Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Announces Launch of New York State's Institute for Immigration Integration Research & Policy to Help Immigrants Transition to Community Life, Further Education, and the Workforce

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul announced the launch of New York State's Institute for Immigrant Integration Research & Policy to help immigrants transition to community life, further education, and the workforce. The Institute, which received funding in the FY 2023 State Budget, will be housed at the Rockefeller Institute of Government, the State University of New York's public policy think tank. The announcement coincides with the selection of an Advisory Board of community leaders, who will set in motion groundbreaking policy development and select an Executive Director and Assistant Director in the coming months.

VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.

AUDIO of the event is available here.

PHOTOS of the event are available on the Governor's Flickr page.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks are available below:

Buenas dias, muchas gracias. Thank you so much.

Patrick Charpenel, I want to thank you for being the keeper of the flame — the flame that started over 50 years ago when people realized that there needed to be a gathering place, as you mentioned, a casa, for people to talk about their shared experiences and to lift up the new and older immigrant communities and let them feel they do have such an important place in our state, and that is what has made us so rich and diverse. And so thank you for all the work you do at El Museo del Barrio.

I also want to thank Rossana Rosado. What a tremendous leader. She was our Secretary of State, but also, she had such a passion for doing right by people and making sure that our criminal justice was a true system of justice. And so I thank her for ascending to the position, accepting the offer, to become our Commissioner of Criminal Justice Services.

To all the elected officials and to all the consuls general who are here today, we're honored to have your countries represented, so proud to have you join us here today as well as Dr. Denise Nuñez, who will be talking about some of her experiences here.

So I will try my best Spanish. Es un honor de ser la gobernadora de New York. Is that good enough?

I am humbled. I am truly humbled to be the governor of this state and to have the ability to represent such dynamic immigrant communities from across the globe and literally millions of Latinos from around the world.

I used to live up in Buffalo, a place called Lackawanna was a home for many Puerto Ricans for a long time. They came there when I was younger and my parents were involved in the social justice Catholic movement and we embraced the community and helped lift up the children, many of whom's parents worked at the steel plant alongside my father who worked on the migrant fields.

So we wanted to help lift them up. And today, those are the elected leaders. Those are the community activists. And those young people who came here without much hope, perhaps, but just a dream, were able to live very fulfilled lives. And I saw that personally, and I know that that is the story that is happening all over this great state.

As we celebrate this month, we're nearing the end of the month — the music, the dance, the culture, the food, my gosh, it's extraordinary. And I just think it's made us so, so special.

And this is a special place. I was here at El Museo back maybe a few years ago, and we had a symposium to talk about disparities in income, the wage pay gap for Latinas, which is still very real. But I showed up in person to say, "This can no longer be the case."

We have to continue intentionally focusing on resolving this as well. So I thank you for hosting us then, and also the many exhibitions of art and culture. And I know we just talked about exhibition that's heading to Mexico City that you're very proud of.

So we feel a special responsibility to all in the family. But I will say as we just saw, five years, almost to the day, when Hurricane Maria battered Puerto Rico, we were hit again with Hurricane Fiona. And I know that's a great cause for many of you — family members, people you know who are still there.

And I literally said, "We have to take action immediately. This has happened to our familia, this is our familia." And so we've deployed our staff, we have — seems like half of my staff is down there right now, that's why they're not here, starting with our Secretary of State, Robert Rodriguez, who led a delegation.

And I've said, "Stay on the ground and provide all the assistance you can." Logistics, we're very good at this, unfortunately, because we've been through so many.

But everybody's anxious about their loved ones. And I just want to let you know, they've asked for help. I've been in communication with the governor regularly and they want people to be on the ground. And so we are sending state police officers and others and have deployed people.

We're sending down food, 33 thousands of food just yesterday. And anything we can do to help improve the island's energy infrastructure, which is so critical. And I've been down there after hurricanes. After the earthquake, we went down, I went down with then-Secretary of State Rosado.

And just there's so much more that needs to be done. So that's what we're going to do. Not just Puerto Rico, but anybody who needs our help. And we're going to continue doing that as well. We've been in communication with the Dominican Republic, offered assistance there.

