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PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Alice Davis, Deputy Director of Catholic Migration Services
2:47:14
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128 sec
Alice Davis, Deputy Director of Catholic Migration Services, testifies in support of bills 205 and 980 to combat immigration services fraud. She highlights the need for additional protections for immigrant communities due to the scarcity of affordable, quality legal services and the prevalence of fraudulent providers.
- Catholic Migration Services provides free legal services in immigration, workers' rights, and housing to low-income NYC residents.
- Davis reports instances of notarios falsely advertising immigration legal services without proper authorization or training.
- The organization has had to correct mistakes made by fraudulent providers, including incorrect applications and submissions to wrong government offices.
Alice Davis
2:47:14
Hi, Good afternoon committee chairs of Ilis and Minin and members of the committee on immigration and consumer and worker protection.
2:47:21
Thank you for the opportunity to testify regarding bills two zero five and nine eighty.
2:47:28
My name is Alice Davis and I'm the Deputy Director at Catholic Migration Services.
2:47:32
Catholic Migration Services provides free legal services and information to low income New York City residents in three main areas: immigration, workers' rights, and housing.
2:47:42
For over fifty years, our immigration unit has provided both removal defense and affirmative legal assistance to immigrants residing in New York City.
2:47:50
More recently, our Prose Plus team, which was created a few years ago, has worked with unrepresented asylum seekers with legal orientations, screenings, triage and application assistance.
2:48:03
To review some of what some of the other providers have said, the immigration process is often very long and expensive and complicated.
2:48:12
And in recent years, the availability of quality, and affordable immigration legal services has become very scarce.
2:48:20
As a result, we are seeing that many of our immigrant clients, have turned to notarios who falsely advertise immigration legal services, even though they have no legal training or not authorized to perform some of these services.
2:48:36
We applaud the city council for taking measures to protect New York City immigrant populations from fraudulent immigration services providers.
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And we feel that it is critical at this time to implement these additional protections.
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We have seen instances of providers who hold themselves out as nonprofits but have charged exorbitant fees to prepare asylum applications.
2:48:58
On many occasions, we have cleaned up and corrected the mistakes of notarios, including the use of incorrect applications and the submissions of applications to incorrect government offices.
2:49:08
And we have found that, as in in essence, our immigration team is spending, inordinate amount of time
UNKNOWN
2:49:18
Your time has expired.
2:49:19
Thank you.
Alice Davis
2:49:20
Thank thank you.