Mayor Bill de Blasio today announced the creation of ActionNYC, the nation’s largest investment by a municipality to prepare for executive action and in response to the need for nationwide comprehensive immigration reform.
The $7.9 million initiative, through the Executive Budget and in partnership with the City Council, will create a citywide system rooted in immigrant community organizations to provide high quality immigration-related information and legal support to thousands of New Yorkers starting in early spring 2016.
“New York City’s commitment to our immigrant communities will not waver. While the courts delay executive action and much-needed relief, while some voices may attempt to create hostility toward immigrants, while more than 30 governors tried to resist the resettlement of Syrian refugees, New York City will demonstrate the power and values of our city,” said de Blasio.
“ActionNYC will demonstrate that there is another way. We can build the capacity of community-based organizations and legal service providers to ensure that all New Yorkers can come out of the shadows and live their lives freely. This program demonstrates New York City’s commitment to ensuring everyone can live their own American dream.”
The initiative includes the creation of community navigation hubs at immigrant services organizations across the five boroughs, where immigrant New Yorkers can receive a safe and secure legal screening regarding their immigration legal options, community navigator support to prepare applications, assistance from high-quality lawyers, and connections to relevant services, such as IDNYC, the City’s municipal ID program.
Additionally, ActionNYC will feature rotating legal clinics across all five boroughs. A mass marketing campaign and cadre of trained organizers will do outreach to immigrant communities in multiple languages to direct them to ActionNYC programming.
The plan calls for the city to award over two dozen contracts to community-based organizations and legal service providers that will serve as the program’s implementing partners, accepted into the initiative after a competitive process and review.
More than half a million New Yorkers are estimated to be undocumented and an estimated 700,000 additional New Yorkers are eligible to become U.S. citizens.
“Forty-seven percent of Brooklynites speak a language other than English at home, and we need to tailor government to serve the varied needs of this population, particularly immigration legal assistance. I am pleased that ActionNYC seeks to do more to assist Brooklyn residents that face difficulties accessing the information and resources needed to uplift themselves and their families,” said Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams.
Sunset Park City Council Member Carlos Menchaca, Chair of the Committee on Immigration, said ActionNYC sends the message out to the city’s immigrants that the city wants them and cares about them.
“ActionNYC gives us the opportunity to build on programs like IDNYC and participatory budgeting which have been successful in no small part because of our immigrant friends and neighbors,” he said.
“ActionNYC is truly a ground-up, grassroots, municipal immigration program tailored to New York City’s unique and diverse immigrant communities and the struggles they face. Mayor de Blasio’s proposal is both effective and efficient: connect and communicate among and between our citywide network of immigrant services. The new tools and greater access these organizations will have thanks to ActionNYC will provide greater support to New York City’s immigrant communities,” said Williamsburg State Senator Martin Malavé Dilan.
Midwood Assembly Member Rodneyse Bichotte. said it is clear a great deal of thought went into developing ActionNYC.
“I know from my own lived experience as the daughter of Haitian immigrant parents, that the coordinated services will not only benefit the immigrant population with an efficient and reliable process, but it will alleviate immigration fraud, which has prohibited many people from becoming new Americans. With different languages incorporated into the program, the navigators will certainly play a critical role in ensuring that the immigrant population understands the process and that they are getting their needs met,” she said.
Among the Brooklyn-based non-profit community Based Organizations that have been awarded ActionNYC grants include the Arab American Association of New York (Bay Ridge), CAMBA (Flatbush) and Make The Road New York (Bushwick).
