DANIEL DROMM, Democrat for City Council

Labels: ImmigrantRights, Legislation, Press

Labels: ImmigrantRights, Press, Unions

From The Queens Gazette: By John Toscano

Labels: ImmigrantRights, Press

The Queens Courier: By Pete Davis

Labels: ImmigrantRights, Press

Labels: ImmigrantRights, Press

From Queens Chronicle: By Aarti N. Maharaj

Labels: ImmigrantRights, Legislation, Press

From Times Ledger: By Jeremy Walsh

Labels: ImmigrantRights, Legislation, Press, Youth

From The Queens Gazette: By John Toscano

A bill that would require the city Administration for Children’s Services to create a plan to protect immigrant children in foster care and perhaps put them on the path to permanent status in the U.S. was passed by the City Council last week.

The bill, introduced by Councilmember Daniel Dromm (D–Jackson Heights), seeks to ensure that immigrant children who are eligible for Special Immigration Juvenile Status (SIJS) are identified as quickly as possible and are receiving all the appropriate benefits, Dromm who chairs the Immigration Committee, said.

Qualifying for SIJS, Dromm added, would enable undocumented children to apply for this status, become permanent residents and obtain a green card.

“Immigrant children deserve the same rights as everyone,” Dromm stated. “This bill will help children in ACS supervision get access to the immigration services they need. We must ensure that children who qualify are given the opportunities they deserve, including the ability to be put on a path towards citizenship.”

Dromm added that he was “proud to move this important bill which protects the rights of immigrant children in foster care”.

Without a dedicated plan for immigrant services, Dromm explained, once a young person turns 21, he or she become ineligible for SIJS status and also loses the opportunity to take full advantage of various services available to lawful U.S. residents.

Dromm, whose district is one of the most diverse in the city, pointed out that his legislation would result in an accurate and efficient identification and tracking system in order to coordinate immigration services that would most fully protect the rights of immigrant children.

Labels: ImmigrantRights, Legislation, Press

From Gotham Gazette: By Gail Robinson

Labels: ImmigrantRights, Legislation, Press

From El Diario: By Manuel Avendaño

La Administración de Servicios Infantiles (ACS) tendrá que crear un plan de acción para proteger a los niños inmigrantes que se encuentran bajo su cuidado y brindarles todos los beneficios que merecen, incluyendo ayuda para obtener la residencia permanente en caso de ser indocumentados, según una ley aprobada ayer por el Concejo Municipal.

El proyecto —presentado por el presidente del Comité de Inmigración del Concejo, Daniel Dromm (D-Queens)— pide identificar lo antes posible a los menores que califiquen para el estatus especial de inmigrante juvenil (SIJS) y ofrecerles los servicios de inmigración que necesitan.

El ACS toma bajo supervisión a estos menores cuando sus padres pierden la custodia por diferentes circunstancias, incluyendo abuso, negligencia, maltrato o ausencia. Los coloca dentro de hogares de crianza con el fin de asegurar que se desarrollen con familias permanentes y seguras.

En la actualidad, los menores que se encuentran bajo la supervisión de ACS pierden una serie de servicios al cumplir los 21 años, debido a su estatus de indocumentados.

“Creo que esta pieza legislativa pondrá en el camino al éxito a muchos jóvenes inmigrantes que se encuentran en el programa de crianza”, declaró a este diario Dromm. Indicó que en 90 días, cuando la ley sea implementada, el ACS tendrá la obligación adicional de llenar los papeles de inmigración cuando sea necesario.

“Los niños de otros países merecen los mismos derechos que los niños nacidos en Estados Unidos”, señaló el concejal de Queens.

Por su parte, Deycy Avitia, directora de organización y defensa de la Coalición de Inmigración de Nueva York, dijo a este diario que “es alentador que el comité de inmigración del concejo tenga nueva energía para solucionar viejos problemas de la comunidad inmigrante”.

Avitia anunció que continuará trabajando con el comité para asegurar a los inmigrantes otros beneficios, como programas para aprender inglés, así como oportunidades de empleo, educación, vivienda y salud.

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From City Limits: By Abigail Kramer

Undocumented immigrant children who end up in foster care could take advantage of a wealth of opportunities, if only the agency responsible for them would do the paperwork. A green card, which grants permanent residency, and other substantial benefits are available to undocumented juveniles who are abused, neglected and abandoned – but only if they are given Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS).

Dozens of kids in the city's child welfare system have been identified as potentially eligible for the special status, but lawyers acting on their behalf fear that many more are simply overlooked. This week, City Council is scheduled to consider some ways to improve the situation.

