As snow swirled down after midnight on Tuesday, about three dozen migrants, including two families with children, huddled on the sidewalk under thin blankets outside a city office in Brooklyn.
They had temporarily left their homeless shelters to spend the night camping in the 20-degree wind chill for a chance at a prize whose significance was not quite clear: a New York City-issued identification card called IDNYC.
Some said they had been told by shelter workers that the card was a necessary step on the road to legal employment. One woman who was six months pregnant said she had heard she needed the card to get seen at a public hospital.
As winter settles in, the situation faced by the 68,000 migrants in city shelters has grown more precarious and left many eager to find their way to self-sufficiency but confused about the many rules that govern the steps to get there.
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