NYC NOW - April 19, 2024: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: April 19, 2024

New York City Street Vendors are criticizing a recent crackdown on unlicensed vendors in Queens and the Bronx. Plus, CUNY’s law school has finally booked a venue for its graduation ceremony after struggling to find a place to host the event. And finally, WNYC’s Sean Carlson talks with reporter Arya Sundaram and Amaha Kassa, executive director of African Communities Together, about the specific needs of Black migrants in New York City.

Welcome to NYC now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. I'm Jene Pierre. So the vendors are not the problem. The problem is the city government, is the outdated laws, the outdated systems that prevents vendors from accessing the business license. Street vendors in New York City are calling on local lawmakers to lift a cap on the number of street vending licenses and permits awarded across the five boroughs. The call comes amid an ongoing crackdown on unauthorized vendors. Street vendor Floriverto Diaz had his food car confiscated by city officials in the Bronx.

Me has done multas until $6,000. Me has left without, sin nothing, the stress and the angustia, to me, to my family. Diaz says he's been charged with $6,000 in fines for vending without a permit. He says he's stressed about paying his family. families' bills. There are currently long wait lists for vending permits and licenses. A bill to lift the cap has yet to be scheduled for a hearing in the city council. Students at CUNY Law School have finally found a venue for their graduation ceremony. WMYC's Ramsey Caliphé has more.

The event will be held on May 23rd at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Last year's graduation drew national attention after a student criticized Israel during her commencement address. This time, there won't be a commencement speaker. Here's Zazia Hanif, a senior at CUNY Law. We exhausted all our administrative remedies going to our to CUNY in relation to their constant repression of student speech on campus. Hanif is part of a group that filed a new discrimination complaint with the Federal Education Department. It cites the commencement controversy as an example of censorship of pro-Palestinian students. A spokesperson for CUNY law says the school will combat discrimination in all forms.

Nearly half of the migrants with new immigration court cases in New York City are from places like West Africa and Haiti, a shift from the Central and South American migrants. After the break, we discussed the specific needs of black migrants in the Big Apple. Stick around. Growing number of migrants from countries in Africa are coming to New York City to seek asylum, signaling a shift from the Central and South American migrants that made up the majority of cases in city immigration records. Earlier this week, a thousand migrants, mainly from African countries, gathered in City Hall Park during a council hearing on racial inequities in the city's immigrant support systems. Amahakasa is the executive director of African communities together. He joined my colleague, Sean Carlson, and WNYC's Arias Sundaram, to talk more about the specific needs of black migrants in New York City. Ariya, can we start with what the demographic breakdown of migrants in the city is? Why are we seeing more black migrants arriving in the Fibros?

So sure, historically, the majority of new migrants landing in the city have been from central and South America. And that's still the case. But now nearly half of migrants with new immigration court cases here in New York City are from other countries, especially Asia and Africa, namely West Africa. There's also been a pretty large influx of Haitian migrants. And so we're also seeing a particularly large number of African migrants in city shelters. So just to give you some stats on what that looks like, at the start of last year, 2022, migrants from any given African country made up less than 1% of the migrant population in city shelters. But now West African countries are among some of the top nationalities among migrants in city shelters. So Venezuelans are still the largest group, followed by Ecuadorians and Colombians.

But now those are followed by Ghanaians, Senegalese and Mauritans. And Africans now make up 16% of the migrants that are in city shelters. Why are we seeing this influx? The reasons really vary significantly from country to country. A number of migrants say that they're fleeing violence and political persecution in their home countries, seeking better economic opportunities here. But particularly with African migrants, immigration experts tell me that the stricter border rules in Europe have really influenced a number of their decisions to come instead here to the U.S. Amaha, what kind of unique challenges do these migrants face? First of all, language is an enormous barrier.