In an appearance before the Council's Committee on Immigration earlier this month, the lawyers urged committee members to require that the city Administration for Children's Services develop a system-wide strategy for identifying undocumented children and helping them to get timely immigration assistance for SIJS. The window of eligibility is open only as long as undocumented children are in the child welfare system under ACS protection.

“We have no way of knowing how many kids are falling through cracks,” said Myra Elgabry, Director of the Immigrants' Rights Project at Lawyers for Children. "This is an opportunity they have a right to, and it absolutely ends at 21.”

Aging out of the system without being identified means the youngsters forfeit access to a privileged status – potentially including work programs and financial aid for college – that could improve their lives after leaving foster care. Missing the application deadline exposes them to the risk of deportation to their country of origin, a country they may not even remember.

The rationale for the special immigrant juvenile category is that abused, neglected or abandoned undocumented juveniles can't go back to their families. A Family Court judge must have already advised against reunification with one or both parents before the petition can be processed. Foster care agencies would identify undocumented kids and refer them to public service lawyers, who are funded by ACS to provide immigration counseling and file SIJS applications.

ACS Director of Immigrant Services Mark Lewis told Council members earlier this month that the department has recently taken significant steps to identify children who might be eligible for SIJS. In 2009, ACS began a file-by-file review of children in its care that turned up 110 previously unidentified, more than twice as many as discovered in a normal year, Lewis said. The newly discovered files will be referred to immigration counselors, he said.

Advocates say those numbers confirm why ACS needs to implement a standardized system for identifying SIJS-eligible children. Four legal aid groups asked the Council to make the bill more stringent, requiring ACS to hold mandatory training on immigration issues for case workers. They urged Council to mandate data systems that would allow the department to track immigration status. Two of the groups complained that for several years they had been asking ACS to no avail to add a “country of birth” field to children’s case files.

In an e-mail, ACS spokeswoman Sharman Stein said that the department “supports the intent” of the measure and “will work with the Council to come to an agreement on the best way to legislate the bill.”

“This is a human rights issue,” said Daniel Dromm, chair of the Council’s Immigration Committee and sponsor of the bill. “It’s what this country is supposed to be about: protecting the most vulnerable among us.”

Labels: ImmigrantRights, Legislation, Press, Progressive

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From The Queens Courier: By Camille Bautista

Labels: CommunityOrganizing, CulturalAffairs, ImmigrantRights, Press

Labels: CulturalAffairs, ImmigrantRights, Press, Progressive

City Council Member Daniel Dromm listens to testimony at the first hearing of the Immigration Committee. The New York City Council is considering a bill sponsored by Dromm to amend the administrative code of the city of New York to require the Administration for Children’s Services to review strategies and create a plan of action to protect children who qualify for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status.

Labels: ImmigrantRights

From Irish Echo: By Irish Echo Staff

Recently elected New York City Council member Daniel Dromm, and community organizer Mary Lanning, are grand marshals for the annual Inclusive St. Patrick's Parade in Queens this Sunday, March 7. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn are also expected to march.

The parade, also known as the "St Pat's For All" parade, begins at 43rd Street and Skillman Ave. in Sunnyside and ends at 61st St. in Woodside.

"Our St. Pat's for All 2010 is a generous coming together of businesses, communities and musicians who for a few hours turn the streets of Sunnyside and Woodside into an Ireland of the welcomes," said parade organizer Brendan Fay.

Dromm, he said "is the New York City Council's only openly gay Spanish-speaking Irish American."

New groups in this year's parade include members of the Chilean community who will use the event to raise awareness of their country's recent earthquake and tsunami tragedies. Also in focus will be Irish patriot Roger Casement for his humanitarian work in Africa and South America.

Labels: CivilRights, CommunityOrganizing, CulturalAffairs, ImmigrantRights, Press

From The Queens Courier: By Tonia N. Cimino & Claudia Cruz

As the remnants of the six stores ravaged by a four-alarm fire in Jackson Heights were razed, neighbors and other business owners reflected on the loss to the local economy.

“It’s a big tragedy,” said David Samaia, owner of Franco’s Corner, located one block away from the inferno. “These people lost a lot. Some of these businesses have more than one owner that will be affected. Employees lost their jobs. In this economy, it’s hard enough trying to find jobs.”

It was just before 10 a.m. on Saturday, February 13 when the fire started inside the Acme Furniture store located at 84-09 37th Avenue. It took 39 units with 168 firefighters to get the blaze under control – in three-and-a-half hours – but not before it chewed through conjoined storefronts and forced people from their homes.

Fire officials, who said there was a “significant delay” in calling 9-1-1, have determined the cause was a defective boiler on the first floor.

Locals credit the FDNY – which was fighting hot spots for hours after the fire and arrived on scene in just three minutes – with a job well done.

