Immigrant advocates reject Adams Executive Budget

The New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC), an umbrella policy and advocacy organization that represents over 200 immigrant and refugee rights groups throughout New York, on Wednesday rejected New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s Executive Budget proposal for the fiscal year 2024, noting proposed cuts to a wide variety of programs and social services.

“Mayor Adams has become unbelievably skilled at speaking out of both sides of his mouth. How can we be on the brink of a fiscal crisis and yet have $8.3 billion for a rainy day fund?” asked NYIC Executive Director, Murad Awawdeh. “It makes no sense. Right now, thousands of New Yorkers are struggling with soaring rents, the increasing price of groceries, and just making ends meet.

“Instead of providing real solutions for all New York’s families, the mayor is continuing to sow division among New Yorkers by blaming his administration’s fiscal failures on the asylum seekers who are simply in pursuit of safety from violence and persecution as they are legally entitled to do,” he added. “Executive budgets are about choices — the mayor’s choices have made clear that his priority is ensuring that the city serves the interest of the ultra-wealthy, no matter the cost to every day working New Yorkers.

“The mayor and City Council must step up to deliver a budget that will uplift every single New Yorker in their time of need, which includes investing $3 million for English Language Learner (ELL) Transfer School Programs; $75 million to hire additional social workers to support the needs of students, especially newcomer asylum seekers; renewed funding for legal services programs including $31.1 million for ActionNYC and Admin IOI (Immigrant Opportunity Initiative); and $10 million for an emergency immigration legal services program for asylum seekers,” Awawdeh urged.

“We reject the Mayor’s continued calls for austerity and demand a budget that ensures every New Yorker has equal opportunity to raise their families and thrive in New York City, no matter their income level or legal status,” he continued.

In the meantime, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, the son of Grenadian immigrants, said that, “with over half of New York’s families unable to meet the minimum cost of living in our city amid an affordability crisis, we must not repeat the mistakes of the past by pushing austerity at times of greatest need.

“As I argued in Washington, D.C. last week, the necessity of state and federal funding to support the needs of asylum seekers is real and urgent” he said. “At the same time, so is the need to provide essential government services at their full capacity. These goals are part of the same moral and governing mandate, and one cannot be used as justification to impede the other.

“The issues highlighted during this surge in people seeking asylum also pre-dated it – the day before the first bus arrived at Port Authority, there were already 50,000 New Yorkers in shelters, many for years,” Williams added. “Our city’s current budgetary challenges have certainly been exacerbated, but are rooted in years of government failure to address systemic problems.

“Our city has faced fiscal hardship many times in our history, and the prudent path has been investment, then and now. Not funding agencies and programs adequately, or worse, cutting them, has a real cost, and we must all agree to prevent them in the final budget,” he continued. “I know that there are areas of agreement with the administration on issues like preventing gun violence, creating deeply affordable housing, and supporting mental healthcare. Beyond agreeing on principles, we have to prioritize funding and implementation of programs to meet them. On gun violence, for example, we still await a long-promised report and plan to be put in place, and a previously funded anti-violence mentorship pilot to launch.

“As we continue to review the details of this executive budget proposal, we must be clear that in the coming fiscal year, it’s time for concrete action,” Williams urged. “We can neither retreat from past promises nor preserve the status quo; we must progress.”