COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA PUBLIC HEARING BEFORE COUNCIL COMMITTEE ON LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - - - Room 400, City Hall Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Tuesday, 10/17/2000 10:15 a.m. - - - RESOLUTION 000551 - Strategies to increase foreign immigration to the City of Philadelphia and to improve the immigrant experience within the City. PRESENT: COUNCILMAN JAMES F. KENNEY, Chair COUNCILMAN DAVID COHEN COUNCILMAN MICHAEL A. NUTTER COUNCILWOMAN MARIAN B. TASCO COUNCILMAN FRANK RIZZO - - - VINCENT VARALLO ASSOCIATES, INC. Registered Professional Reporters Eleven Penn Center, Suite 600 Philadelphia, PA 19103 (215) 561-2220 2 10/27/00 LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 000551 I N D E X Pennsylvania Economy League David Thornburgh Executive Director . . . . . 4 Anuj Gupta. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 5 Police Commissioner Timoney . . . . . . . . . 26 John Tenhula, Balch Institute . . . . . . . . 39 6 James Cuorato, Director of Commerce . . . . . 49 Lynn Fields, Philadelphia Airport . . . . . . 58 7 Dr. Walter Tsou, Health Commissioner. . . . . 66 Dr. Anyanwu, African Congress . . . . . . . . 71 8 Jaime Figueras, Congreso de Latinos Unidos. . 80 Frank Talangbayan, President. . . . . . . . . 82 9 Executive Council of Greater Philadelphia Ernesto Gange, Network of Filipinos Overseas 85 10 Mary Ramirez, School District Office. . . . . 87 of Language Equity 11 Allan McIntyre, OHCD. . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Donna Wolf, Managing Director's Office. . . . 101 12 Lazar Kleit, Office of Human Relations. . . . 108 Otis Haigler, Jr., L&I. . . . . . . . . . . . 111 13 Marwan Kreidie, Arab-American Community . . . 115 M. Miller, Office of Internationat'l Service 122 14 Majid Alsayegh, Small Business Owner. . . . . 128 Marina Kats, Esquire, Russian Immigrant . . . 133 15 B. Klotz, Lutheran Children & Family Services 141 Judy Bernstein, Council of Migration Services 146 16 P. Uyehara, Esq., CLS Language Access Project 156 Father Gerry Burns, Archdiocese . . . . . . . 161 17 Arrefe Tsegaye, Nationality Service Center. . 164 Frantz Latour, Haitian Community Center . . . 168 18 Estella Rayes, Honduras immigrant . . . . . . 174 M. Portillo, Eastern PA Organizing Project. . 175 19 David Liu, Chinese Development. . . . . . . . 179 Association of Chinatown 20 Cindy Suy, Cambodian Assoc. Of Philadelphia 181 Rorgn Sorn, " " " " 188 21 Philadelphia Commission of Asian Affairs. . . 192 Liu Wen Cheng and Attorney and Interpreter. . 199 22 Bernard Neary, Esquire. . . . . . . . . . . . 202 23 24 25 3 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 P R O C E E D I N G S 3
Good morning, 4 ladies and gentlemen. The Council Committee on 5 Legislative Oversight is now in session to take testimony on a recently passed resolution 7 regarding immigration and Philadelphia's situation relative to worldwide immigration patterns in the United States. I have just a short statement I would like to read. Also in attendance are Councilmembers Tasco, Cohen and Nutter. We all know that Philadelphia is rapidly losing its population and as a result, our city's tax base and future economic growth are seriously in peril. Various commendable efforts have been undertaken to address certain aspects of this population exodus, including student retention initiatives, charter schools, tax increment financing and tax abatements, wage tax reduction, et cetera. But the issue of foreign immigration is rarely addressed, while comparable cities like Boston, Chicago and Houston are offsetting their losses with dramatic immigration gains. We as a city government must do 4 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 everything we can to address our population loss, and increasing immigration is a critical step in the right direction. The City must ensure that we are not an impediment to new immigrants' success, that we respond to their needs for assistance, and that they can successfully become contributing members of our society. I know that one of the political pitfalls for advocating for immigration is the misperception and fear among some citizens that new immigrants will drain resources and take jobs. These are unfair misperceptions that I hope this hearing will address. It is important to remember that Philadelphia was built by immigrants, and each of