QUESTION
What updates are available on the Mayor's Office for Immigrant Affairs (MOIA) hotlines' performance and services?
2:27:42
·
5 min
The Mayor's Office for Immigrant Affairs (MOIA) updates on its hotlines, which provide legal and immigration-related information, highlighting their vital role in supporting NYC immigrants.
- MOIA operates two main hotlines: one for immigration legal questions and another as a general information line, serving as a complement to 311.
- They report a significant influx of calls, mainly concerning legal services and IDNYC appointment assistance.
- The immigration services hotline, managed by Catholic Charities, has added multilingual operators and upgraded technology to respond effectively to the diverse inquiries.
- MOIA emphasizes its role in troubleshooting and navigating for callers who do not find answers through 311, although it is not intended as a replacement.
- The general MOIA hotline operates with limited staff, handling about 6,000 inquiries last year, demonstrating the persistent demand for immigration-specific support.
Alexa Avilés
2:27:42
What is is there a status update on Moya's hop hotline?
2:27:46
You mentioned 16 60,000 received calls in our last hearing.
2:27:52
Wanted to hear a little bit more about what the issues that you're seeing Mhmm.
2:27:59
Coming through the hotline.
2:28:00
Can you tell us a little bit about, like, what that looks like?
Manuel Castro
2:28:04
It it depends on which hotline we have we operate to a hotline.
Alexa Avilés
2:28:07
True hotline.
Manuel Castro
2:28:08
Yes.
Alexa Avilés
2:28:08
Okay.
Manuel Castro
2:28:09
They were that PMMR needs to be updated for sure.
2:28:13
The First, Tom, we can talk about the immigration services hotline, which deals with immigration legal questions.
2:28:24
And, again, we've had record number of calls.
2:28:27
Tom can speak to that.
2:28:29
We also have our general ex Moia hotline.
2:28:32
Which is meant to complement the work of 311.
2:28:37
It doesn't replace it because we do not have the staffing the 3 home one has.
2:28:42
It's not a call center, but it is meant for individuals who are having a hard time getting the information that they're looking for, and we often encourage immigrant Yorkers to call into 311 and if they are are not successful in obtaining answers to the questions they can call us in the past 18 months, last past year, many of the calls that we received have to do was accessing legal services.
2:29:15
And so we connect them to our legal services, hotline, hotline, and other resources.
2:29:20
Again, we receive a lot of calls to deal with IDNYC, and when that happens, we can connect them to IDNYC and explain the process to obtaining appointments.
2:29:33
So, again, we're not we're not supposed to replace 311, which is really the main vehicle for people to get their answers questions answered.
2:29:45
We're really there to troubleshoot and navigate whenever they're not successful elsewhere.
2:29:50
So Tom can talk about the legal hotline now.
Alexa Avilés
2:29:53
Got it.
Tom Tortorici
2:29:55
Thanks, commissioner.
2:29:56
Just briefly, the hotline has it was originally created just the schedule action MIC appointments when during the creation of that program in 2015, 2016, and has since discovered through the diversity of calls, the variety of caller questions that doing more is necessary, especially given that the demand for immigration legal services is much greater than the supply overall in New York City and across the nation.
2:30:24
And so the hotline, we've added hotline operators, Catholic Charities is the contracted nonprofit that runs the hotline.
2:30:33
Hotline operators that are multilingual, especially speaking Haitian Creole, given the increase in Asian nationals coming to New York and also investing in technology, RingCentral Systems, and other CRMs that help them to manage the calls more effectively.
2:30:53
Their target deliverable, you know, they've exceeded the number of calls received year after year, but they're required to answer a minimum of 90% of calls without allowing for too much of droppage.
2:31:11
And they have met or come very close to meeting that goal even with the significant increase in callers.
Alexa Avilés
2:31:17
Does answering mean, like, literally answering or is that resolution?
Tom Tortorici
2:31:24
Responded to.
Alexa Avilés
2:31:26
Okay.
Tom Tortorici
2:31:26
Yep.
2:31:27
Okay.
Alexa Avilés
2:31:28
And in terms of how many staffing what's this staffing for the general esque moya hotline.
Manuel Castro
2:31:43
The general exmora hotline.
2:31:46
Just to be specific about the data, has received close to 6000 has answered to 6000 inquiries last calendar year.
2:31:59
And generally, 2 staff rotate the the answering, the the hotline and a couple of fellows, it fluctuates rates depending on the fellows that we have available.
Alexa Avilés
2:32:13
Got it.
2:32:14
And in terms of the I'm sorry, commissionable.
Manuel Castro
2:32:17
I was just gonna say that this is why we say that this is not supposed to replace 311, which does have a call center So we encourage people.
2:32:25
They can't reach us.
2:32:27
They they should reach out through through 11, but we often end up getting so some of those more complex calls to our hotline.
Alexa Avilés
2:32:36
Have you looked at the overall universe of related immigration related that includes 301 data and and what Moia is able to complement.
Manuel Castro
2:32:50
No.
2:32:50
I mean, it's that's quite challenging because as you mentioned, so many people call into 311.
2:32:56
That could be immigrants.
2:32:57
It's not That's not information that's readily available through or asked by 311 operators.
2:33:03
But when they refer to us, we're able to collect that information.
Alexa Avilés
2:33:08
And for the, I guess, for the legal services hotline with the capital lictories, how many how many people serve that contract?
Tom Tortorici
2:33:20
Currently, there are 9 operators, 1 coordinator and a director.
Alexa Avilés
2:33:24
Got it.
2:33:24
Thank you.
2:33:29
I know the answer to this question.
2:33:31
Have you requested additional funding for Moiya's hotline?
Manuel Castro
2:33:36
We have not well engaged in the process as we continue.
Alexa Avilés
2:33:39
We're talking with OMB.