>For many Russian migrants with little to no English knowledge, the Russian-speaking community in Brighton Beach, a coastline neighborhood in Coney Island, Brooklyn, is the best chance to get a job and start a new life in New York. But for Simon, a trans man from Moscow who is seeking asylum in the US, it was a reminder of the discrimination he faced back home. His appearance routinely made it difficult for him to find employment as he was often received with surprise and discrimination. “Where did you find this male name? You should have a female name,” he was told angrily by a Russian business owner in a job interview.
New York City is one of the most accepting places in the world for LGTBI people, which makes it a preferred destination for asylum seekers in the community. Yet, language barriers and a lengthened administrative system make asylees rely upon their diasporas, communities that often keep the same homophobic and transphobic attitudes that asylum seekers left back home. While waiting for a work permit, a process that takes at least half a year after the asylum claim, some asylees need to rely on the informal economy to pay for expenses such as room or food, all things easier to find in a community that speaks their language and understands their origins.
After spending all his savings on a trip that was canceled three times because of the war between Russia and Ukraine, Simon finally made it to the United States in March 2022. He was aware of the difficulties, but the prospect of a better future in which he did not fear expressing his own identity made it worth it. There weren’t many other choices: “I simply didn’t feel safe back home.” Yet, to his surprise, Russian conservative views and Putin’s anti-LGTBQ propaganda could still reach him across oceans and more than 4,500 miles away from the Kremlin.
When he first arrived in America, Simon lived in Los Angeles for six months. It was there where he applied for asylum in July 2022, the first step in a multi-year-long process to stay permanently in the country that in many cases involves getting legal help from private lawyers or specialized NGOs. With limited English knowledge, he did not find much support in California. He recalls having anxiety and panic attacks at the time, worried about getting food and medical help for his family. With the support of RUSA LGTBQ+, a non-profit New York-based organization that helps Russian-speaking LGTBQ+ migrants, Simon decided to move with his two kids to New York, which hosts the largest Russian diaspora in the country. Then the wait and the discrimination started.
The struggle to find a job
“The Russian-speaking community is homophobic and transphobic. They help heterosexuals, not us,” says Simon, referring to the job market. Asylum seekers that can, try and get jobs anywhere else. The rest are forced to live double lives. “They rent a room in Brighton Beach and work in a Russian-speaking business, so they need to get back to the closet or even never leave it,” explains Dr. Alexandra Novitskaya, Visiting Professor at the Department of Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Maryland: Baltimore County. “Yet, they hop on a train, go to Manhattan and club in gay discos or even attend a pride parade.”
For the academic, whose doctoral dissertation focused on post-Soviet LGBTQ migration in the US and included 30 interviews on New York-based asylees, job insecurity plays a major role in the dependence on the diaspora.
Migrants are not allowed to legally work in the country until six months after they apply for asylum—which in itself is a process that takes some time because it often involves finding legal assistance in a scarce pool of lawyers. A 2023 survey by the American Immigration Lawyers Association found that 50% of immigration attorneys have a caseload of more than 70 active legal cases. It is also not uncommon for Employment Authorization Documents – known as EAD cards – to take longer than 180 days because of a system called “clock stop”. There are several instances in which the “clock” counting toward the required 180 days stops, adding time to the wait for employment authorization. For instance, if an asylum interview is rescheduled because the asylum seeker needs extra weeks to gather and submit more documentation to prove their case or moves to another part of the country, the clock will stop until the new interview date.
In the meantime, asylum seekers are forced to delve into the informal economy to survive. Anything from cleaning to walking dogs or babysitting are common examples. That’s when the support of the national community becomes crucial. “It can be a lifesaver, but a prejudiced one,” explains Dr. Novitskaya when clarifying why asylees settle in neighborhoods in which they face homophobia and transphobia.
Both New York City and State offer asylum seekers and other immigrants some help when they arrive like access to temporary shelters, physical and mental health care, and public school for minors. Food stamps are uncommon, but several charity pantries serve hot meals or give away food. Still, getting a job is the only way towards a normal life.
But even if they receive your first EAD card, they are not in the clear. For long, those work permits were only valid for two years. While migrants could apply for renewal before they expired, there was no guarantee that the new one would arrive in time. “That used to happen under the Trump administration, and again, asylum seekers were forced back into the informal economy,” explains Amitesh Parikh, Senior Staff Attorney at Immigration Equality, the nation’s largest LGBTQ immigrant rights organization. In September 2023, the Biden administration started issuing five-year-long permits, a policy that can be changed at the discretion of USCIS, the federal agency that deals with immigration.
