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New York Advocates Launch $1 Million Campaign for Federal Immigration Reform


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A march to end family separation at the border (photo: John McCarten/City Council)


After four years of the Trump administration’s cruel and hard-line policies intended to slow immigration to a crawl, immigration advocates in New York and beyond were overjoyed that Democrat Joe Biden will become the next President of the United States. Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, ran on a promise to immediately overturn Donald Trump’s many punitive and limiting administrative actions on immigration and to pursue comprehensive reform of the immigration system.

Now, a coalition of advocates in New York plans to hold the new administration to those promises and is launching a $1 million campaign to apply pressure and ensure a set of policies is prioritized and passed.

New York Immigration Coalition Action, the political arm of the nonprofit advocacy group New York Immigration Coalition, announced the new campaign on November 7, a day after the presidential election was declared for Biden. As voter turnout reached an all-time high, advocates say that immigrants voted for Biden in record numbers.

“The last four years for immigrant communities have been the most difficult possible,” said Rovika Rajkishun, interim co-executive director of NYIC Action, in a phone interview. “Just everything that the Trump administration could throw at immigrant communities they did. So this is definitely a turning point for us, as a community, as an organization.”

The $1 million, roughly half which they have already raised, will go towards grassroots mobilization, grants for local organizations, and media campaigns focused on pushing the New York congressional delegation, she said, to ensure that federal and state elected officials recognize the strength of the immigrant vote in the state and pursue federal policies that benefit immigrants.

Right after Biden’s win was called on Saturday, NYIC Action pledged to launch the “unprecedented” campaign “to ensure every single member of Congress in New York, with New York Senator Chuck Schumer leading the way, works to win immigration reform that will bring the justice and freedom—not only from Trump's racist policies, but from our failed immigration system that has been broken for decades."

Schumer, currently the Senate minority leader, could become immensely influential as majority leader if Democrats can take the Senate via upcoming special elections in Georgia. And Brooklyn Rep. Hakeem Jeffries is again pursuing a leadership position in the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives.

“We're just not going to let the campaign and the administration forget that immigrants are really important to this country,” said Rajkishun. “Just because we have a Democratic president and vice president doesn't mean that we're going to sort-of let up in making sure that immigration is at the top of the agenda.”

After he ran for president on an anti-immigrant agenda, the list of Trump’s policies that have done unquantifiable harm to immigrants, both documented and undocumented, is seemingly endless. He moved to suspend the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that prevented deportation for immigrants who were brought to the country as children and allowed them to work here. He ended Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for nearly 400,000 immigrants from six countries who had fled the likes of natural disasters and armed conflicts in their homelands. He put in place a travel ban on certain Muslim-majority countries. His administration enacted a “zero tolerance” policy at the border to increase criminal prosecutions for illegal entry, and separated thousands of children from their parents to discourage both legal asylum seekers and illegal entry. He significantly curtailed refugee resettlement and asylum programs. He tried to prevent undocumented immigrants from participating in the Census. He tried to create a “public charge” rule that would deny green cards to immigrants who may require public benefits in the future.

Many of Trump’s policies were enacted administratively or through executive order and Biden has pledged to reverse all of them in his first day in office. He vowed to fully reinstate DACA, to end prolonged detention of children at the border, improve the asylum management system, stop the diversion of funds from the Department of Defense for a border wall, rescind travel and refugee bans, increase transparency and accountability for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and order a review of the TPS program, among other things.

Rajkishun’s organization helped get out the vote for Biden and for other Democratic candidates in New York, reaching out to more than 1.2 million immigrants in the state alone. And she does not want the new administration to take that support for granted. “We are looking for the new administration to reverse, on day one, a number of things that they promised that they will,” she said, including “a stay on deportations, restoring DACA...starting to work on uniting families, and all of those things that they've talked about on the campaign trail.”

Biden has also committed to pursuing legislation giving 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country a path to citizenship. But that will require legislation to pass through Congress, the chances of which are likely to be bleak if Republicans retain control of the U.S. Senate. As votes continue to be counted, the majority is likely to come down to two Senate runoffs in Georgia, with voting to conclude January 5, just ahead of January 20’s Inauguration Day.

Rajkishun said NYIC Action is reaching out to organizations in Georgia to offer support. “That would change things significantly when it comes to immigration reform,” she said of Senate control.

