This summary was featured in Documented’s Early Arrival newsletter. You can subscribe to receive it in your inbox three times per week here.
New Yorkers who are eligible for the $2.1 billion Excluded Workers Fund, which was approved more than two weeks ago, are waiting for the State Department of Labor to answer their questions. They don’t know when the fund will begin being handed out and what will happen if the number of applicants pass the estimated 290,000 limit on recipients. According to the Fiscal Policy Institute, 92,000 people will qualify for the tier 1 benefits under the fund while 199,000 for tier 2 benefits. That’s just a small piece of New York City’s estimated 560,000 undocumented people, with most of them between the ages of 18 to 64 age range. Advocates realize the fund is high in demand and stressed the importance of properly planning out its distribution. City Limits
纽约州“能源补助”申请指南
In other local immigration news…
Documented Talks: The Future of Chinatown
📍 Documented Event
Manhattan’s Chinatown has suffered immensely since the beginning of the pandemic; from businesses closing to former President Donald Trump constantly connecting coronavirus and China. On Thursday, April 29 at 4:30 pm, Documented host an online discussion with Rong Xiaoqing, a reporter for the Chinese-language newspaper Sing Tao Daily, to discuss the events of this past year and will shed light upon what the future may hold for Chinatown residents as they cope with loss of employment, declining business and rising rent, along with other issues. Wellington Chen, executive director of the Chinatown BID, Joanne Kwog, president of Pearl River Mart and Yin Kong, founder of Think! Chinatown, will join her. Register here for our free Zoom event.
New York’s Immigrant Population is Declining
New York has long been the place where immigrants started their journeys in the United States. But that seems to be changing, as government data shows the number of foreign-born New Yorkers hasn’t been growing. Between 2009 and 2019, the number of foreign-born green card or visa-holding New Yorkers decreased by 16 percent. According to the U.S. Customs and Immigration Service, a program that allows family members to sponsor relatives to migrate recorded its lowest number of petitions in New York regional offices last year. Ramón Guerra, an immigration attorney in Long Island City, said the new demands reflect “residual effects of having an administration that basically beat down immigrants for the last four years.” The City
Advocates Rally for Citizenship at Jersey City
Dozens of immigrant advocates marched through Jersey City’s Exchange Place to urge Congress to pass legislation for a pathway to citizenship for undocumented essential workers and 11 million undocumented immigrants who reside in the U.S. “For far too long, harmful federal immigration policies have caused our friends and neighbors to live in fear of detention and family separation, threats that have only been magnified over the last four years,” said Sarah Fajardo, policy director of ACLU-New Jersey. The Relay Across America, which hosted the rally, is leading in-person and virtual events in about 30 states through May 1. NJ.com
