But at a time of increasing unemployment and crushing budget deficits, Brazil’s magnanimity has its limits. Visa recipients must pay their own airfare to Brazil, and the government provides little support once they arrive.

Although they are reluctant to complain, Hanan and her family have encountered a welter of hardships since arriving 18 months ago. Eleven relatives, including her parents and two siblings, share a one-bedroom apartment in Glicério, a fraying, drug-infested neighborhood in downtown São Paulo. Many of the adults sleep on the flotilla of four sofas that clots the apartment’s small living room.

Her father, Khaled Dacka, 40, who worked in a currency exchange office in Syria, spends his day tending a furnace at an auto parts factory.

Her 16-year-old brother, Mustapha, works seven days a week peddling cellphone accessories.

But her mother, Yusra, 35, said, “If we had stayed in Syria, all of us would be dead.”

The Rev. Paolo Parise, director of Migration Studies at Missão Paz, an organization that provides temporary housing for newly arrived refugees, said many Syrians encounter similar barriers when they make it to Brazil.

Though highly educated, they often struggle to find jobs that match their skills. It is also hard for them to find the financial guarantor and three months’ rent that many landlords require before signing a lease, he said.

“Once they leave the shelter, refugees cannot count on any federal program to help them find a place to live,” he said.