For advocates, it’s not just enough for Biden to undo Trump’s record. Rather, they want him to redeem what they see as failed policies from when he served as vice president under President Barack Obama for two terms. Obama was infamously termed the “deporter in chief” for massively increasing deportations in his time in office and, because of Republican opposition, was unable to accomplish wholesale reform of the broken immigration system. Rajkishun is optimistic that Biden has recognized those mistakes. “What he’s said is that he's not Obama. He is his own person, he will be his own type of President and in that we heard him really trying to make up for what happened,” she said of Biden.

Even if the Senate should remain in Republican hands, Rajkishun has a sliver of hope that bipartisan reform may yet be achieved, particularly after the strong showing of immigrant voters in the election. “I just think that it would be a huge mistake for even Republicans to not recognize that immigrant voters do have power and they are using that power,” she said.

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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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Brooklyn, Staten Island Democrats Look to Absentee Ballots to Help Them Hold Their Seats


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Several local races hing on absentee ballots (photo: @JustinBrannan)


As New York election officials begin counting absentee ballots from the general election, there are dozens of races that have yet to be decided. Based on the in-person tallies, Democrats in several state and congressional races are currently running behind Republicans and are hoping that absentees will deliver them victories. But in three races in overlapping districts in Southern Brooklyn and Staten Island, areas home to more Republican voters than most other parts of the heavily Democratic city, absentees may not be enough to overcome leads buoyed by immense turnout for the GOP candidates for Congress, State Senate, and Assembly.

In New York’s 11th Congressional District, 22nd State Senate District, and 46th Assembly District, Republicans stand a chance of reclaiming Democrat-held seats after turnout swelled this year, likely in large part because President Donald Trump was on top of the ticket. Each district is home to large pockets of Republican-leaning voters, anomalies in a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans eight to one and Joe Biden received three-quarters of the in-person vote. Trump’s job performance, New York State coronavirus restrictions, criminal justice reform and public safety, and how far left New York City progressives want to take city government were all key themes in the three races.

In the 11th Congressional District, which covers the entirety of Staten Island and parts of Southern Brooklyn, first-term Democratic U.S. Rep. Max Rose trails Republican Assemblymember Nicole Malliotakis by a margin of 37,158 votes going into the absentee counting, which begins Tuesday for some districts. Though Malliotakis declared victory on election night due to her more than 15-point margin based on the in-person vote, Rose has refused to concede the race. According to New York City Board of Election data, he received 99,224 votes (42.04%) to Malliotakis’ 136,382 (57.79%).

Rose is all but assured to lose his seat, which has mostly been in Republican hands for many years. With more mailed votes still being accepted for several days to come, the latest Board of Elections numbers show there were 48,259 absentee ballots returned in the district as of Election Day – 27,598 came from Democrats, 9,213 from Republicans, and 9,508 from party-unaffiliated voters. As absentee ballots continued to come in, the Democratic share was expected to remain high, favoring Rose.

Rose also appeared on the Independence Party ballot line and 1,212 voters from the party cast absentee ballots. Malliotakis appeared on the Conservative Party line, whose voters cast 401 absentees. If Rose won all those Democrat, Independence, and unaffiliated voters, which is very unlikely, it would give him 38,318 votes, for a total just past what Malliotakis got in the in-person vote. Meanwhile, Malliotakis will easily pick up the bulk of the 9,900 Republican and Conservative absentee voter votes, not to mention some percentage of the unaffiliated voters. (Some voters will likely leave the race blank, a not-uncommon practice down ballot during presidential elections.)

Of the 48,259 absentee ballots returned as of the Election Day tally, Rose would need to win at least 88.5% of them to surpass Malliotakis, though more valid absentee votes surely came in since Election Day.

State Senate district 22 in Southern Brooklyn falls within the 11th Congressional District. It covers the neighborhoods of Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst, Fort Hamilton, Dyker Heights, Marine Park, Gerritsen Beach, and Manhattan Beach. Democratic State Senator Andrew Gounardes, also a first-term incumbent, is 6,035 votes behind Republican challenger Vito Bruno. Gounardes received 34,586 votes (45.94%) via in-person voting, while Bruno tallied 40,621 votes (53.95%).

Gounardes doesn’t face an insurmountable lead. Through Election Day, 18,524 absentee ballots were returned in the district; 11,622 were from Democrats, 2,651 from Republicans, and 3,714 from party-unaffiliated voters, according to the Board of Elections. Bruno also appeared on the Conservative and Independence Party lines, whose voters returned 101 and 345 absentee ballots respectively.

