Big Apple officials have kicked off a campaign to stop migrant kids from peddling candy in the subways and on city streets — as migrant parents argue they need the youngsters to help make ends meet.
City staffers, the NYPD and the MTA this week started distributing flyers in Spanish and an Ecuadorean dialect to steer migrant parents to available children’s services to keep the youngest asylum seekers in school instead of panhandling sweets on the streets.
The pamphlets also make it clear it’s illegal to sell goods without a permit.
“The health and safety — especially that of children — are always top priorities for our administration, which is why we’re expanding outreach to ensure every migrant parent knows about the support available for their children,” City Hall spokeswoman Kayla Mamelak said in a statement.
“Beginning this week, we are intensifying our work both in migrant shelters and on the subways to ensure school-aged children are enrolled in schools and parents know about safe after-school and childcare programs available to kids,” Mamelak said.
All good, except that migrant parents tell The Post they need their kids’ help earn a living in the big city — which is the way things are done back in their native lands.
“I don’t have a choice, I have to work,” said Maria, who was lugging her 3-year-old son along as she sold an assortment of gum and candies at Grand Central Terminal on Tuesday. “I’ve seen cops and others trying to discourage people from selling on the train but I can’t afford to listen to them.
”Where I’m from, the kids are expected to help their parents with work,” the 40-year-old single mom from Ecuador said. “As soon as my baby can walk, if I don’t find another job, he’ll have to help me sell candy. I want him to go to school, but if I need him to help me, he won’t go.”
She said she used to work in a chocolate factory before she began peddling on the street — and can make up to $30 on a good day.
Veronica Chega, 44, who was selling candy in Times Square with her 4-year-old daughter in tow this week, said hawking the sweets make it easier for her to duck police — because they’re easier to hide.
“I am always moving around when I’m working because a moving target is hard to catch — all good vendors know that,” the Ecuadorean native told The Post. “This is easier and I can move around freely.”
Chega says while her young daughter helps with business, she prefers to have her in school.
“I heard they are warning everyone about kids selling candy in the subway,” she said. “That’s why I only bring my daughter after she’s done at school. Today there’s no school so she’s working with me but tomorrow I’ll be selling on my own.”
Pint-sized migrants have become a familiar sight at city subway stations and street corners selling sweets in recent years, as asylum seekers have flooded into the five boroughs.
Mexican migrant Jose Prado, 53, said he used to work in textiles but now makes ends meet by selling candies and “churros” — a Latin American fired-dough pastry.
Although he can make as much as $80 in a day, he said kids can pull on the heartstrings of straphangers, so he is trying to get his own kids into the US to help hawk the sweet treat.
“My kids are all back in Mexico but the kids and parents with kids make the most money,” he said.
Prado said he had been living in a shelter in the city but said “conditions were awful.” He now shares an apartment in the Bronx with four other men.
“It would be one thing if the president [Joe Biden] were telling us all to come here and giving us jobs,” Prado said. “But we’re only getting half of that.
“I have the hardest time finding work because I’m older than a lot of the migrants showing up.”
More than 190,000 migrants have arrived in the Big Apple since the influx started in the spring of 2022, with more than 64,000 currently housed in city shelters at taxpayer expense.
Many have picked up underground jobs delivering food, but others have resorted to panhandling.
