 Good afternoon. I'm Anne Williams-Eisem, Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services. And for this week's Asylum Seeker Briefing, I'm joined by Masha Kinla, Executive Director of the Asylum Seeker Application Health Center. We launched the Asylum Seeker Application Health Center in late June. Since then, we've had and been able to complete over 3,800 applications, helping thousands of families take another step towards building their lives here. In prior briefings, we discussed the important role of caseworkers and legal partners and academic institutions in this effort. This week, we're excited that students have come from a number of academic institutions and they're beginning to work at this center, helping to scale our efforts. Today we're taking this work a step further. I'm proud to announce that teams are currently conducting a sprint to survey the tens and thousands of adults in our care and determine who is eligible to apply for work authorization right now. This effort began last week and will continue over the coming weeks as we work to reach approximately 40,000 adults in our care. By surveying those in our cares, we will also be able to send reminders to people in the coming weeks and months as they approach their eligibility to apply for work authorization. I'll now turn it over to Masha Kinla, the Help Center's executive director to provide an update on our work at the Asylum Application Help Center as we passed over the past couple of months to see how that work is going. Masha? Thank you. Thank you, Deputy Mayor. As a reminder, the Asylum Application Help Center opened at the end of June and our goal is to help asylum seekers file their asylum application. That's going to be their official petition to remain in the United States due to persecution that they have suffered or feared they will suffer in their home countries. So applicants have a year to apply and for most applicants, this application is their only pathway to eventual work authorization, which I'll go into in a little bit. So how does the center work? Clients have to live in one of our city emergency sites to be eligible to get an appointment. We are appointment based so that we know which languages are coming so that we can be sure to have translation available. When clients come in, they meet with a trained application assistant who explains what applying for asylum entails. We do a lot of education at this point and we want to make sure people make informed consent about whether they want to proceed. If clients do wish to proceed and if they can articulate a fear of persecution, we will help them fill out their 589 form, which is the official form we fill out in order to apply for asylum. To comprehend some form, it asks a lot of detailed questions and it also asks the applicant to go into detail about what harm they have experienced or fear they will experience. So these appointments can often last four hours or more. They can go into really sensitive information and we're very grateful for our staff for staying strong and motivated during these interviews as well. So once an application is completed, it is reviewed by at least two immigration attorneys and mailed for the applicant. The applicant gets a tracking number and they'll know when that has been received. Since we started in late June, as the Deputy Mayor have said, we filed over 3,800 applications and counting. So that's for asylum. Now I want to go into work authorization because as we know, that is ultimately what will get these folks situated. So there are two pathways to work authorization. For a majority of asylum seekers that we're seeing, they can only apply for work authorization 150 days after the federal government has received their asylum application. So that's the majority of our cases because they have been given no status and they need to wait that period. So for all the clients we have seen, the 3,800 and counting, we're going to call them back at their six month mark, bring them back in and file their work authorization for them. For a minority of the clients we're seeing, asylum seekers that have been given humanitarian parole or TPS, so temporary protective status, those folks can apply right away. When we see those clients, we file work authorization for them right away, but they have been a minority of our clientele so far. The survey effort the Deputy Mayor has mentioned is an effort for us to identify who else might be eligible via either TPS or having parole status. So folks that have heard about the CB1 app will know that people that have got here through the CB1 app have that parole status so they are eligible. So when we identify folks through the assessment survey effort that are eligible for work authorization, we will schedule them an appointment in order to file work authorization because we want to get as many people applied as possible. We're also training folks in our emergency sites to be able to do these forms which are a lot less complicated than the hefty 589 forms to fill out and folks can't do this on their own. So we obviously want as many people to apply for work authorization as possible and we're dedicated to making it done. Everyone that's come through the application help center that has been eligible we have applied for and so just on behalf of all the application assistants doing this work all the immigration attorneys that have joined our efforts we're really grateful for opportunity to help these individuals and get them in the path to work in stability and fulfill kind of their their strong desire to get to work. Thank you Deputy Mayor. Thank you so much Masha it just reminds me you and your team and all of the volunteers and our partners it's such hard work it's being managed so well you know I wish more people can come and see the operation that you're doing but it's tough listening to some of the stories listening to what people have gone through and so there's mental health and social services that are set up on site not just for the folks that are applying for asylum but also for the workers who themselves are I think experiencing some secondary tertiary trauma as they hear some of those stories so thank you so much to you and your team for that work. This is certainly a whole of government effort here so now let me give you some of the numbers as of September 10th we have over 112,800 people in our care including over 59,900 asylum seekers over 113 300 asylum seekers have come through our intake center since last spring we have opened 208 sites including 11 humanitarian relief centers and last week from September 4th to September 10th more than 3200 new asylum seekers have entered our care that's the number that we look at every week when we are talking when people say that the numbers are slowing down I keep reminding everyone that no matter how well we do to get people out the system if we have that amount of people that are continuing to come