Taking the 6,035-vote margin and the 18,524 absentee votes into account, even though the latter figure has certainly grown, Gounardes would need to win 66.3% of the absentees to surpass Bruno. That percentage is not far off the percentage of absentee ballots tallied by election night that were from Democratic voters alone.

Assemblymember Mathylde Frontus from Brooklyn’s District 46 also represents some of the same neighborhoods as Gounardes and Rose. She received 15,030 votes (45.66%) via in-person voting. Her little-known opponent, Mark Szuszkiewicz, received 17,852 votes (54.23%), giving him a 2,822 vote lead heading into the absentee count.

Frontus could overcome that lead with absentee ballots largely in favor of Democrats. Of the 7,081 absentee ballots returned in the district, 4,525 were Democratic voters, 1,035 were Republicans, and 1,273 were unaffiliated voters.

To make up the 2,822-vote deficit via the 7,081 absentee ballots that came in by Election Day (a number that has surely grown), Frontus would need to win 70% of those votes. That percentage is slightly higher than the 64% of the 7,081 absentee ballots that came in from Democratic voters alone.

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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.

New Yorkers Celebrate Biden Victory, Defeat of Trump


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Brooklynites celebrate Biden's win, Trump's loss (photo: Ethan Geringer-Sameth/Gotham Gazette)


It was a great day for the Doppler effect Saturday in Brooklyn as a near constant stream of car horns trumpeted elation after it became clear Joe Biden had won Pennsylvania and clinched the 2020 presidential election. Throngs of New Yorkers took to the streets, plazas, and parks to breathe a collective, mostly masked, sigh of relief.

In New York, that sigh took the form of spontaneous dancing on sidewalks and in streets, clanging pots and pans, and uncorking champagne -- an outpouring of collective joy perhaps not seen in decades.

Many people heard the news through their apartment windows. Cheers broke out across the city around 11:30 a.m., just after CNN first called the race, and continued all day and into the evening.

In Brooklyn, crowds formed in Barclays Center and Grand Army Plaza, which had become hubs during the spring Black Lives Matter protests for a wide swath of central Brooklyn, not far from the right-leaning enclaves further south. In the case of Barclays Center, where the first night of clashes with police began in New York in the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the unseasonably warm weather added to the distinctly lighter atmosphere among the people who had gathered there Saturday.

The festivities -- matched by large and small celebrations across other boroughs -- had some of the same symbols of the protest marches, like Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ pride flags, now with the addition of Biden-Harris signs. It was not lost on many who had protested systemic racism and the xenophobic policies of now-defeated President Donald Trump that Harris was to become the country's first Black vice president, as well as first woman and first person of Indian descent to hold the position. Expressions of joy and relief swept many parts of a city that voted for the Democratic ticket overwhelmingly, with hundreds of thousands of ballots still to be counted and expected to widen the in-person margin.

Brooklynites, including U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer, filtered in and out of what became an all-day block party extending after dusk, from Atlantic Avenue onto the fields of Prospect Park. Schumer, the Senate minority leader, joined the crowd at Grand Army Plaza, and, later, held out his cell-phone to capture the Brooklyn jubilation for the president-elect, whom he said was on the other line.

Schumer was among many Democratic New York officials, advocates, and others to celebrate the Biden-Harris win.

In a statement released just after the race was called, Governor Andrew Cuomo said, "This is a historic day. After the darkness, division and hate of the past four years, America has spoken and rejected more of the same. Congratulations to my good friend President-Elect Joe Biden and to Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris. Today we go forward in hope and progress."

In a statement calling Donald Trump’s presidency a “nightmarish chapter of American leadership,” New York Attorney General Letitia James of Brooklyn said that Biden and Harris “have the intelligence, know-how, and aptitude to lead our nation through the triple pandemics of COVID-19, systemic inequities, and an economy that doesn’t work for most working Americans.

"President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris have already changed history by electing the first woman Vice President in our nation's history,” said James, herself the first woman of color elected New York City Public Advocate and also the first woman of color elected the state’s Attorney General. “This is just the start of the change they will bring to this nation.”

During church remarks on Sunday, Mayor Bill de Blasio called the election results symbolic of “the rebirth of our nation,” and went on to call Biden “a healer” and “a moral force.” He said Harris “has done so much already in public life, but will do so much more and has flung open the doors of leadership so finally all can serve, all the talents of this nation can be represented in our White House.”

