Empire Justice Center to Open a Long Island Office

February 1, 2007

Author: Anne Erickson

Empire Justice will be opening a Long Island office as part of Touro Law School’s newly created Long Island Public Interest Legal Center. The Center will house other not-for-profit agencies, including Nassau Suffolk Law Services, the Health and Welfare Council of Long Island, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund, the Civil Liberties Union, and others.

As part of this new Center, Empire Justice will strive to fill gaps and to supplement the work of local Long Island agencies, adding depth to their efforts by providing unrestricted legal assistance to ensure that government benefits are provided fairly and equitably, that immigrants have access to needed legal assistance, and that local government rules comply with state and federal law.

Long Island is home to over 455,000 foreign born residents (U.S. Census Bureau, 2004 American Community Survey). Over 23% of them (107,930), are considered “recent entrants” having arrived in the United States within the ten years prior to the 2000 Census. In this region, immigrants are most likely to have arrived from Latin America (47%) and Asia (25%). They face significant language barriers: 72% of foreign-born residents speak a language other than English at home with almost 60% of them reporting that they speak English “less than very well.”

While their demographics may vary, the special legal needs of the immigrant population are similar in their intensity. Many of these immigrants, refugees and asylees arrive in desperation from impoverished countries leaving them extremely vulnerable – they take tougher jobs for lower pay, face discrimination, both subtle and overt, and they now confront a host of new laws governing their status in this country We will focus our new office on helping to meet some of the legal needs of this diverse and growing population. We envision a two-person office, consisting of one senior attorney and one more junior attorney and anticipate that the attorneys will be public benefits generalists. Their work will focus on serving the immigrant populations of Long Island. They will have considerable support from and access to Empire Justice attorneys in our Rochester, Albany and White Plains offices who specialize in immigrant rights, disability rights, consumer law, child care, HIV/AIDS, civil rights, employment, health care, domestic violence and housing. The attorneys will also benefit from interactions and collaborations that result from being housed at the Public Interest Law Clinic.

In addition, as part of this unique effort, we will be able to engage Touro Law School students in this critical work. We hope to have a team of students working with our staff throughout the year.

This is an extremely exciting opportunity and we are pleased to have financial support from the Horace Hagedorn Foundation, the Long Island Community Trust, the Long Island Unitarian Universalist Fund and the New York State Interest on Lawyer Account (IOLA) Fund.