With this year’s City budget almost complete, Make the Road New York and the New York Immigration Coalition released a report titled A Budget For The City Of Immigrants that finds the city’s immigrant population is being shortchanged in the budget.
About 3.1 million New York City residents are immigrants, making up 37 percent of the city’s population. Immigrants make up 45 percent of the workforce and 49 percent of small business owners. The report identified workforce, policing and restorative justice, affordable and safe housing, education, access to Health Care and civic engagement as areas within the immigrant community that should get funding.
“Making sure immigrants are well served by city government is smart economic policy, and this report highlights many critical solutions like expanding resources for adult literacy, workforce development, and a pro-active citywide approach to administrative relief,” said David Dyssegaard Kallick, Senior Fellow and Director of the Immigration Research Initiative at the Fiscal Policy Institute. “Removing barriers immigrants face will help dozens of communities to do better.”
The report’s budgetary suggestions included allocating $5 million towards the Access Health NYC Initiative, in efforts to teach, enroll and assist immigrants in acquiring health insurance options, and $1 million to mobilize roughly 75,000 immigrant residents that are not involved in their community.
“These proposals highlight how immigrants, now nearly 40 percent of New York City’s population, can get their fair share of the resources allocated through the budget process,” said Javier H. Valdés, co-Executive Director of Make the Road New York.