What do you need? They needed drones. We got them drones. I said, "What else do you need? You know, just tell us." I mean, because you know, when we have large populations, and even smaller populations, from other countries and people are part of the New York family, that extends back to their homeland. And I want you to know that. That is genuine. That is how we're going to continue operating. So we'll continue doing whatever we can.

And also, we think about another humanitarian crisis that we're living with — the migrant individuals who've come here in search of just freedom from oppression. And we're not turning a blind eye to them at all.

They are here in our city. We're in regular communication with the mayor, with his efforts. We've answered his call for help in a number of ways, and we'll continue doing that. And we've had many, many conversations.

So we'll make sure that wherever the opportunity arises, we will stand up for our Latino brothers and sisters because they have stood up for New York before.

They are such an important part of our fabric and of what makes us so fascinating. And we saw during the pandemic even, you know, when you look at the populations, those first responders as well as the essential workers — who were they?

You know, when you look to the Latino community, they had to send, they had a lot more representation in those individuals who went into the line of fire, literally going into nursing homes and hospitals and home care aides, and a lot of people who really had no option.

They couldn't zoom into life. They showed up, and you look at the individuals who go into that profession, it's like helping, caring professions. And it does draw and attract many Latinos and Latinas to those jobs. So, we relied on them, and we can never forget that. So, our economic vitality relies on the economic vitality of all of our communities and particularly the Latino community.

And that is why I want to find ways to lift people up. And we launched, last October, the Latina Mentoring Initiative. Many times, people do not have role models. They don't see someone else who looks like them and has had their shared experience in a higher position, whether it's in, you know, health care, but not just as a health care worker, but as an administrator of a hospital, higher education, all of our institutions, politics, technology, clean energy revolution.

There's so many jobs out there. But if I'm trying to get Latinas into those jobs, if they don't see someone out there, someone who reaches a hand back and helps them, it's a much heavier burden for them. So, we said, we are not going to let that happen, and we're going to continue doing that intentionally, not just for their own personal benefits, but also again, to start narrowing that wage gap that I mentioned before.

So, people need to see people look like them. We've also found ways to have our initiatives all over the state. We're working on that. We have opportunity centers, people can come into and get help. New immigrants, they can get help with language and filling out forms and all the procedures they have to go through.

So, sometimes it's just so hard, you know, preparing for naturalization tests, workforce development and learning the English language. So, we've increased our funding to those programs. I said, "That's nice to have them in place, but they always will need more resources." So that's exactly what we're doing, too.

But today I wanted to do a different announcement, sort of a different approach to how we look about our opportunities here. And today, I'm proud to announce the state is creating a brand new Institute for Immigration Integration Research and Policy.

And I expect this research institute, I expect this to really take us to the next level in our level of understanding, and not just understanding the challenges, but also understanding the barriers of just becoming part of the society against, oftentimes there's biases, there's hatred, there's, you know, discrimination out there that still exists.

And I want this housed in a very premier institution — SUNY's Rockefeller's Institute of Government will house this and they'll help develop local immigration policies. This is not just a sit off in an ivory tower and think about it. This is to come up with concrete policies that I, as the Governor, and our state legislature, and the members of our society who are the activists and the business leaders, will all have ideas on how to work on the same page toward the same objectives to make sure that we can help immigrants assimilate and become better situated as part of our society so they don't feel like they're separated from the rest of the individuals who've been here a longer time.

So that's how we bring it together. That's how we land this month. And talk about bringing people together personally, but also opening our arms wide because we are so proud to be the state that has the Statue of Liberty in our harbor — shared with New Jersey, but that's okay — it's a sign of who we are. It's a statement of our values. And whether your family members came here last week or generations ago, this is New York. This is what makes us so exceptional. It is that passion and caring for people from all over the globe.

But I have to say there's a special pride in knowing that we have such a large, robust community from the Latino countries around the world. And that is going to continue to give us the strength we need to continue on in this new unchartered territory — the post-pandemic world.

But I believe it's going to be even better. And to the people in this room who care so deeply in higher education and the business community and the elected officials again, and representing so many fascinating countries, I say muchas gracias, thank you.