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie of the Bronx said in a statement citing Harris as “the first woman and the first woman of color to ever be elected to that office” that the Biden-Harris ticket “offered America a vision of compassion, respect for all people and respect for our democratic institutions.”

Heastie went on to say, “Here in New York we will stand shoulder to shoulder with President-Elect Biden and his team to help move our country forward. New York has always been a progressive leader in our nation, and over the last few years we were able to hold the line, protecting women’s healthcare, making it easier for registered voters to cast their ballot, protecting the rights of LGBTQ New Yorkers, putting college within reach for immigrant students and so much more.”

State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins of Westchester, the first woman and woman of color to hold her position, said in a statement, in part, “Both Joe and Kamala are inspirational and historic leaders, and I know they will help our nation heal after the trauma of the past four years. Following an unprecedented election and outrageous behavior from President Donald Trump, now is the time for us all to move forward. The NYS Senate Democratic Majority will work with the Biden/Harris administration to help New York recover from this pandemic and economic crisis. Now is the time to heal the deep divisions in our society and come together as New Yorkers and Americans to build a stronger, more respectful, and more just state and nation.”

“Brooklyn has spoken,” said Borough President Eric Adams, in a statement. “New York has spoken. Our country has spoken. A new day, and new leadership, is coming to America. Thanks to everyone who has turned out in this record-breaking vote. Now we must continue showing up to ensure our leaders deliver the real recovery we deserve. After 244 years, we can finally celebrate a woman being elected to serve in the White House — and a person of color as VP. Congratulations to Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, who alongside President-elect Joe Biden will be the most diverse duo to ever lead our nation.”

City Council Member Ritchie Torres of the Bronx, who is heading to Congress after his election this year, said in an emailed letter to supporters that “For four years, we watched the character, corruption, and chaos of one man shape our national identity. We watched as Donald Trump violated our principles, eroded our institutions, and made a mockery of the rule of law. We watched as he pursued cruel and disastrous policies directed at marginalized communities, and as he systematically dismantled the progressive agenda.”

“During Donald Trump’s presidency, we all witnessed the resurgence of white nationalism — and the elevation of fringe right-wing elements to positions of immense power and influence,” Torres continued. “We watched as Black and Brown communities suffered at the hands of over-policing, and as calls for accountability and reform were ignored by the Trump administration. We watched Donald Trump lie about and then ignore the most significant public health crisis our country has seen in the last century — a pandemic that has resulted in over 9 million cases and claimed the lives of more than 237,000 Americans and counting.”

“The horror that we witnessed is difficult to put in perspective, but what’s clear is that it required a transformational movement capable of defeating the evils of this era and turning the page,” Torres wrote. “And that’s exactly what everyday people in this country set out to build.”

“This is only the beginning,” Torres went on to conclude. “The damage of the last four years doesn’t go away simply because we elected a new president. Joe Biden needs our help to enact an agenda that lifts people out of poverty, addresses systemic racism and inequities, gets this pandemic under control, and so much more. I can’t wait to get to Washington to work with fellow House Democrats and President Joe Biden to get the job done. And it’s an honor to know that you’ll be by our side every step of the way.”

In response to the Biden-Harris win, leading New York immigrant advocates Murad Awawdeh and Rovika Rajkishun, the interim co-executive directors of NYIC Action, the political arm of the New York Immigration Coalition, said, “This year, immigration was on the ballot—and it won a resounding victory.”

They said that “millions of Americans firmly repudiated Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda at the polls with the record-breaking turnout from immigrants and people of color and a show of force not seen in previous elections. Here in New York, NYIC Action mobilized thousands of immigrant citizen New Yorkers—many of them first-time voters—to vote for Vice President Biden, Senator Harris, and other Democratic Congressional and State candidates because they believe immigration is good for New York and good for America. The fact is that these victorious candidates have committed to undoing the damage that the Trump administration has inflicted on our communities and are the only viable option for an America that is united in fighting this pandemic and building an economy that works for all of us.”

“Now, as we get ready for the votes to be confirmed and to swear in a Democratic administration, we remind Vice President Biden and Senator Harris of their promises:,” they continued, “to rescind the Muslim Ban, reinstate and expand DACA and TPS programs, as just a starting point to rebuilding our immigration system from the ground up.”

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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.

Ben Max contributed to this article.



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