through the front door it is going to be hard to keep up the mayor announced over the weekend a set of cuts to the leaders of our city agencies we have said this here before many times that we knew that this situation would start to impact every part of the city the parts of the cities that have the 200 sites the parts of the cities that are giving services and certainly to every single city agency this is because one municipality and a couple of others across the country has been asked to handle a disproportionate share of what is clearly a national issue like so many New Yorkers we have to estimate our costs and we each year have a budget I think about it like this if you have a mortgage payment or you have a rent payment you know that that's a fixed cost you know that you have to deal with food that you need for the month your kids are going back to school we have to get kids supplies school supplies you have to make sure that they have the clothes that they need and then all of a sudden something comes out of the blue could be that your neighbor's tree falls on your house or most likely that happens to many people sometimes someone gets sick in your family that you weren't expecting and now they're asking you to contribute something that's unexpected that's impossible that's outside of your control I feel like that's a little bit what has happened here except for we've seen this coming we see it coming and we've been trying to sound the alarm from months and months to say that we think that this is going to be unsustainable so no no matter how well you budget or how prudent you are you're going to face some hard decisions you can ask your neighbors for help you can ask and see if there's money that you can get but ultimately you're going to have to make the tough decisions are you buying groceries are you not buying extra shoes for the kids what are you going to do and those are the tough things that we've had to do here how can we cut our budget where are there places that we can find efficiencies including the budgets in of the humanitarian crisis and our perks and how we've been dealing with the migrant crisis the challenges are difficult and we're going to continue to do everything that we need we've got to tell new yorkers the truth though sugar coating it is not what we need to do but I think we have to be practical and we are able to know that we can do hard things we can do hard things when we get the support that we need new york has shown that time and time again we're going to continue to make every effort that we can in order to get through this humanitarian crisis but we certainly need others our state partners our federal partners to use every tool in their toolbox also to address this crisis now I'll open it up for questions that can get we're coming right away under the role and tbs what percentage are they representing the total number of those applying for asylum if you can sit and speak to that and then my second question state is mulling possibly authorizing work permits within New York state as the city in contact with the state as the mayor supportive of this what type of communication is happening between the city and state on that front okay mash you want to take the first part yeah so the assessment is still ongoing I don't want to throw out a number yet until we finish it but we'll get back to you with the percentage we're seeing okay um and kelly my condolences to you and your um colleagues at New York one um I was very excited to see the governor talk about work permits because it's something that we have on our list of of innovative things to do I think that um finding a way to do that in the absence of the federal government doing that would be very important um I you know we really are excited about our state partners and we do have conversations about all sorts of things but we would be supportive of that especially since we know there's so many industries that need job restaurants all you know things of that sort so that is something that was very excited about deputy mayor uh we had congressman goldman on our morning show this morning uh he said that hundred million dollar checks finally in the mail he said hundreds of millions more might be there for education we know the 50 uh federal workers are coming to help with with the efforts over at the asylum center particularly identifying those who can quickly work flight and it feels almost a done deal um are the feds finally turning the corner and giving you the help you need so I was very excited to hear that the check was in the mail um I think that we still you know with the 12 billion dollars looming ahead of us have to make sure that we're prepared to so I I am excited that the federal government is paying attention more to this issue but I think it's a large number and with over 113,000 people that have come to New York City we want to make sure that it's consistent I think there was a statement that Tom Perez made yesterday that said we are in this together I kind of feel like New York City has done more than our part and so we would really like to see you know our state partners and our federal partners step up and take more of a coordination role here help us decompress people at the border so that we're not getting 3200 people through our front door let's call for a federal delegation of declaration of emergency those types of things I think would be a continuing to move in the positive direction that I'm seeing follow up on those who are subject to humanitarian parole any idea of why you're not seeing more folks like that because I feel like it's been a few months now since the app is up and running the Biden administration likes to talk about and that should make them more quickly eligible the feds have even said repeatedly we think there's a lot of people are eligible now what's the disconnect there why aren't more people working we're seeing what like 11 percent or so of our folks even less so at the asylum help center we're seeing very low percentage but I think that's why it's important to this assessment to figure out what's happening and maybe there's something in the communication to that population that maybe they don't realize or something like that but I'm excited to see what numbers come out and we'll reach out to all of those folks by the end of September so I'm curious are you doing anything different in terms of data collection when people are coming in the door now so you've got 32 people one of the big criticisms by the federal government I mean whether or not it's their responsibility or the city's responsibility except the city's not really triaging to see who's who and who could be moved sooner so have you started to take any new data and you know yeah I was appreciative I think I said here of the assessment that the federal government did for us and the suggestions that they gave you know we're working closely with our state partners too