New York City has welcomed thousands of immigrants over the past year and a half but only about 2,100 have applied for work permitswhich they have not yet obtained, as revealed in public hearings of the municipal legislature.
Of that figure, only 300 are Venezuelanssaid Masha Gindler, executive director of the Application Help Center. asylumin hearings of the City Council’s Immigration Committee.
On September 20, the Administration of President Joe Biden announced the extension of the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 18 months for Venezuelans -who are the largest group of those who have emigrated to New York- which allows them to live and work in this country without fear of deportation.
Working will allow them to leave the city’s shelterssomething Mayor Eric Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul have advocated for due to the humanitarian and fiscal crisis the situation has created.
To date, the city does not know how many of the more than 40,000 adults it provides shelter to qualify to work, city representatives admitted during the hearing.
Gindler told committee members, who were evaluating the legal services the city offers to newly arrived immigrants, that as soon as the date on which they could apply for the TPS They scheduled appointments for more than 600 people.
To date, he said, approximately half of those applications have been submitted through the center he runs “and the reason is that there is a lot of paperwork to go through” so immigrants will return for another appointment with the required documents.
The rest of the applications were processed and submitted with the help of federal government employees from another location in Manhattan.
The center run by Gindler has 75 employees who deal with immigration procedures and 20 lawyers who supervise the work and In total they have processed 5,600 asylum applications since the end of June.
During the hearing it was also learned that the city has not given priority to Venezuelans at the center to request your TPS nor has he informed them of the change.
The city is conducting a survey among newcomers in order to know who qualifies to work, which according to Gindler “will give us a lot of information” to be able to schedule more appointments for the procedures of the TPS.
2023-10-19 01:20:00
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