a month, and Klein was doing his best
to explain that this, in fact, was a very
good deal. ‘‘Everything is expensive
in New York City,’’ he said. Every-
thing, he added, is competitive.
‘‘Don’t worry,’’ Jamalzada said.
‘‘We get a lot of that. People tell us
not to come. They say that New York
is like a black hole. You will not come
back.’’ She grinned at him. None of
this scared her. ‘‘If you can make
it here,’’ Klein started, joined mid-
way by Jamalzada, ‘‘you can make
it anywhere.’’
For centuries, New York City has
built its reputation on, and been
built by, arrivals from all over the
world, people who have landed on
the city’s shores, earned money and
sent for their relatives. Jamalzada
and Khurami, however, have arrived
at a diffi cult moment. The city is in
the middle of a housing crisis, with
infl ation driving up prices and a job
market that is still recovering from
the pandemic.
The country’s immigration
bureaucracy, too, remains back-
logged post-pandemic, and many of
the Trump administration’s anti-im-
migrant policies have endured.
While countries like Germany and
Canada have streamlined programs
for asylum seekers and refugees —
off ering housing, food, work autho-
rization and a monthly stipend to
asylum seekers — the United States
has strengthened enforcement
at the border, while processing
times for asylum applications have
increased from weeks to months
to years. From 2016 to 2020, the
number of refugees arriving annu-
ally in the United States fell to less
than 12,000 from 85,000. In roughly
the same period, as budgets were
slashed, 134 resettlement sites shut-
tered their operations, signifi cant-
ly reducing the country’s capacity
to place refugees into new homes
and neighborhoods. And then, as
borders closed with the spread of
Covid-19, immigration to the United
States continued to drop.
The fall of Kabul in August 2021
tested the limits of a shrunken sys-
tem, pushing large numbers of evac-
uees into the United States — a rush
of new arrivals of a magnitude not
seen since the end of the Vietnam
War. As the government struggles tofamily and no friends in the city; but
the couple had made up their minds
— they wanted to come to New York.
And it was Klein, along with a net-
work of community groups, donors
and volunteers, who was going to
make it possible.
Jamalzada and Khurami, each in
their mid-20s, are part of a gener-
ation of Afghans who came of age
with United States soldiers in their
country. Khurami fi nished his univer-
sity degree in India and Jamalzada
was accepted to Kabul University,
one of four women in her graduate
program. She earned a master’s in
business administration by attend-
ing night classes against her parents’
wishes. She worked for U.S.A.I.D.,
the U.S. government’s internation-
al development agency, promoting
women’s interests, and then found a
job in the presidential palace work-
ing in development. She also ran a
side business selling Afghan-made
jewelry. The pair met online and
persuaded their parents to forgo
arranging marriages.
Both Jamalzada and Khurami have
spent their lives being told not to do
something and going ahead with it
anyway. There was no reason, Jamal-
zada thought, that making a place for
themselves in New York City should
be any diff erent.
That morning, the couple saw two
apartments on the edges of the city.
Both would cost them around $1,800piece together an eff ective nation-
wide system of welcome and
support, civic groups like Klein’s
have created their own patchwork
response, straining their resources
to fi ll in the gaps between federal
aid and the needs of arrivals.
Standing in the sun in White
Plains, Klein was hopeful that Khu-
rami and Jamalzada would quickly
fi nd their footing. The goal, Klein
explained, was to ease people into
their new lives and make them
self-suffi cient. His group is looking to
leverage the money they have to help
as many people as possible. The crisis
in Afghanistan has been followed by
war in Ukraine, and more immigrants
arriving in the city with very few
resources. ‘‘We try not to dwell on the
big picture,’’ Klein told me. ‘‘Because,
yes, we’re helping this one family, but
there are millions of others.’’Since its founding, New York City
has been a gateway for immigrants,
with waves of arrivals ebbing and
fl owing alongside global events
and national policies. The city’s
reputation as a sanctuary for hud-
dled masses solidifi ed in the latter
half of the 1800s, with an infl ux of
Irish refugees who were fl eeing
political persecution and, later,
famine. They arrived in the streets
of New York in such great numbers
that residents feared the city could
not support them.
Civic organizations sprang up to
assist the migrants. Church groups
established teams to greet people
as they disembarked from boats,
pre-empting the predatory ‘‘run-
ners’’ who prowled the docks. In
1841, a group of Irish merchants and
clergy formed the Irish Emigrant
Society, which published a guide-
book on city life and established a
‘‘labor offi ce’’ that connected new
arrivals to jobs. William M. Tweed,
known as Boss Tweed , the famously
corrupt and domineering New York
politician, helped immigrants fi nd
work, housing and medical care
(sometimes in exchange for votes).
In 1855, it was the city, in part-
nership with New York State offi -
cials, that created the nation’s fi rst
immigrant- processing center in a
former fort and theater called the
Castle Garden.A man named Bob Klein was stand-
ing in the courtyard of a red-brick
apartment building in White Plains,
N.Y., in late April, looking vaguely in
the direction of New York City. He
was smiling with the corners of his
eyes, trying to set the expectations of
the couple standing in front of him.
Klein, who is in his 70s, is an archi-
tecture-and-design consultant and
founding member of the six-year-old
Neighbors for Refugees, a Westches-
ter-based organization dedicated to
helping resettle refugees around
New York. He was there to ensure
the pair — evacuees from Afghani-
stan — did not arrive in the city with-
out support. But he was also off ering
them a gentle warning: There is only
so much he can do.
Farhad Khurami and his wife,
Farzana Jamalzada, fl ed Afghani-
stan in August 2021 and were among
the more than 76,000 evacuees who
arrived in the United States in a peri-
od of about three weeks. They had
been married one month before
the fall of Kabul. ‘‘If we had known,’’
Jamalzada told me, ‘‘we wouldn’t
have bought so much stuff .’’ They had
been shuttled to Qatar, to Washing-
ton, D.C., and on to Fort McCoy in
Wisconsin (where they spent months
in limbo), all the while chasing docu-
ments, waiting in lines and grasping
at wisps of information. They left
everything they owned; their donat-
ed clothes were too big; they had no
Additional reporting by Anna Kambhampaty Photograph by Joshua Rashaad McFadden for The New York Times