AAF Statement on FY2027 New York City Budget
Funding allocated for AAPI Legal Services Falls Short of Growing Community Needs.
New York, NY — On Tuesday, New York City adopted a $125.8 billion budget for Fiscal Year 2027, and announced Schedule C funding allocations. The Asian American Federation (AAF) applauds critical investments in priorities we have championed, including language access, support for nonprofit capacity building, and immigration legal services.
However, AAF and the coalition of community organizations that make up the Rapid Immigration Support and Empowerment (RISE) Network remain concerned that current investments do not match the scale of need and continue to urge sustained funding for culturally and linguistically responsive immigrant services for AAPI New Yorkers.
Over the past year, AAF has worked with RISE Network partners to build an infrastructure that connects immigrant New Yorkers to trusted, community-based legal and social services support. Through RISE, organizations with deep relationships in AAPI communities have strengthened coordination, expanded referral pathways, and developed rapid-response systems to ensure that residents can access timely assistance in the languages they speak from providers they trust. In FY 26, our network organizations have assisted over 2,200 people in over a dozen Asian languages with legal referrals, “Know Your Rights” education, and case management.
The need for this work has only grown. AAPI New Yorkers continue to face deep uncertainty, including heightened immigration enforcement, changing federal immigration policies, cuts to benefits, threats to humanitarian protections such as Temporary Protected Status, and persistent barriers to critical services. Asian immigrant communities also experience significant language barriers and often rely on trusted community organizations as their first—and sometimes only—point of access to legal information and services. AAF’s work coordinating the services of the RISE network partners has met this moment by bringing together trusted AAPI organizations across the city and leveraging their cultural competencies to serve our communities where they are. In creating network-wide resource maps, multilingual immigration resources and tracking fast-changing policies, AAF has also served as a hub for knowledge sharing and rapid response coordination.
We recognize and appreciate the City’s current investment in immigrant services including the modest expansion of the Legal Services for AAPI Communities Initiative to include additional organizations. While we welcome this increase, the investment still lags far behind the harsh realities facing AAPI immigrant New Yorkers. This allocation also falls significantly short of our 3.5 million dollars request, the investment needed to sustain the RISE Network’s capacity to meet growing challenges across AAPI communities. Asian immigrants comprise nearly 30% of New York City’s non-citizen population, yet culturally and linguistically appropriate legal services remain severely under-resourced. The systems, partnerships, expertise, and capacity that AAF has built over the past year would be difficult and costly to rebuild.
“AAF is grateful to Mayor Mamdani, Speaker Menin, and NY City Council members who recognized the importance of investing in immigrant communities and supported this effort,” said Catherine Chen, Chief Executive Officer of the Asian American Federation. “At the same time, we must be honest about what is at stake. Without adequate investment, community members would have to wait longer for help, struggle to connect with trusted providers and encounter even greater barriers to accessing the support they need. This is not only about funding a program, it is about sustaining the infrastructure that allows immigrant New Yorkers across the city to get timely, culturally responsive services. For many families those services can make the difference between staying together and being separated.”
AAF looks forward to continuing to work with the administration, the City Council, and our partners in the RISE Network to support AAPI New Yorkers.