Immigrant advocates and members of the City Council are throwing their weight behind a budget-threatened, first-of-its-kind childcare program for low-income immigrants who lack permanent legal status.
The exclusion of the program Promise NYC from Mayor Eric Adams’ executive budget for the next fiscal year was at the center of a City Council hearing and rally outside City Hall on Tuesday.
The Adams administration launched the program in January with $10 million in city funding for the care of 600 children over six months. Several councilmembers want to renew the program, and some advocates want to boost funding to $20 million to cover the entire school year. Funding is set to expire at the end of the month.
The initiative, which aids families deemed ineligible from other childcare programs because of their immigration status, is an acknowledgment that immigrants without legal authorization to work still need to feed themselves and their families – and that lack of free or affordable childcare impedes them from being able to work.
With many immigrants widely ineligible for federally funded childcare, Promise NYC has been heralded as a vital support – especially to migrants who have newly arrived in the city. Families with children account for more than 70% of those living in shelters.
“Given the administration’s admirable advocacy for work authorization for asylum-seekers, it is befuddling that they are threatening to cut the resource that allows our newest New Yorkers, especially those who are women to go to work,” Councilmember Shahana Hanif, who chairs the immigration committee, said at the hearing. “This program is an economic driver that will make asylum-seekers more self-sufficient and less reliant on costly city-funded shelter beds.”
A spokesperson for the administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but Jacques Jiha, the city’s budget director, signaled a willingness to revisit the issue at a finance committee meeting last month.
“This is a very good program, to be honest with you,” Jiha said. “We will monitor it and be part of the discussion as we move toward adoption with the Council.”
New York City’s childcare costs rank among the most expensive in the country. The median annual cost of commercial daycare for toddlers hovers around $18,000 across the boroughs, and $23,000 for infants, according to U.S. Department of Labor data.
Under 1996 welfare reforms, federally funded child care programs – including city-run vouchers for low-income families – are limited to children who are citizens, refugees, asylum-seekers and others who meet certain immigration status requirements.
Some other local programs exist for children, like the kindergarten to eighth grade Summer Rising program, Headstart and Early Headstart, and universal pre-K and 3-K (early childhood education for 3- and 4-year-olds).
But no such childcare programs exist for children under 2 years old. Promise NYC, meanwhile, is open to children in the city who are 13 and younger and whose families are making below 300% of the federal poverty line, regardless of their immigration status.
Councilmember Tiffany Cabán of Queens, who chairs the Committee on Women and Gender Equity, said “$20 million is roughly one-fifth of 1% of the New York City budget.”
“That’s pennies in comparison to the huge budget that we have every year,” she continued. “But to preschool-aged, undocumented New Yorkers and their families, this is a game-changer.”
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