New York, NY-Immigrant rights advocates praised the New York City Council’s response to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s preliminary budget as an important first step towards an equitable recovery for all The City Council’s response included investments in immigrant legal services, language access, and the brand new Office of Street Vendor Enforcement.
Murad Awawdeh, interim Co-Executive Director of the New York Immigration Coalition, issued the following statement in response:
“With this budget response, Speaker Johnson and the New York City Council are making clear that immigrants are essential to New York City’s economic, social and cultural recovery. For more than a year, immigrant New Yorkers have held this great city together, despite struggling to support their children through remote learning with few resources and enduring the hardships of sickness and job loss without any financial assistance from the federal government. This budget response is an important first step to ensure that our immigrant communities get on the road to recovery by providing legal services funding so that low-income New Yorkers can keep their families together, supporting immigrant students with the help they need to continue to thrive and finally delivers real economic justice for New York’s street vendors. We are grateful to Speaker Johnson and the City Council for their work on this proposal and urge Mayor de Blasio to adopt it. We also look forward to working with the City Council and Mayor in the coming year to ensure that immigrant New Yorkers have what they need for a full and equitable recovery.”
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