Hi John,

Across our state, more than 23,000 income-eligible children cannot access child care assistance solely due to their immigration status — including children lawfully present in the United States. Email New York State’s leaders urging them to invest state dollars in this budget and end the exclusion of children from eligibility for child care assistance based on immigration status.

Many of the children barred from assistance are the children of essential workers — the very essential workers that kept New York running during the dark days of the pandemic, the families we vowed to support in the future.

Our existing system bars these children from assistance, but there is nothing that prevents New York State from spending its own state general fund to ensure all the state's children have access to child care. Universal child care means that child care assistance access does not depend on a child’s immigration status. New York can — and must — provide care for all children.

The Senate has shown a commitment to expanding access to currently ineligible children in the budget. Yet with their inaction, Governor Kathy Hochul and the Assembly are still choosing to leave them behind.

Send an email now to all our State leaders — Governor Hochul, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie — urging them to invest state dollars in this budget and end this unjust, harmful exclusion of children from eligibility for child care assistance based on their immigration status.

In solidarity,

Jasmine Gripper