New York State

Now more than ever, refugee resettlement agencies are providing essential services to refugees and also to a number of other community members, to help protect everyone during the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, the Fiscal Policy Institute showed how refugee resettlement agencies are anchor institutions in their communities, providing services for some of the most vulnerable community members, jobs for local residents, and a productive use for buildings that in some cases might otherwise be vacant. The importance that refugee resettlement agencies have to [...]

April 29, 2020. In response to the economic and health hardships that the COVID-19 pandemic has created for individuals and families, state and federal governments have created relief programs to provide financial, safety and medical assistance. However, these relief programs do not apply to everyone. Many programs exclude undocumented immigrants who have also been laid off from jobs due to nonessential business closures. Undocumented immigrants are also experiencing the same financial and health hardships that the rest of us experience, which warrants the need for [...]

Orders for non-essential workers to stay at home and the ripple effects of the coronavirus have been felt throughout the New York economy. Over one million New Yorkers have filed for unemployment insurance since the middle of March when the coronavirus impact was first felt. Yet, one group is left behind by both the state’s existing unemployment insurance system and the federal government’s temporary enhancements to that system: undocumented immigrants. There are an estimated 530,000 undocumented immigrants in the New York State labor force. They [...]

During this time of crisis, the coronavirus pandemic, federal and state governments need to ensure that all of us, regardless of immigration status and the job we hold in society, are safe, healthy, and have access to critical services. No one should be left to struggle on their own during a global pandemic. As a society, we want to encourage everyone who is sick to stay home from work and have access to medical care if they need it. Now is the time to protect [...]

New York State is dealing with a pandemic that demands sudden and unusual changes in our everyday lives. The need for societal change including social distancing and restricting public gatherings to protect our health is clear. The question is what will be the economic cost of our necessary public health policy and how will we pay for it? Explore these pressing issues with us in our new brief: At the time of this writing, our state is trying to reach the short-term goal of sufficiently “flattening [...]

Our state budget is the opportunity to improve the lives of immigrant New Yorkers by investing in immigrant integration. While Governor Cuomo continues to stress that New York is a welcoming state for immigrants, unfortunately he failed to include any funding in his executive budget for critical programs to help protect immigrants from federal attacks, cut funding for some programs, and eliminated it for others. There is still time for these issues to be addressed as the governor, the assembly, and the senate negotiate a final [...]