our ancestors faced similar prejudices when they arrived here. But with the problems facing Philadelphia today, we don't have a person to waste. I would like to ask each person testifying before this committee today to tell us about their immigration experiences and also propose solutions as to what the City can do to make itself more attractive to immigrants. If we can improve the level of City services to our 5 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 current immigration communities, it is my hope that they will in turn spread the word that Philadelphia is welcoming all new arrivals with arms open wide. We must each think creatively to convince people from all corners of the globe that Philadelphia is the place for them and their families to make a new home. I thank everyone present for their support and attendance. Hopefully, this hearing will mark the beginning of a new approach, and our neighborhoods that housed the immigrant groups of our past will soon be repopulated by the immigrant groups of Philadelphia's future. Our first witnesses are from the Pennsylvania Mr. David Thornburgh and Anuj Gupta. Good morning. Please identify yourself for the record.
David Thornburgh, Executive Director of Pennsylvania. Councilman Kenney, I very much appreciate your initiative in pulling together this hearing. And Councilman Cohen and Councilman Nutter and Councilwoman Tasco, I appreciate your inviting us to share some thoughts with you. 6 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 This summer, we at the Pennsylvania Economy League took a look at this question of immigration and its impact on the City and on the region, and I have some very interesting numbers and analyses and I hope some insights to share with you today about this opportunity. Before we get into that piece of the presentation, I would like to introduce and knowledge Anju Gupta, who was a staff member of with us this summer and who took the initiative to assemble this quorum and who I think also is a living example, a poster child almost, of the impact that immigration and immigrants can have upon our region. So I'm going to turn the floor over to him if it's okay for him to share his thoughts with you.
Councilman Kenney and honorable members of the Legislative Oversight Committee, I want to thank you for taking the initiative and bold steps to consider an issue which is vital to the City of Philadelphia's long-term ability to remain a place for people of 7 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 all backgrounds can live, work and play. For the past two years, I've worked as a research associate at the Pennsylvania Economy League. During that time, I paid keen attention to the mayoral race in 1999, a race in which a number of issues key to the City's future were discussed and where population was -- population was an issue that cast a shadow over others. And rarely, if ever, was immigration mentioned. Immigration is a phenomenon that helped build this country as well as nowadays allows many of our nation's cities to escape decades of despair and decay. In addition to the importance of immigration as a policy matter, immigration has a personal degree of importance to me. I am the son of two Indian immigrants. Both of my parents came here during the 1960s with next to nothing in their possession and sought an education here and stayed here to live the American dream. Along the way, they never sought public support and they have done nothing but work their entire lives. Their dream culminated five years ago when my father finished completion of an Indian food 8 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 factory in Sharon Hill, Pennsylvania, a factory which was featured on the front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer's business section, and which is a factory that now employs ten people built without one cent of public grants or loans. Honorable Councilmembers, I hope that the results of these hearings will put a face on just how much immigrants can add to our great city, if only you will give them a chance.
Thank you for your testimony. Mr. Thornburgh, do you have anything to add to what Mr. Gupta said and also what other cities in this country have done? For example, all roads lead to New York but what about other cities similar to Philadelphia, aside from Boston, that go further away from the ports of immigration entrance?
