The Office of the Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer held a conference yesterday to discuss the main factors affecting immigrants after the presidential election and the potential effects of budget cuts on immigrant services. The conference, sponsored by the Office’s Immigrant Rights Task Force, was attended by several dozen representatives from immigrant rights watchdog groups and community organizations. According to the attendees’ analysis, immigrants’ participation in the presidential election was not particularly enthusiastic, and President-elect Obama is unlikely to put immigration reform high on the list of priorities for his first term.

A representative from the New York Immigration Coalition discussed immigrants’ involvement in this past election, noting that voter participation was not actually enthusiastic. In addition, Obama is not an active proponent of immigration reform: as a state senator, he did not put much effort toward immigration reform, and his newly-named cabinet members, such as Rahm Emmanuel, his appointee for White House Chief of Staff, are not supporters of it. Emmanuel’s main priorities for the first four years of the Obama administration are taxes, financial regulation, energy, and health insurance reform; he has never mentioned immigration reform. Conference attendees said that despite this, it is still necessary to keep the immigration reform issue alive in the next four years and keep it from falling off the radar screen.

Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association president Justin Yu said that, no matter whether Americans’ attitude toward immigrants is positive or negative, it is always linked to the state of the economy. When the economy is good, there is increased immigration to fill expanding roles, and when the economy is bad, attitudes toward immigrants become even more unfavorable.

In addition, United Neighborhood Housing presented predictions about New York City budget cuts in 2009, pointing out that cuts will directly affect government housing, the elderly, the youth, immigrants, and early childhood education. They issued a general call to unite and fight for more support and funding.

Immigrant Rights Task Force chairman Jimmy Yan introduced a draft of the Immigrant Rights and Services Manual, one of the fruits of the Task Force’s labors. The copious manual includes various executive orders signed by the Mayor, such as #41, guaranteeing immigrants access to City services; #73, requiring governmental organizations to provide bilingual services; and #120, requiring all governmental organizations to provide translation services starting next year. In addition, it includes information on immigrants’ rights regarding health care, food, housing, education, naturalization, elections, voting, and entrepreneurship, as well as contact information for various community groups and governmental organizations. Yan requested that all attendees put forth suggestions and opinions to help improve the manual.