A long wait for stability
While waiting for their case to be decided, asylum seekers live legally in the country. Yet, they are often left in a vulnerable position. For Yonatan Matheus, a Venezuelan gay activist and co-founder of the immigrant LGTBQ Latino organization América Diversa, that meant missing the funeral of his dad and two other close relatives. He applied for asylum in May 2016 but was not granted it until seven years later, in August 2023. If he wanted to leave the country during that period, he would have needed special authorization, and even with it, he could have risked being denied reentry.
For Simon, the Russian political situation has added a layer of difficulty. He currently describes his employment situation as a “survival job” in which he helps senior citizens with disabilities. Yet, back in Moscow, he is a fully qualified nurse with years of experience. The problem is that he is not able to get his diploma recognized by New York State. “I have my degree on my own hands,” says Simon, who holds a physical copy of his diploma and his transcripts. Yet, the State’s Office of Professions requires the institution that issues the degree to fill out a form and send it directly to their office, something that, according to Simon, his Russian college has not been willing to do. That has transformed the nurse registration procedure into an impossible barrier to getting better job security and pay.
Under US law, asylum can be granted for persecution due to five reasons: race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. Claims based on sexual orientation and gender identity fall into the ‘particular social group’ category, which includes a broad range of people from child soldiers to people with disabilities. In all instances, wait times of over five years are common, with some extreme cases even exceeding a decade-long wait. However, as per USCIS’s own guidelines, that should not be the case. Unless justified by exceptional circumstances, the agency should decide on all applications within 180 days.
Yet, that did not happen 97% of the time. A 2024 report by Joseph Cuffari, the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security, found that almost 390,000 asylum claims have been pending for more than two years. Cyril Gosh, Associate Professor of Political Science at Clark University, explains that “the indefinite wait is the period between making a claim and waiting to be brought in front of an asylum officer for the initial credibility assessment”. That interview is the crucial step that decides the destiny of the asylum claim.
The same report was clear in identifying the reason why this happens. “USCIS did not have sufficient funding, staffing, and planning” to reduce the current backlog. Unlike most other agencies, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services is mostly funded by fees. Although asylum seekers are not charged any fees to start their petition, most people who apply for other visas are required to pay a sum that ultimately funds operational costs. In the fiscal year 2024, that system financed 94% of the agency’s overall budget. The rest, $270 million, came from the federal budget. It represented roughly 0.2% of the total Department of Homeland Security budget, which in itself amounts to 1.5% of the total federal expenditure.
In a 2022 Congressional Hearing, USCIS director Ur Jaddou requested more federal funding for the agency’s work on humanitarian issues, which includes the asylum-seeking program. “The cost of humanitarian programs at USCIS has skyrocketed since the beginning of our agency,” she declared. According to Director Jaddou, when the agency was founded in 2003, humanitarian projects required 5% of USCIS’s resources and could be financed with other fee-paying visas. The same figure now represents 20% of the total.
A bittersweet stay
Even with the difficulties, most asylees, like the 42-year-old Venezuelan trans woman Liebana, consider New York the long-awaited final destination of an arduous journey. During the six years after she fled home, she lived in Peru and Chile, but it was in the US that she started exploring her gender identity and began to transition, which positively affected how she faced life and even helped with her back problems. “Here I am regaining my self-esteem. I even walk upright again, which is good for my back,” explains Liebana. When talking, the asylee expresses her optimism and gratitude over and over. This city has provided her with some health benefits, a community with other LGBTQ people, and the possibility to access food. She is now becoming a businesswoman and working to start a catering service based on Venezuelan cuisine.
While she prefers to focus on her positive experience, she admits to having to stay alert when taking the subway or walking in certain neighborhoods. In different instances, she recalls being shouted phrases like “Here comes the pájaro” or “Look where that pájaro is going” by older Dominican men who have been living in the US for years. In Spanish, the word ‘pájaro’ means ‘bird’, but in Dominican slang, it is also a slur towards gay men. But Liebana, who has heard much worse, prefers to avoid confrontation: “I never turn around, I don’t want to lose my energy in that. As long as they don’t try to hit me, they can say what they want.”
Yonatan from América Diversa explains that in some cases discrimination can become much harsher. He recalls a case from last year, in which a gay Guatemalan man was hit when going to the bathroom in a majority-Latino shelter overseen by the New York City Department of Homeless Services. The shelter dismissed his claim. Although he still attends América Diversa’s support groups, he is mainly back in the closet and is extremely careful not to disclose his sexuality at work.