I do. I wanted to try to briefly address three questions that I think you might find of interest, and I will refer sometimes to the briefing materials that I think you have in front of you. The three questions are this. Why is 9 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 immigration important to the City's future and, I would say, the region's future? The second question is, how does Philadelphia stack up relative to other cities and other regions? And the third, and perhaps most important, question is, what is it that we can do to improve our standards in that area? The first question first. Why is immigration important to this City's future? If a city is to grow in terms of population, we quickly come to realize that the city's challenge is not as much people moving out but that there are not enough people moving in. Frankly, this is true whether people are moving from other cities in the country, but most particularly most relevant to today, it's focusing on people moving here from other countries, and I'll add numbers to that in a second. The second reason why I think this is a very timely and critical issue is that it has to do with the potential entrepreneurial energy unleashed by immigrants coming to this country, Anuj's and his family's experience being a case in point. 10 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 Let me read a quote out of Sunday's Pittsburgh paper. Pittsburgh and Philadelphia have a lot of similarities in this regard. Take a look at the nation's leading high-tech centers. They are places where people from virtually any background can settle and make it happen. The growth and development of great cities come from their ability to harness diversity and welcome newcomers' energy and wealth. In Silicon Valley, nearly a quarter of the population are foreign-born. Not to mention, a third of the Valley's high-tech scientists and engineers come from foreign countries. I think there's no better critical mass than Silicon Valley demonstrating this. The third reason it's important to have increased immigration is because it's one aspect of a series of connections between Philadelphia and the rest of the world, which opens up all kinds of new horizons, whether it's for culture exchanges or business development opportunities. In this global economy, those connections are critically important. How does Philadelphia stack up? I want 11 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 to focus on the City and the region during the 1990s and particularly the seven years from 1990 to 1997. If you had to characterize Philadelphia in those years in terms of people moving in, we have been a relatively still pond, very few new residents, again, from either from other parts of this country but most particularly from other countries. If I could refer you to the chart that's on of our testimony. This chart, I think, clearly demonstrates that those cities that have a healthy concentration of foreign immigration have grown, and that those that have not --
You can clearly see in the first column just the order of magnitude of difference between the experiences of Los Angeles, 12 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 New York, Chicago, Miami and Washington and that of Philadelphia, and that at 89,000 immigrants in that period, Philadelphia pales in comparison, particularly to Los Angeles and New York, which were basically a million apiece. If you focus on the second column, it's a very interesting analysis. This says -- forget about foreign immigration, let's just look at citizens moving in and out of these regions. You can see that Philadelphia had a 4.6 percent net loss of people again moving in and out of the region in that period. That's actually significantly less than a city like Los Angeles or New York or even San Jose or San Francisco. Many more citizens move out of those cities on a percentage basis than Philadelphia. Again, that reminds us that our focus is not trying to hold on to people as much as who are here, but if that -- if we want to grow, our challenge is to bring newcomers to this region and this city. Focussing on the third column, this looks at the overall population change in that time period. What's remarkable about a city like Los Angeles or New York is that in both cities, a 13 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 huge number of people have left, but because of the million-plus people that came to those cities from other countries, their populations actually grew. Our region did not have that same growth, so we only grew a very, very small amount in the region. If we go to the forth column, you will see that Philadelphia is next only to Washington in terms of our population loss. So, again, if our focus will be on building this city and building our population base, then we will gain all of the economic and social benefits that that contributes. This argues strongly that that's a story of people coming here particularly from other countries. One contrast that struck me in reading this chart. If you compare Philadelphia to San Jose, which has the high-tech hot spot growth engine of Silicon Valley. If you look at the second column, San Jose actually lost more people on a percentage basis than Philadelphia with more citizens moving out of the San Jose than Philadelphia. One positive about Philadelphia's 14 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 experience in this 1990 timeframe has been that the immigrants that have come to the Philadelphia region seem to be somewhat more educated than those who have come to other cities. If you just turn for a quick second to Table 3-A and Table 4-A on -- I apologize, I don't know the page.
Okay. You can see, if you focus on the '97 and '98 immigrants that have come to Philadelphia, they have over a high school education, which is markedly different from, say, the experience in particular in Chicago or San Francisco. So that may be an important fact to remember as we develop strategies going forward. Let me finally turn to the third question, which is, as I said, the most important for you and for us: What is it that we could do to improve our standing?
