QUESTION
Is there a plan to increase legal services funding and expand non-profit legal assistance in 2025?
2:01:44
·
3 min
Officials discuss plans to increase legal services and move towards non-profit partnerships, but no specific increase for fiscal 2025 is in the preliminary budget.
- The Mayor's Office for Immigrant Affairs (MOIA) is currently in the early stages of budget planning for legal services funding.
- There is a short-term strategy to move away from for-profit contractors towards nonprofit vendors, in partnership with the City University of New York.
- In the past year, the legal assistance network has held 43 clinics and served 756 migrants and asylum seekers, providing a range of application and court guidance.
- Over 8,000 people received training from the network's partners, including asylum seekers and frontline workers, emphasizing a community-rooted and holistic approach.
Alexa Avilés
2:01:44
So in terms of, is there any plan to increase the legal services in fiscal 25 to meet the 150,000,000 fiscal 25 funding requests from legal professionals.
Molly Schaeffer
2:02:01
I mean, we're currently expanding our work through the stage.
2:02:06
And I defer to Moia on the other.
Alexa Avilés
2:02:09
Okay.
Manuel Castro
2:02:10
Yeah.
2:02:10
There's current it's not something that's in in our the preliminary budget.
2:02:16
Again, we're at the beginning stages of this process.
2:02:20
We'll certainly, you know, continue to work with city hall and OMB on this.
2:02:25
But I did wanna have to give Tom an opportunity to talk about Aslan, which I spoke about earlier and also mentioned that speaks to the one of your earlier questions.
2:02:39
We've in the last couple of months think we've had many good discussions around our desire to move away from these sort of pro for profit contractors to working closer with our non profit vendors.
2:02:55
Again, short term strategy required us to work in such a way that we had to rely on this temp agency.
2:03:04
But as long as I think it's a good a model that we can look to to working and expanding capacity of our nonprofit providers in partnership with the City University of New York.
2:03:16
So time if
Tom Tortorici
2:03:17
you wanna speak to it.
2:03:19
Thank you, commissioner.
2:03:20
And as commissioner said, that's been the attention of Moiya and the assigned to the legal assistance network since inception.
2:03:32
In the past year, the collection of organizations that make up that initiative have held 43 clinics serving 756 newly arrived in migrants and asylum seekers who arrived on or after January 1 2022.
2:03:47
There is no requirement that they actively live in shelters, so it's a broader population.
Shekar Krishnan
2:03:52
Mhmm.
Tom Tortorici
2:03:52
And the services they provide are also broader.
2:03:55
They serve individuals with Prosafe Alarm application assistance.
2:03:59
TPS application assistance, work authorization application assistance.
2:04:04
They also provide guidance with respect to representing oneself in court.
2:04:08
Given that representation is very low field wide.
2:04:13
They help folks with changes of venue and changes of address, all the things necessary to ensure success in the case to the extent possible.
2:04:24
They also provide training sessions.
2:04:26
More than 8000 people have received training and informational session sessions from Ossalon Partners.
2:04:32
This is further building the capacity of the field.
2:04:36
Many of the individuals participating in those sessions were asylum seekers themselves learning how to navigate their own case.
2:04:43
Many thousands of others were frontline workers, community based organizations, staff, volunteers who are working to assist the sound seekers, even shelter staff so that they are more aware of the sort of paperwork people are presenting with and not providing legal advice, but helping to orient people to the appropriate resources and information.
2:05:06
So it's a holistic approach, community rooted driven by nonprofits, and we're proud of everything that our partners under that initiative have accomplished to date.
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How is the RFP process for legal services being addressed amid critiques, and what are the efforts to resolve funding disparities between nonprofit and profit providers?
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What is the budget for the Asylum Seeker Legal Assistance Network (ASLAN) program and will its funding level continue in the coming year?
