mr. Machado, who had traveled with his family to the United States from Venezuela. He had applied for asylum but was still waiting for a work permit.
Their savings exhausted, the family slept in a van for 15 days, until Ms. Fladmo was able to find them accommodation, first in a church and then in a small apartment in exchange for maintenance work.
Last week, eight months after filing the documents, Mr. Machado received a work authorization.
He showed up at a construction site the next day.
“I’m going to pursue the American dream right here in Utah,” he said.
