NYC must lead on immigration

New Yorkers are, unfortunately, all too accustomed to doomsaying.

Within the last three years, we were told empty office buildings would destroy the city. Before that, they said wealthy New Yorkers afraid of taxes would abandon the city. Our mayor amplified a perception of crime that didn’t always bear out in the NYPD’s statistics.

As 2023 draws to a close, the Adams administration again would have us believe that the city will fall apart as his administration continues to struggle to comprehensively address how we support asylum seekers. Instead, the mayor needs to focus his energy on the true cause of our crisis: affordability.

Housing costs are too expensive. Child care and education costs keep rising. People continue to struggle to access good-paying jobs. And despite the fear that the rich would flee New York, a recent report affirmed that there are more millionaires here today than there were during the pandemic. Instead, it’s the working class — the true engine of our economy and the foundation of our communities — who are being priced out of the city.

So, how do we solve an affordability crisis that has plagued New York for decades? First, we have to recognize the reality, which is that the city’s financial conditions today are not the result of the last two years of asylum seekers arriving, but a generation’s worth of short-sighted policies and passing the buck at every level of government.

This is especially true of the federal government, which has failed to pass any meaningful immigration reform for decades. Instead, the least productive Congress in 92 years, is currently threatening to codify an anti-immigrant agenda and MAGA border policies in the supplemental budget — all with the blessing of President Biden.

We can start to meet this moment by simply ensuring our new neighbors can find work. Jobs are the first step towards independence and integration into our communities. That’s why the fight to secure work authorization for new arrivals has been a priority for so many New Yorkers.

While we need to do more to expand and expedite for different countries, we finally convinced the Biden administration to grant Temporary Protected Status to asylum seekers from Venezuela, who represent some 40% of arrivals to New York.

Moving work authorization forward also means boosting legal services for asylum seekers navigating our legal system. Looking forward to 2024, City Hall must improve its efforts to assist asylum seekers filing necessary legal paperwork. Investments in legal services will help folks get to work quicker and alleviate pressure on our severely backlogged immigration court system.

Earlier this year immigrant communities won a historic $63 million dollar investment for immigration legal and essential services across the state, connecting thousands of low-income immigrant New Yorkers to legal representation. The effort led to momentum for the landmark Access to Representation Act, which, if passed next year, would establish the legal right to counsel for New Yorkers stuck in immigration courts.

But families can’t have economic security without housing security. That’s why New Yorkers came out in force to call on the City Council to override Mayor Adams’ veto of legislation connecting New Yorkers to permanent housing. The Council protected landmark legislation that expanded eligibility for CityFHEPS vouchers and allowed New Yorkers to circumvent the shelter system altogether. That means reducing shelter stays and saving more than $730 million annually for taxpayers by linking all New Yorkers to opportunities for long-term housing.

All of these wins are winds in our sail as we look toward 2024 as a critical year for change. We have to keep pushing our elected leaders to fully fund legal and language services that keep New York’s neighborhoods intact and full of economic opportunity. We must continue pushing for permanent housing solutions in New York City, expanding voucher access to all New Yorkers can save the city billions while keeping people outside of the shelter system.

In just a few months, New Yorkers will be tuning into another presidential election that feels as uncertain as the last one — where immigration will again be used as a cudgel to divide us. If extremists on the political right and its virulent anti-immigrant leaders succeed this time, they threaten to not only undo our gains as a country, state, and city but throw immigration policy in reverse. We can’t let the doomsayers sway us.

Instead, we have to press on. Together, we must advocate for policies reinforcing why generations of Americans think of our city as the greatest city in the world. Immigrants have always been at New York’s foundation, and we must build a brighter future that supports all of our neighbors.

Awawdeh is executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition.