City Council Melissa Mark-Viverito
Immigration Speech at Cardozo Law School
Friday, November 21, 2014

Remarks as Prepared

Thank you and good morning.

I would like to start by thanking my colleague Council Member Rory Lancman from Queens who is here today. He has been a strong advocate for equal access to justice for all New Yorkers, a great partner, and I am happy to call him a colleague.

First I want to thank Peter Markowitz, Director of the Cardozo Immigration Law Clinic, and Matt Diller, Dean of Cardozo Law School and our host today. I also want to thank Chief Judge Robert Katzmann, who I like to call the architect of the City’s Immigration public defender system.

Thank you’s are also in very much in order for Mr. Robert Morgenthau, who has been an incredible advocate for the rights of immigrants, the Robin Hood Foundation who have partnered with the Council on our unaccompanied minors initiative and New York City Commissioner for Immigrant Affairs Nisha Agarwal.

You are all tremendous partners and I am grateful for your efforts in this struggle.

And make no mistake– immigration reform has been a struggle.

For more than a decade, this country has been mired in an endless and circular debate on immigration.

What do we do with the 11 million plus undocumented immigrants who are already here?

Just what does securing the border mean?

How do we ensure immigrants are not taken advantage of?

And so on.

And while the solutions have bipartisan agreement – the politics of immigration reform have been ugly.

In campaign ad after campaign ad and election after election, undocumented Americans have been criminalized and scapegoated for political gain.

This fear-mongering has at times served its malicious purpose: it has created a toxic political environment around the issue.

The halls of Congress haven’t been much better.

Undocumented immigrants have been called “criminals,” “wetbacks” and worse by Republican in interviews and on the floor of our nation’s Congress.

And this summer as unaccompanied minors fled unspeakable violence, many Washington Republicans took to calling them diseased.

This rancor and obstruction is what necessitated presidential action- and why many like myself, Congressman Luis Gutierrez, Governor Andrew Cuomo, Governor Martin O’Malley, and many others have urged the President to go big, go bold and go soon. Because there was no time to waste.

History is behind the President: the last 6 Republican Presidents have taken executive action on immigration.

Like President Obama, they understood executive action for immigration relief was a critical tool.

And this is why it‘s exceptionally fortunate that I am here to speak with you this morning.

Last night, with a simple announcement, President Obama delivered on not just a political promise, he delivered on the very promise of America.

The promise that America as country is never static, but always striving for perfection.

And Last night… the President nudged us a little closer to that ideal.

Because of President Obama-

5 million undocumented immigrants will be protected from deportation.

These deportations have been especially damaging to communities.

They have ripped families apart.

They have torn at our social fabric.

And they were counterproductive.

When many of us said, “Not one more” —THIS is what we meant.

For 5 million hard working immigrants, the specter of deportation is lifted.

They no longer have to wake up wondering if this is the day ICE comes to their home or work.

This is good news.

The Executive Action also expands the program for DREAMERS- ending the age limit and benefiting 700,000 people.

This will give more protections to children who were brought here and through no fault of their own have been undocumented.

I found out last night that my friend, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and undocumented immigrant Jose Antonio Vargas is among that group.

There is still more to do and immigration reform must be a top priority for Congress.

The Senate passed a bipartisan immigration reform bill in 2013; the House should act on that.

Unfortunately, the House has not shown the will or desire to act.

That’s why the President is stepping in where Republicans in Congress have continuously failed- much like the New York City Council has done over the past year.

Thanks to many in this room, New York City has established itself as a national leader on immigration policy.

I challenge anyone to find a municipality or state that has done more for immigrants.

In just this past year the City Council, through the leadership of the Council’s outstanding immigration committee chairman Carlos Menchaca- has passed a landmark municipal ID program for all- including undocumented Americans.

For many, this will be their first ID and will give them access to City Services and many other benefits.

We’ve also passed two bills that will significantly limit the City’s cooperation with ICE in the enforcement of civil immigration laws.

These bills will prohibit the Department of Correction and the Police Department from honoring civil immigration detainer requests issued by ICE unless a Federal judge issues a warrant AND the subject of the detainer has been convicted of a violent or serious crime or is a possible match on a terrorist watch list.

New York City has no business expending scarce resources assisting in the enforcement of broken immigration laws. Congress wouldn’t act—so we did.

In addition to reducing the number of ICE civil detainer requests the City honors we also removed ICE offices from Rikers Island and we will no longer give ICE special access to those being held on Rikers Island.

I know many in this room were supportive in this effort- and I thank you tremendously.

And we also created a landmark public-private partnership to fund lawyers for New York City’s unaccompanied minors.

After touring the surge docket and seeing the level of despair, sadness and hopelessness that some of these children faced, I knew we needed to act.

So taking $1 million in Council funds which were designated to immigration services, we teamed up with the Robin Hood Foundation and New York Community Trust to create this new initiative.

This nearly $2 million program is helping provide critical legal services to these children who have found themselves here- far from home and without access to a lawyer.

I am proud to say that is no longer the case in New York City and every child will have an attorney.

But even after the President’s Executive Action, immigrants will still desperately need legal representation in deportation proceedings.

So I am also proud to say the Council funded the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project—the brainchild of Judge Katzmann and one of the reasons we all came together today.

I hope we can all learn from this program and from the Immigrant Justice Corps—a new program I am equally excited about. This program will create a new generation of committed immigration lawyers with the tools to take on the challenges to come.

New York City is a city built by immigrants.

Immigration is our past, our present and our future.

We thrive and succeed because of immigrants.

There is much more work to be done- but with partners like those in this room, I know New York City will continue to be a beacon of hope, compassion and resilience.

Thank you.