In New York City, where population is composed largely of immigrants, anti-immigrant laws are often just a distant nightmare, a dream of radical conservatives. No one in this city could imagine a law, like the one instituted in Arizona, that will require city employees to report undocumented immigrants.
However, HR 4437 – a bill that has been approved by the House of Representatives – could severely limit the access of undocumented immigrants to public services in New York, including the use of the city’s police force, and would significantly alter the city’s social safety net.
“All of the work that the City Council has done to guarantee benefits to documented and undocumented immigrants – from the Executive Order 41, which permits the use of city services without the police questioning legal status, to the law we recently approved, which requires the Department of Education to provide services in all pertinent languages – all of this is in danger. If this passes we will have a witch hunt across the United States,” said Council Member Miguel Martínez, who announced last week that a resolution against HR 4437 will soon be presented in City Council.
The U.S. Senate is currently divided on different immigration reform and border security proposals. Although there is a proposal that would legalize workers and offer the possibility of gaining citizenship, which was presented by Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Edward Kennedy (D-MA), it is another proposal by Senator Arlen Specter, president of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which serves as the launching point for the debate.
This is bad news for the half-million undocumented immigrants that live in New York, since Specter’s proposal picks up some of the more controversial clauses from HR 4437, such as the criminalization of illegal immigration and of all people who or entities that help undocumented immigrants. HR 4437, whose provisions could be included in a Senate bill, would also give the police the power of immigration officials.
A federal law that includes these provisions would cancel out the effects of Executive Order 41 approved by Mayor Bloomberg in 2003, stating that public employees cannot report the immigration status of people who solicit city services. This executive order has encouraged immigrants to access services such as the police, education, health, prenatal and emergency care, and health insurance for those under 19 years old. However, if being undocumented becomes a crime, and if public employees report the immigration status of their clients, how many undocumented immigrants will report crimes or go to the hospital?
Although Bloomberg has not made any public statements about immigration reform, New York City Commissioner of Immigrant Affairs Guillermo Linares said that the administration is opposed to “the legal stipulations in HR 4437 that make local police a tool of the federal government,” and that the responsibility of immigration control belongs to the federal authorities.
”It is of utmost importance to the well-being of our city that all New Yorkers – regardless of their immigration status – exercise their freedom to report crimes, seek medical attention and have access to other critical services. Any situation that impedes immigrants from seeking this assistance puts us all at risk,” said Linares.
However, Linares did not say if the city had been in touch with legislative leaders or spoken to their senators in Washington to let them know their position on HR 4437. The mayor’s office did not return our request for comment.
Councilman Martínez said yesterday that this week he would send a letter to Mayor Bloomberg asking him “to declare publicly his opposition to this proposal and to lobby against it in Washington.” The resolution against HR 4437 has enough votes to be approved, he said.
Statistics
According to a U.S. Census Survey undertaken in 1999, 40 percent of the 7.4 million New Yorkers were born in another country. According to this data, each year, over the past decade, close to 100,000 immigrants have made New Cork their new home.
Since 1990, one million immigrants arrived in New York City, an increase from 28 percent to 40 percent in the last three years. For example, the number of New Yorkers born in the Dominican Republic increased from 230,000 in 1990 to 387,000 in 1999, while the Mexican population nearly quadrupled, increasing from 35,000 to 133,000.