Yonatan admits that this is an extreme case, but says that it is not uncommon for LGBTQ asylum seekers to hide who they are and not get involved in queer spaces just to avoid potential problems. Even when they face discrimination, “A lot of LGBTQ Latino asylees don’t report it because they fear for their immigration status,” he says.
With time, little change
The Russian diaspora has also experienced other alleged discriminatory cases in the past decade. Back in 2017, Aleksander Smirnov, a gay asylum seeker who fled Moscow after publicly coming out, had to leave his job at Brighton Beach NetCost supermarket. In a Facebook post, he claimed to have been threatened with a knife by a coworker who also directed homophobic slurs at him.
Two years later, the same store was involved in another claimed homophobic incident, in which another man was fired because of his “gay appearance”. At that time a small protest was organized in front of the store. NetCost has not answered a request for comment on those incidents at the time of publication.
Overall discrimination stems from cultural practices and is difficult to pinpoint. Yet, multiple sources point towards the influence of Russian-language media, especially the website RT (formerly Russia Today), which propagates conservative ideologies within the diaspora. “RT is a soft power outlet,” explains Dr. Aleksandra Raspopina, Lecturer in Journalism and Digital Media at the London Metropolitan University. “It basically supplies the world with the Russian viewpoint on global events.” That viewpoint often involves presenting an alternative side of events. For the academic, “anti-Westerness also includes being quite homophobic.” RT operations are fully funded by the Russian Government.
In March 2022, shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the European Union banned RT emissions from its territory alleging that the outlet promotes “propaganda” and “disinformation.” In the unprecedented decision, the institution accused the television network of being “instrumental” in the “international campaign of media manipulation and distortion of facts” which included the targeting of “gender minorities,” among others.
As a response to these conservative views, in 2008, a group of LGBTQ Russian speakers based in New York decided to start an informal social club to create a community and help other migrants navigate the US asylum-seeking process. This was the origin of RUSA LGBTQ+. With the years, their work became more and more intense, and, in 2022, they registered as a nonprofit. But even with a more than decade-long trajectory, the organization still faces challenges. “The bigger Russian-speaker diaspora doesn’t want to know about us or repudiates us,” explains Maxim Ibadov, national coordinator of RUSA LGBTQ+.
That did not stop the group from organizing events in the heart of the diaspora. An example of this is their annual Brighton Beach Pride Parade. The tradition started in 2017 when the festive demonstration gathered around 300 people, but also disapproval comments from bystanders and the refusal to host an after-party from several local businesses, according to Maxim and other sources with knowledge of the situation.
Masha Undensiva-Brenner, a reporter who covered the event, recalls a few homophobic comments yet no big counterprotest or incidents. She remembers some bystanders mumbling “Thank God it’s not in my family” or “This is disgusting” in a non-confrontational manner. “It’s homophobic in more subtle ways,” says Masha about the diaspora. “I mean, it’s New York City, right? So, they can’t really do anything about the parade,” she adds.
RUSA LGTBQ+ offers new hope
More recently, they have found hope and allies in liberal Russians, many of whom are tied to opposition movements. “There is a lot of conservatism in the Brighton Beach community,” says Ivan Lopukhin, one of the founders of Team Navalny NY, “but we have to show them a different Russia.” He leads a branch of an organization that keeps with the work of Alexei Navalny, who died at age 47 in a Russian prison near the Artic Circle in February 2024 after 37 months behind bars. Before his death, Amnesty International considered the opposition leader a “prisoner of conscience.”
RUSA LGBTQ+ and Team Navalny have been working together for a year and organized three letter-writing events directed at some of the political prisoners included in the OVD-Info Database, one of Russia’s largest human rights NGOs. All of them were hosted in an unlikely venue: the NYC Pride offices in Manhattan. While Maxim explains that some attendees were surprised the first time they saw the giant pride flags hanging on the walls, he considers that it has been a great way to remember that their fights are tied. Ivan agrees, “We share the same problems.”
The discriminatory practices and conservative values of the majority of the diaspora have not stopped Simon from trying to offer others the sense of community he lacked at first, even if it is a small one. For him, getting information about the resources available at the time of arrival is key. For this reason, he now leads one of RUSA LGBTQ+ peer-to-peer support groups, a monthly meeting that gathers anywhere between five to a dozen asylum seekers who offer each other emotional support and practical help. “I can only describe my experience and maybe give my advice,” explains Simon, who also makes sure that people who have recently arrived in the country know what resources are available, from legal help to English-language courses.