“It could have been a much bigger disaster if the fire department didn’t show up as fast as they did,” said Alex Chin, owner of Kelly Han Dry Cleaners, Inc., located at 84-11 37th Avenue. “I might not be here in this store if they hadn’t.”

Chin continued, “When I saw the smoke, I thought the fire was from my store. The fire was so close. I just stayed across the street and watched. I feel extremely lucky that it wasn’t me. I feel bad for those other business owners. I knew most of them — they were my friends.”

Though the Chin family’s cleaners sustained a little bit of water damage near the front door, an official with the Office of Emergency Management on scene on Sunday, February 14 – on the phone with the Department of Buildings (DOB) – deemed it structurally safe.

The DOB, however, determined the six stores were structurally unstable and ordered them leveled on Sunday, February 14. A spokesperson for the agency told The Courier that in 2003 and 2005, violations were issued at the site because one store had been subdivided.

As of Monday, February 15, Chin said his dry cleaning business was open. “All of our machines are working so far, knock on wood, so we plan to stay open,” he said.

However, Ilona Pozniakiene was not so lucky.

An employee of Colony Wine & Liquor Store on the corner for 10 years, she said she saw the flames from her kitchen window a few blocks away. “I’ve lost my job,” she said.

“The flames were as huge as the building,” said Councilmember Daniel Dromm as he surveyed the damage and helped a few business owners – from storefronts not affected by the fire – get back into their stores. “This will have a tremendous affect on the community because it was eight businesses and all ‘mom and pop’ stores.”

Dromm said that he is unsure at this time as to the monetary loss, though city agencies are working to determine this. He continued, “I have already conducted meetings with five of the eight business owners affected and the Department of Small Business Services has arranged to give those affected immediate assistance.”

“It’s horrible. It’s terrible at this time with the economy being so bad,” echoed Fannie Beylot, who lives on 79th Street. “Your heart goes out to these people. All of these stores have been here forever.”

Labels: CommunityOrganizing, Fire, ImmigrantRights, Press, PublicSafety

From The New York Times: By Fernanda Santos

There were a Russian liquor seller, an Ecuadorean manicurist and a Dominican barber. There was Thomas Kourakos, 83, who is from Greece and who opened his shoe-repair shop in 1956. And there was Maria Solano, 54, who is from Peru and who opened her party-favor store in 2006.

Along 37th Avenue in Jackson Heights, Queens, from 84th Street to 85th Street, a diverse global cast toiled every morning in an equally diverse collection of neighborhood stores.

They could count on the Uruguayan furniture salesman to shovel the sidewalk after snowstorms, on the Ecuadorean accountant for financial advice and on one another for companionship.

Yolanda Mitsis, 59, a Colombian aesthetician who had a skin-care clinic on the block, described their relationship as “una cadenita,” or a little chain. But that chain was broken Saturday morning when flames, water and smoke pulverized 8 of the 15 stores on the block.

“I used to say hi every morning, when they walked by,” Alex Chin, 59, a Chinese dry cleaner whose shop was spared by the fire, said of the people whose businesses were destroyed. “It feels very lonely without them.”

A malfunctioning boiler inside a furniture store between Mr. Chin’s and Mr. Kourakos’s shops sparked a blaze that raged for four hours, forcing the evacuation of a neighboring apartment building and requiring 168 firefighters to bring under control, officials said.

No one was seriously injured, but the flames left a crater of mangled metal and charred brick in the heart of a commercial strip that has offered many immigrants a foothold in a new city.

For the lucky ones, like Mr. Chin and Abdul Rahim, an Afghan who owns a fabric store on the block, life goes on. Those not so lucky lost pretty much all they had.

“Everything I had saved I invested in this store,” said Robinson Valderrama, 30, who is from Colombia and who last year opened a clothing shop, Stylus Boutique, in a storefront facing 84th Street. He has a 9-year-old son, a 21-month-old daughter and a 7-year-old stepdaughter. His wife is unemployed, and the store was their only source of income, he said.

Mr. Valderrama did not have insurance. Ms. Mitsis thought she had insurance, but said that when she called to check on Tuesday, she found out that her policy had lapsed. Ms. Solano had coverage but said it would not offset her losses.

Then there are people like Amada Sánchez, 51, the manicurist from Ecuador, who rented a work station at La Pelukeria, a hair salon. She accepted only cash and kept it at work, in a small cardboard box that she emptied every Saturday at the end of her shift, she said.

“I had worked like crazy all week because of Valentine’s Day, but the fire burned my money,” Ms. Sánchez said dejectedly, estimating that she probably had $1,000 in the box. She said the fire also burned her nail polishes, nail drying machines and the rest of her equipment.

