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; and $60 million to provide legal representation to those in immigration courts, where there is a backlog of 127,000 cases. 

The mayor’s office did not respond to an inquiry about the funding recommendation.

Those funds, Lander and Hanif said, could help expand the city’s existing programs for immigrants including ActionNYC, the Immigrant Opportunity Initiative (IOI), and the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP). And they said the city should work with law schools and law firms to enroll volunteers who can provide legal assistance to migrants, and enlist the help of nonprofit and religious organizations for outreach and translation services [Read More].