because it really is a all hands on deck moment we'll have Dr. Long come back and do a full assessment of what how he's been using the funds to do intensive case management but to answer your question Melissa yes who's coming in the door what's their plan as they get here for exit especially since now we're giving people notices that they have to move on where did they come from do they want to be reticketed all those kind of intensive questions I think that we are making sure that we are tying the information now to case management there is a hundred percent yeah so there's a database that the dhs system has there's a database that we've created created in our h&h system and now we're doing the integration to make sure that all the databases can speak to each other going back to the federal the federal said that they are helping for 14 000 vouchers for housing is there any idea if that is coming soon and if that's going to help for the migrants that are without any now it's going to be so it's not my understanding that our migrants are eligible for housing vouchers so i'm not sure if they're just saying that there's extra vouchers that they're just going to be sending for new yorkers that need to get out of shelter and that need adventures oh okay is that with the check that's coming to us too because all of those things okay those that all of that would be wonderful and welcomed that they are the city has been slow in submitting receipts for reimbursements is that something you guys are working on speeding that up she says that really hasn't moved in the past couple months i did hear the governor say that today i was really probably more focused on the positive innovation of the work permits i think we are working really hard housing 110 000 people and making sure that nobody's sleeping on the street is what we're really focused on and i know that the team is working really hard to make sure that all of the invoices get to the places where they need to get to so my question is how many people because they've got a one-year timeline how many people have missed that timeline and what can they do or are using a lot of people going underground now um what kind of advice are you giving them when they show up and oh you know miss the deadline those are great questions so in terms of how many folks have missed the deadline again i'll refer to the assessment when it's complete hopefully we'll know more then um for folks that have recently missed their deadline they do have legal options but they probably benefit more from from full legal representation um and our clinic is really focused on people that are within that one-year program so they do have options as individuals they could explain to the federal government where they missed their one-year deadline but they should really do that through uh having a legal representation and it's not something that we do at our clinic perfect we'll now take some questions from press on webex we'll first go to marcia kramer marcia you can now unmute your line please we hear you marcia yes we can um i have sort of a two-part question deputy mayor number one uh talking to senator louis apolfo who is the who's introduced the bill that would allow the state to issue work permits he's calling on the governor to call a special session to do this because he said you can't wait for all the federal forms to be filled out et cetera i wonder if you think that's a good idea and he also suggests that cuny and suny campuses could start hiring um migrants and and the asylum seekers right now so will cuny do that will you ask suny to do that is that something that could get jobs right away so the i'm hearing hi marcia i'm hearing both of those well the first part of course i've heard about this special session and i think that i am gratified that people are thinking outside of the box and trying to figure out what can we do because there's a sense of urgency here sometimes i feel like people are like we hear 3259 000 people and everybody's just kind of like it's all good but i think there is a sense of urgency and whatever we can do and whatever ideas people come up with i think that that's fantastic i also think that we know that there would be lots of places that we could connect people to if they had work authorization if they had a work permit period amen and so whether that would be suny whether that's the restaurant um industry so many other businesses have come up to us and said if we had work authorization if people could have a permit to work i think that would be one of the biggest solutions to get out of the humanitarian crisis that we find ourselves in thank you we now go to matt chaise matt you can now unmute your line please to the head of the application assistance program uh your personnel have helped file i think you said 3,800 applications um how many people does that represent in other words there could be more than one person in application as i understand it and how many prospective applicants chose not to file applications for whatever reason and then to the deputy mayor the 59 000 number of those in the city's care doesn't appear to have gone up in weeks um even as thousands more migrants as you just noted have come to the city why is this number static where are these folks living you want to start yes um so you're absolutely right because most applications have derivatives so spouses are children um let me get back to you the exact number it's larger than how many applications we filed and a good point about that is that when those folks are ready to file for work authorization all the derivatives can file as well so really with one application you could have a family covered um the second question that you asked was how many folks refused or didn't proceed i would say in a given day we see about 150 people and maybe two to three stopped the process with us either because we find that they're not eligible or because they after hearing our informational session decided to opt out on the road but it's a very small minority so to the question of where are people going or is i think that our intensive case management are reticketing and our 60 day notices are working people are finding other opportunities i don't know if this is good or bad but since people have been here for 14 months they're now creating their own community they're living um finding communities together people are going outside of new york city and so that's a good thing that's what we want to see more of we want to see people to continue to not stay in the shelter system but to move on to other opportunities so yeah you're you're exactly right and we do really feel like with some of the policy changes we will continue to see um those numbers continue to exit the system thank you our last question goes to jeff maize jeff you can now unmute your line please jeff you can now unmute your line please all right folks that will do it for today thank you very much