Very little has been recovered from the debris. A contractor in charge of the demolition said his crew had salvaged seven helium tanks and a cash register from Ms. Solano’s party-favors store, Lalita’s, with $1,400 inside. They also retrieved a filing cabinet and a safe from the liquor store, facial vaporizers from Ms. Mitsis’s clinic and a pair of pedicure chairs from the hair salon.

“I would love to have the businesses that were destroyed come back, but to be honest, I don’t know if it’s going to happen,” said Councilman Daniel Dromm, who represents the neighborhood and who spent much of the weekend at the fire scene. “This was devastating to people’s lives.”

Their loss is more than just material. Mr. Kourakos, the cobbler, was working in the back of his shop when flames erupted next door. Because he is hard of hearing, he did not know that Ms. Solano and her husband, Julio Aragón, had been calling out his name, unsure if he was still inside.

Ms. Solano said Mr. Aragón visited Mr. Kourakos every morning after he had helped her roll up Lalita’s gates. If a Spanish-speaking client needed Mr. Kourakos’s services, Mr. Aragón helped translate. If Mr. Kourakos had to bring a heavy box into his shop, Mr. Aragón would carry it. If Mr. Kourakos had trouble pulling nails from the heels of a shoe, Mr. Aragón would do it for him.

Mr. Aragón dashed inside Mr. Kourakos’s shop, Tom’s Shoe Repair, even as smoke and flames threatened to overpower him. Mr. Kourakos emerged wearing an apron smeared with shoe wax. His winter jacket, keys and all the machines and memories he had amassed in more than five decades had been left behind.

“I don’t know what he’s going to do,” his daughter Jeannie Kourakos said. “He went there to work, but he had a social life with the people who worked around him. They’d come in, bring him a doughnut; they stopped by to say hello. He’s going to miss his friends.”

Labels: CommunityOrganizing, Fire, ImmigrantRights, Press, PublicSafety

From NY de Día: By Edison Esparza

Labels: ImmigrantRights, Press

Labels: CivilRights, ImmigrantRights, Legislation

From Philippine Daily Mirror: By PDM News

Rain, wind, and cold weather did not hinder supporters from rallying behind Daniel Dromm at the Jewish Center in Jackson Heights. Dromm held a press conference to announce his latest position as the chair of the New York City Council Immigration Committee. “Dromm is the person we need for the job. He has been active in community affairs in the district for almost two decades already. He has advocated for community issues which includes just wages, traffic concerns, LGBT rights and justice for victims of hate crimes in the community”, Mon Mappala of the Filipino Political Action Committee (FPAC) said.

On November 3, 2009, Dromm received overwhelming support from the immigrant community when he was elected to serve the 25th district. His district has the highest percentage of foreign-born residents in New York City (the 25th district includes sections of Jackson heights, Elmhurst, LeFrak City, Corona, Rego Park and Woodside).

Council member Dromm declared, “As committee chairperson, I look forward to addressing the wide array of issues that our immigrants face when they come here. In the City council, I represent what is perhaps the most diverse, immigrant rich community in the city, if not the world. It is indeed an honor to chair this committee.”

“A patchwork of immigrants elects an openly gay councilman”, is how the New York Times dubbed Dromm’s recent election. Dromm who has irish roots, speaks Spanish fluently and once worked as a teacher promised to address different issues in the community.

Among the issues which is Dromm’s priorities in the Immigration committee are expanding of English-as-a-Second language programs, improving health care access for immigrants, opening jobs and community centers, improving housing for immigrants, relieving school overcrowding in communities with large immigrant populations, supporting federal legislation for the DREAM act and focusing on the need for a comprehensive federal immigration reform.

“Dromm truly understands the diversity of his district and the needs of the different neighborhoods that thrive in it. We are hopeful that his appointment as Chair of the immigration committee will bring our voices, the immigrant voices into the New York City Council. And he will help bring changes to our community including the ever growing Filipino Community”, Mappala said.

Council member Dromm declared during the press conference, “It does not matter where you come from or how you got here. What matters is where we are going together”. “What immigrants want is what all New Yorkers want – the right to pursue happiness and freedom in our great land”, Dromm added.

Philippine Forum, a local organization in Queens fighting for the rights and welfare of Filipinos, signified to help Dromm push for a comprehensive immigration agenda.

"The appointment of Council Member Dromm is a big victory for the Filipino community and our immigration campaign. Danny has been a close ally even before he was elected as NYC council member and we look forward to working with him in bringing concrete changes for immigrants”, Julia Camagong, Co-Executive director of Philippine Forum, stated.

Labels: ImmigrantRights, Press