I'm sorry, one point. Your position on Table 3-A is that on average, the immigrants coming to Philadelphia, even though it's a smaller number, they're more educated?
So what can we do to improve our standing? Four main forces drive immigration. The first is clearly the federal immigration policy. When that pool is restricted, the Philadelphia share would have trouble growing. When that pool grows, then Philadelphia may have an opportunity, and a lot of that is now based on what existing immigrant populations are, and the federal government acknowledges the positive benefits of unifying families, some members of which are still living overseas. The second is clearly employment opportunities. If there are jobs or there are perceived to be job opportunities in the future that will have a magnetic pull on immigrants. The next is education opportunities. The forth, which is not to be overlooked, is the transportation access. It still needs to be relatively easy to get to a particular region, and if it isn't, then your ability to compete for immigrants is less. I'd like to make a statement on each of those forces. The first is immigration policy. 16 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 We need an immigration policy by and large where we can have some impact through our Congressional delegation, but I wouldn't want to overstate that. But what we can do though in the broader sense is not just focusing on policy but on more opportunities like this to acknowledge and celebrate and welcome the contributions that immigrants have made to this city and region and state for hundreds of years, just beating that drum. I think this a very important thing to do. Looking at employment opportunities, they are clearly needed if you wanted to increase that magnetic pull for immigrants. In the short term, we would love to have a high-tech employer employing or 30,000 people in the Philadelphia 17 region. That would open the gates like nothing 18 else. But that begs the question, of course, of 19 exactly how you do that, and you end up with the 20 chicken-and-egg type of thing and going back to the basics of economic competitiveness that I know so many members of Council are focussed on. Now, whether it's taxes, workforce issues, education issues, crime, schools, they're part of the core issues of competitiveness. But the drift of that 17 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 challenge I don't think should dissuade us from taking it on. A lot of it has to do with new business formation, the ability of colleges and universities and their graduates and their ideas to create new companies and new opportunities that can be that magnetic pull. And that leads me to the third area, which is educational opportunities. Only 2 percent of our regional student body are foreign students, and that's about a third of what Boston is right now. It may be relatively easier to build a set of initiatives to attract foreign students to our institutions, and that then has the capacity to help create the businesses and new employment opportunities. But, as you know, there's very promising activities right now going on in that regard. The Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation is working with a company called "Campus Visit" that has a very extensive Web site magazine and brochure targeted to students. My only observation of that is that it could be internationalized a little bit more in terms of offerings in different languages and 18 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 maybe different cultural perspectives. Let me turn to the fourth area, then I'll conclude, and that's the issue of transportation access. It's clear that Philadelphia has missed some opportunities to build better transportation access to this city from other countries. That's an opportunity we continue to have in front of us now rather than shifts in ports. It's very much a function of the airport. It is not insignificant to see how relatively few direct international flights come into the Philadelphia International Airport, and that chart is 6-A.
Basically, Philadelphia in 1996 had 8 nonstop international destinations by airport origin, compared to Newark and JFK at 30 and 75 respectively. Even O'Hare had five times as many as Philadelphia. It seems to me that we have one of two choices: either we can try to do all that we can to increase Philadelphia's direct international flights or we can try to reposition Philadelphia taking advantage of flights coming to New York and JFK and BWI that this is a very accessible point to each of those points of entry. And I think either one, or perhaps both, 19 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 of those strategies would lead to something further. Let me conclude with just my thanks again to you for inviting us to testify here and my thanks to you and your colleagues for raising this important issue. It is one that has been much talked about in quiet circles around this city for a number of years, and it deserves more attention and it deserves more thinking and energy going forward.
