Immigrant-ARC Statement on Mayor Adams's Announcement of $2M+ in Assistance for Ukrainian Refugees

NEW YORK, NY (04/22/2022) (readMedia)-- Immigrant-ARC (I-ARC) commended Mayor Adams for his announcement to deliver over $2 million in funding to help currently residing and newly arriving Ukrainians with immigration legal services.

"We applaud Mayor Adams for providing aid to help ensure the smooth resettlement of Ukrainian families fleeing violence and war back home. However, there is still more to be done to help fix our strained immigration system: There are already Afghan, Cameroonian and Haitian communities in New York who hope to receive the help they were promised by the Biden administration – and that's on top of the backlog in immigration courts created by closures during the pandemic and increased enforcement during the Trump presidency. Simply put: Immigration legal service providers just don't have the capacity. While this is a great start, we must properly fund legal services for immigrant New Yorkers," said Camille Mackler, founder and Executive Director of I-ARC.

I-ARC recently polled its over 80 statewide members, all of whom are legal service providers, and the reality is that no one has capacity to meet the pressing needs of the latest crisis driven by families fleeing Ukraine.

Earlier this week, I-ARC was joined by Council Member & Immigration Chair Shahana Hanif, Catholic Charities, Legal Aid Society, Urban Justice Center, CALA and Brooklyn Defenders to urge the City to fully fund legal services for immigrant New Yorkers. Watch the presser here. The group yesterday urged lawmakers to increase funding for immigration legal services from $23.2 million to $26.6 million, including a increase to $4 million for the Immigrant Opportunities Initiative, as well as $18 million for the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP) and $4.5 million for the Immigrant Children Advocates Response Effort (ICARE).

About I-ARC

Immigrant ARC is a collaborative of over 80 organizations and professional associations providing legal services to New York's immigrant communities throughout the State. Born out of the legal effort at JFK Airport during the Muslim Travel Ban in 2017, our mission is clear: to mobilize New York State's legal service providers by facilitating communication and information sharing to better support our immigrant communities; to organize and respond to issues as they arise by coordinating resources and fostering best practices among providers; and to resist and challenge anti-immigrant policies by shining a light on injustices and confronting inequalities faced by our communities in the legal system.