Gotham Gazette – Last week, City Comptroller Brad Lander and Council Member Shahana Hanif, who chairs the Council’s immigration committee, wrote a letter to the mayor, calling on him to invest an additional $70 million in the city budget for immigration legal services. That would include $10 million to scale up pro se legal clinics that help immigrants apply for asylum, work authorization, and Temporary Protected Status;
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New York Post – “We also believe it is critical – not only for those seeking asylum, but also for the City’s long-term fiscal stability – to significantly ramp up outreach and legal immigration services to help asylum seekers navigate the paperwork that will enable them to live, work, and contribute to our city,” wrote City Comptroller Brad Lander and Councilwoman Shahana Hanif in a letter to Adams on May 9.
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Daily News – Brooklyn Councilwoman Shahana Hanif, a Democrat who chairs the Council’s Immigration Committee, raised particular alarm about how Adams’ policy shift could impact migrant children.
“The last time families were in congregate settings, there were cases of child sexual abuse,” tweeted Hanif. “Right-to-shelter exists to protect families and ensure all New Yorkers have their rights respected in our shelter system,” she added.
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CBS New York – The city has welcomed more than 60,000 asylum seekers in the past year and more than 37,000 currently remain in the city’s care.
During a budget hearing on immigration Wednesday morning, Council Member Shahana Hanif said lack of sufficient federal funding does not excuse the ways in which the city has housed asylum seekers.
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Gothamist – The City Council excoriated Mayor Eric Adams’ response to the city’s ongoing migrant crisis on Wednesday amid mounting concerns over the growing number of arrivals.
“Now that we are over a year into the situation, we must be building the long-term infrastructure needed to help recent arrivals succeed,” said Councilmember Shahana Hanif, who represents the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens and Park Slope, during a budget hearing on immigration and youth services on Wednesday.
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Gothamist – The city needs to invest more resources toward resolving the underlying problem areas — shrinking the perennially high shelter population by fast-tracking residents into long-term housing, said Lander and Councilmember Shahana Hanif, the head of the immigration committee.
They also argue that the city needs to invest more money, $70 million by Lander’s estimate, into legal services to clear the biggest hurdle now for many to get a work permit: filing an asylum application.
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ABC 7 – Neely had a long history of mental illness, and many leaders believe he slipped through the cracks, a story that’s all too common in New York City. Now, lawmakers want to change that.
“Tragic deaths like Jordan Neely’s are the inevitable result of our city refusing to acknowledge the basic dignity that all of us have as human beings,”
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Gothamist – “As someone who grew up as a young Muslim in post-9/11 New York, I am all too familiar with this city’s overreliance on surveillance technology to harass communities of color,” Councilmember Shahana Hanif, the sponsor of the first bill, said in a written statement. “It’s time our Council takes action to protect our communities from the constant overreaches of the expansive surveillance state [Read More].”
The City – In an unusual show of solidarity by elected officials, Councilmembers Chi Ossé, Sandy Nurse, Alexa Aviles and Shahana Hanif of Brooklyn and Queens Councilmember Tiffany Cabán led the stage takeover along with a couple dozen supporters. The Council members also spoke to the crowd, which quieted its roar to hear them read testimonies from renters around the city who say their housing situations would be upended by any increase in rent [Read More].
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City + State –
These issues, which have long plagued the city’s labor market, are among what New York City Council Members hope to address through the creation and dissemination of an “immigrant workers’ bill of rights.” While there are already existing federal, state and local laws that protect immigrant workers regardless of status, many immigrants aren’t aware of this, according to Council Member Shahana Hanif, who sponsors
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