“Refugees have very limited public assistance when they arrive and if they do not have a family to live with, are left with few housing options,” according to a report on housing in Syracuse county. “Very low-income households also struggle to find quality housing, a problem that was identified as being especially problematic for single refugees.”

Having children or a spouse significantly boosts the amount of money a person can receive, so solo refugees often get a much smaller amount of cash assistance. An amount that often doesn’t even cover the cost of an apartment, even in a relatively affordable city such as Syracuse, Castricone said.

“For a single person, they really need to get to work as soon as possible,” she told me.

There are organic resources that people such as Ali find when they arrive. A day or two after he came, he was pointed to Mursal’s Store, a convenience store run by Somalis that also serves as an informal gathering place. The store is constantly bustling with Somalis coming in, wishing store owner Warfalibaax Mursal “as-salamu alaykum,” asking for help to send money to family or buying foods that they can cook to remind themselves of home.

Abdullah Ismael, a Somali taxi driver who came to the U.S. by himself a decade ago, pointed out a man he said arrived from the refugee camps only four days ago. The man had already found his way to Mursal’s store, he explained. Many refugees are more comfortable at Mursal’s store,—where they can speak Somali or Arabic—than they are in resettlement agencies, where they are encouraged to speak English. “This is our Armory Square,” he explained, referring to the bustling section of Syracuse’s downtown.

But while some parts of this informal social network created for people arriving in Syracuse alone are successful, the jobs piece is still a big challenge. Many refugees find work in hospitality or food services, or at the furniture manufacturer, Stickley, which employs a large number of refugees. Catholic Charities has launched a five-week daily training course that teaches refugees food-service skills.

Many of the jobs are in far-flung suburbs that are difficult to get to without a car, Mursal says. So people such as Osman Ali move on if they can’t find jobs.

Mursal, for example, was resettled in Syracuse with 11 family members. Eight have since moved to Minnesota, which has a large Somali population and where, he says, they felt more comfortable and had better connections for finding work.

Minnesota tops the country in secondary migration, with 2,206 people moving there from another state last year, according to the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement. Ohio was second, with 533, and Iowa and Florida had around 445 each. Arizona, California, and New York saw the most refugees leave to go to other states; in New York, in 2012, 156 refugees moved to the state from other places, but 566 left. That’s despite relatively generous benefit levels: Families can receive $770 from TANF and single adults can receive $475 a month in New York State. In Florida, they only get $303 and $180, respectively.

Refugees appear to move because they can’t find work in the states where they’re placed. In 2012, only 33 percent of refugees in Arizona were able to find work, and only 25 percent of those in California were employed, while 55 percent of refugees in Minnesota had entered employment in 2012.