TESTIMONY
Carolyn Cohen on Supporting Immigrant Communities in NYC
4:41:04
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3 min
Carolyn Cohen from the Chinese American Planning Council (CPC) discusses the importance of funding and supporting immigrant-centric programs in NYC.
- Cohen emphasizes the need for increased investment and stable funding for immigrant support initiatives like Promise NYC and adult literacy programs.
- They advocate for ending the 60-day shelter rule, increasing legal services funding, and investing in the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community support initiative.
- Specific stories, such as assistance provided to a Venezuelan family through Promise NYC, are used to underline the critical role of these programs.
- Cohen calls for at least $20 million in increased investment for certain programs and highlights the importance of fair wages under the "just pay initiative" for human services workers.
- They point out the potential negative impact of the RFP's neighborhood focus on CPC's ability to serve community members needing English literacy training.
Carolyn Cohen
4:41:04
Good good afternoon, everyone.
4:41:07
My name is Carlin Cohen.
4:41:08
My pronouns are they them, and I'm the chief policy and public affairs officer of the Chinese American Planning Council, CPC.
4:41:15
CPC serves over 80,000 Asian American immigrant low income New Yorkers in all 59 neighborhoods of New York City each year.
4:41:23
Thank you so much, Cher.
4:41:25
Avianas.
4:41:25
And we canceled the opportunity to testify at today's hearing.
4:41:30
While many of my colleagues have listed a number of important immigrant serving initiatives that we as CDC support greatly.
4:41:38
I want to uplift a couple in particular and the full list is included in our written testimony that we are submitting.
4:41:46
1st up, Promise NYC, CPC is one of the designated sites for Promise NYC, and we have been working with undocumented families, including asylum seekers, families, and families in Queens to help them enroll for childcare.
4:42:00
One of our community members came to us from Venezuela, and she came because her oldest child could not get necessary life saving medical treatment.
4:42:10
And since then, she has been able to help her child get the lifesaving medication and treatment that she needs to survive and has been relying on Thomas NYC to be able to work while her child gets treatment and care.
4:42:24
This is just one story of many and CDC experience that we enrolled.
4:42:30
In fact, our community member allotment within the 1st couple of months and have waiting lists of 100 of community members long.
4:42:37
For this critical program.
4:42:38
So we urge the city not only to increase investment to at least 20,000,000, but also to baseline funding so that families can have that stability year after year.
4:42:47
We also want to highlight the changes to the adult literacy program At the time that adult literacy is needed more than ever to continuing welcoming new immigrants to New York City, we've seen an RFP that come out that threatens to cut programs for about 60% of the current providers by designated preferred neighborhoods in the new RFP program.
4:43:09
CPC, for example, although we serve community members that live in the identified neighborhood targets, we do not have program sites within those neighborhoods, so we risk losing slots for 600 community members to learn English.
4:43:24
Again, we appreciate that The city is trying to focus on underserved neighborhoods, but this can be accomplished by adding additional slots and additional funding for adult literacy so that community members across our city can be served, not by rearranging and restricting those slots.
4:43:39
So we really encourage the release of the RF p, anew, and also to increase in baseline funding by at least 21,000,000 in adult literacy.
4:43:49
In addition to that, we urge the ending of the 60 day shelter rule.
4:43:53
It has been wreaking havoc on our community members that have coming in and needed support.
4:43:58
We encourage increase in legal services funding for our immigrant community members, and we encourage investment in the AAPI community support initiative to support Asian American and immigrant New Yorkers.
4:44:11
And lastly, we are strong supporters of the just pay initiative because we know that our staff that are working in and out every single day to serve immigrant New Yorkers are not getting paid the wages that they deserve.
4:44:23
And by adding in a cola and a wage war for our human services workers, we can vet serve all of our immigrant community members.
4:44:31
Thank you again for the opportunity to testify today.