John,

Last Friday, the NYC Council passed their $107 billion City Budget, which offered some positive returns to immigrant and working New Yorkers.

The budget made some critical investments for New Yorkers by:

• Restoring the $36.2 million investment in the public library system.

• Increasing baseline funding for Fair Fares to $95 million to expand eligibility to more low-income New Yorkers. 

• $16 million in funding for 600 Promise NYC child care slots for undocumented children and their families.

• $4 million to continue funding for the NYC Department of Education’s Immigrant Family Engagement program, which helps parents, who either do not speak English or are outside the nine standard translated languages, communicate with schools about their children’s education.

• Continued investments in Adult Literacy, Access Health NYC, Immigrant Health Initiative, Welcome NYC, and Key to the City programs, which are vital to ensuring our immigrant neighbors can access the services they need not just to survive, but to thrive in this city. 

While these investments are critical to supporting the everyday needs of many immigrant families, we are disappointed the final budget failed to meet the moment and include more meaningful, long-lasting and critical infrastructure investments. 

In particular,  the CUNY system and Department of Education programs and services lacked the funding needed to keep up with inflation and provide the essential services needed, thus jeopardizing the city’s future by hurting all NYC students. Asylum seekers continue to be scapegoated by Mayor Adams for his austerity measures, and his administration continues to hinder their ability to get on the pathway to self-reliance through deeper investments in legal services and cityFHEPs vouchers, which would help new arrivals leave our costly and overburdened shelter system.

We couldn’t have made it even this far without your support. Many of you participated in our social media calls to action, emailed your representatives, or donated to support our organizing and lobbying efforts. Thank you—your support made these wins possible!

Our work is still far from done. We will spend the summer talking to our members from around the state to determine next year’s state and local priorities and learn more about the challenges their communities are facing now. We’ll share more about the outcome of those conversations in the coming months.

Murad Awawdeh
Executive Director