CUNY Citizenship Now! immigration helpline aids nearly 10,000
Citizenship Now
Daily News/CUNY Citizenship Now! immigration helpline aids nearly 10,000
The effort was lauded by elected officials who came by to thank volunteers, including Queens Borough President Melinda Katz and Reps. Jerry Nadler (D-Manhattan) and Jose Serrano (D-Bronx).
BY RICH SCHAPIRO
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Friday, May 2, 2014, 3:27 PM
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DAVID HANDSCHUH/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Council Member Rafael Espinal works the phone at the Daily News sponsored 12th Annual Citizenship Now! on May 1, 2014.
Nearly 10,000 callers had reached out to the Daily News/CUNY Citizenship Now! immigration helpline by Friday afternoon, the final day of the annual event.
Among the elected officials who stopped by to thank volunteers were Queens Borough President Melinda Katz and Reps. Jerry Nadler (D-Manhattan) and Jose Serrano (D-Bronx).
"What you're doing is something so important," Serrano told a group of call answerers at Stella and Charles Guttman Community College in Manhattan. “It keeps alive in this city the feeling of being a volunteer, of being able to give to somebody else, and that's what New York has always been known for."
Citizenship NOW! phones and special lines for the hearing-impaired will close at 7 p.m. Friday.
Throughout the past five days, hundreds of volunteers — including lawyers, paralegals and law students — have given out free, confidential citizenship and immigration information in English, Spanish and a long list of other languages.
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DAVID HANDSCHUH/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Volunteers work the phones at the Daily News sponsored 12th Annual Citizenship Now! on Thursday day, May 1, 2014.
By Friday afternoon, volunteers had answered 9,676 calls.
“Queens is 46% immigrant population," Katz said.
"Folks from all over the borough have so many questions that they just can't get answered sometimes. To see the phones ringing in here and the amount of folks and, by the way, all the different languages that I here being spoken in that room, is truly remarkable."
The call-in numbers for the 12th annual Citizenship NOW! Immigration hotline are:
English: (646) 746-9636
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DAVID HANDSCHUH/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Volunteers manned the phones at the Daily News sponsored 12th Annual Citizenship Now! effort at Guttman Community College, a CUNY school.
Spanish: (646) 746-9634
TTY/TTD: (212) 221-2419
This year's call-in media partners include WXTV Univision 41 and WABC-TV.
The program is also supported by Stella and Charles Guttman Community College, Gristedes, Cisco, Presidio, the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs, CUNY School of Law, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, International Rescue Committee, the Legal Aid Society, New York State Office for New Americans, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, and the New Americans Campaign.
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