There's a tremendous diversity of languages on the African continent, and the new African arrivals speak many of them, not just languages like French and Arabic, but also indigenous African languages like Fulani, Bambara, and Dingo, and others. And what they're finding is that the people who are supposed to be helping them from the city and other public agencies, not only don't speak those languages, but often don't even know how to connect them. with anyone who speaks their language. So there's also, at times, been a lack of respect for cultural and religious practices. Some of that has changed, thanks to strong advocacy, things like, you know, providing places for people to pray in safety. And then things that people just need to get by, like trying to get a municipal ID, you know, things that they need to navigate the system, a lot of those have been slow in

coming. and where the information has happened, it often hasn't happened in the languages or through the community-based organizations that are serving this particular group of migrants. Ari, what kind of language services are available at city shelters and other organizations for black migrants? So the city says it has a number of bilingual staff members at shelters and they are working to hire more. They already have a number of Spanish-speaking staff members, as I've seen on sites, but there's just a number of Spanish-speaking staff members, as I've seen on sites. but there's just not the same level of support for French, Arabic, and other West African languages. You know, but the city, like it said, it's trying to hire more bilingual staff of these languages, but they say it's often harder to find interpreters for some of these less commonly spoken languages.

So they're often pointing people to language line, which is this private, telephonic interpretation surface that they contract with, which apparently has 300 languages available all times of the day. But there are problems. You know, sometimes they don't offer the right regional. dialect. Sometimes there's issues around sensitivity, not having someone in person when you're talking about a really sensitive issue that you're facing. And I hear there's also a number of language issues when getting help with legal services, workforce training, like health and safety training to try to get construction jobs, for example. And, you know, like he said, there can be serious consequences.

So, for example, the president of the local Senegalese Association told me that some African migrants couldn't get showers at one shelter because of language issues. Guards only called out once a day for residents to get showers and only in English and Spanish and not French and certainly not other African languages as well. So, Ari, like we were saying, the city council had an oversight hearing earlier this week on the experiences on black migrants in the city. Can you tell us how that went and who was there? And are there any indication that help is on the way? So probably the most striking thing was the absolutely massive crowd that was there.

A security guard told me there were over a thousand. thousand people waiting outside the gates of City Hall. I mean, it was just totally packed. You know, most of the people that were there were themselves black and particularly African migrants who are here for this hearing. And the guard told me that it was the most people he had ever seen outside City Hall ahead of a council hearing, really here to voice their concerns and their experiences about being migrants and about the particular needs of black migrants. And so Amaha, other advocacy groups helping African and other black migrants, said the city just, you know, wasn't doing enough.

And their allies and city council really grilled the city and city officials about what they were doing. You know, like the lack of funding for African service groups, lack of language access support. And various city officials, you know, said that they were trying to get more translators, trying to help fund some of these smaller organizations. You know, they mentioned there are a number of issues why they can't do that. But it's not really clear that any help is on the way at this point.

They didn't really put a timeline on when they're getting more translators or when they're going to be providing funding to some of these smaller organizations. Amah, what are the top two to three issues you would like to see the city help with? Well, we would say that at this point, there's not a lack of proposed solutions. There's a lack of political will. On language access, for example, we have been pushing the city for years to adopt a language bank model, which has been successfully used in the District of Columbia as a way to supplement interpreters who are directly employed by the city,

which is an important component, right? We need bilingual and culturally competent staff in the shelters and in the offices where people are talking about getting benefits like a municipal ID card, which is really important for people once they get their work authorization to be able to get work,

you know, open a bank account, do basic activities of living. The language bank model was in the budget two years ago. Last year, it was slashed from the budget, which was an incredibly short-sighted move. This year, the city council has asked for $3.8 million in funding to be restored to the budget to create this language bank model, which would bridge a lot of the needs for language access. We would, again, encourage the city to help the helpers. So that includes things like mosques that are housing people.

It includes some of the grassroots organizations that have been the first responders, organizations like Africana, who have been meeting the buses and helping people when sometimes the official city response mechanisms have not been adequate. So we think there's a lot of solutions. We need political leadership to figure out how to make them happen instead of just talking about all the reasons why several years into this we're still in a state of crisis. That's Amahakasa, the executive director of African communities together, and WMYC's Race and Justice reporter Aria Sundaram, talking with my colleague Sean Carlson. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC. Shout out to our production team.

It includes Sean Bowdage, Amber Bruce, Avey Carrillo, Audrey Cooper, Leora Noam Kravitz, Jared Marcel, Jen Munson, and Wayne Shoalmeister, with help from the entire WMYC newsroom. Our show art was designed by the folks at Buck, and our music was composed by Alexis Quadrato. I'm Jenae Pierre. Have a nice weekend. We'll be back on Monday.