Aiming to improve the city’s response to the arrival of asylum seekers, City Council President Adrienne Adams on Tuesday introduced the Newcomers Strategy Team, a new interdisciplinary group of experts that will lead develop strategies that seek better integration of migrants into New York society.
Lilliam Barrios Paoli, who has served the city in local politics for forty years, is part of the group and expands on us:
“They’re going to be specifically looking at education, at youth services, at legal services, at housing services,” Barrios Paoli said. “How to integrate these new community participants into the larger community?”
The new entity is made up of three components: an advisory board, City Council staff, and nine leaders representing more than 75 organizations on various issues such as language access, culture and social connections, housing, legal services and more.
The Strategy Team will review who makes up the immigrant groups to better understand their needs.
“What is the reality of people? How are they? Who are they? What do they want to do? We treat the immigrant group as an amorphous group, we treat everyone the same and there are very, very different groups. Not everyone has the same cultural values, not everyone has the same competencies,” Barrios Paoli added. “Then see how it is better to integrate people, that is, group by group and not treat them all as a group that all It’s homogeneous.”
Policy recommendations include expanding housing voucher eligibility, establishing the right to counsel in immigration court proceedings, and reducing wait times for work authorization.
Some recently arrived immigrants were optimistic about the new group:
“It seems like a very feasible idea to me, since as you say, we have been stagnant here for a long time. Two months there, two months here and trying to solve it and then you can’t get it, it’s half enough to feed yourself, to clothe yourself,” said Yheenker Fernández, an asylum seeker from Venezuela.
“Actually, we immigrants need a new work plan that is more effective, faster and more efficient, because the majority of people who come here do not find it easy to work,” said Juan Alberto Victoriano Beato, a Dominican immigrant.
The new Newcomer Strategy Team group will begin meeting at the end of April.
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