Thank you for your testimony. I'd like to just for a moment ask your opinion, based on research and knowledge of this issue, how we overcome some of the inherent bias and resistance that we have from Philadelphians or Americans generally? I know that people who came here from Europe back in the mid-1800s through the mid 1900s experienced ugly xenophobic types of attitudes toward them and I know that those attitudes continue today. As I said in my opening statement, there's this belief that people getting are something for free who come here and are getting 20 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 an unfair advantage to be here. And as Anuj testified to, his dad and mom didn't get a TIF for their food processing plant. As he said, they got very little of any kind of federal or state or local help. How do we in, your opinion, begin to break down those walls and to make this issue a more positive thing as opposed to what it's been in our history, which is a very negative thing? I was married in a church in South Philadelphia that was the scene of the 1860s riots that St. Phillip Cannons set up across the street to burn and blow the church down, so this is nothing new. But what kind of strategies do we employ to make people feel more positive about this issue?
There are two basic approaches: the approach of the head and the approach of the heart. The approach of the head is that there's more work to be done in terms of the economic impact, job creation and entrepreneurial opportunities. I think there is a lot of evidence that says this is a very productive economic force that again creates jobs, 21 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 puts money in people's pocketbooks, and rebuilds this city in a very popular way. The approach of the heart, if you will, I think, is the constant reminder that all of us came from somewhere and that it seems at least unfair, given the welcome by and large that so many of us received in coming to this city, that we do not extend that same welcome to others. Some piece of that -- and it's maybe not as much nuance as it was -- is the Quaker mentality that said that this is the place, this is the place of refuge for people from around the world who are experiencing religious persecution or not having economic freedom. I think those kinds of things said often and said clearly and plainly enough, I think, might be our best shot going forward.
I think that our country has a history of xenophobia. Anytime a new group comes here, they will face obstacles in adapting themselves and immigrating themselves, I'm not sure they can really institute a policy to eliminate that prior to their arrival. The only way you eliminate that is getting them here and 22 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 then showing people that they're here to work and add value to our communities and our cities and our state and our country. In New York, people are inundated with immigrants from every country and every walk of life and nobody thinks twice about it. And the city, as a result, creates policies to make sure that that transition is easier as new groups continue to come in. When you ride the New York subway, you see messages provided by the Metropolitan Transit Authority in five or six different languages, you have a mayor's office of immigrant services, and all these things are saying that we want you here, we don't want you to go anywhere else, stay here, we're here to help you.
And stories like the one about the Nigerian immigrant who used his smarts to outsmart the armed robbers in the jewelry heist, highlighting the fact that he could speak a different language and advise his wife on the telephone to call the police without the thieves knowing what he was doing is the kind of stories that really show the City's different 23 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 nationalities and backgrounds. Thank you.
I think we need to look at creating an environment where people want to come and live but how do we create new businesses? We are losing so many of them because businesses have moved out of the Delaware Valley area. I think the question is, how do we stimulate the growth in Philadelphia so that when we do attract immigrants or anyone who wants to come to Philadelphia, where would they be able to find employment? Again, I think the question is, how do we create an educational system where people will enroll their children in schools? I think they're two of the major issues facing Philadelphia for everyone who might want to come 24 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 and live here. I think that is where we have to focus our energy. I think if we build it, they will come. The question is, when we begin to build it, what do we build so that they will come to take advantage of what we provide?
I think on the same line as Councilmember Tasco's saying, part of what you were trying to say and part of what I would like to see in addition to us building it is using the resources that are amongst the immigres to help erode the tax base. People come here from countries that are suffering and find very little opportunity in their country, so even a job in the public service or customer service sector or driving a cab or working at a hotel is a much greater step from where it was they were and that give them the opportunity, I think, to grow their families and buy homes, and the tax base grows. So I think in addition to what the government can contribute to keep people from leaving the city, I think what you were trying to say is that the energy and entrepreneurial nature of immigrants can help to speed that process. 25 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2
As I said, there's good evidence about the increased ability and propensity for newly arrived immigrants to start companies, sometimes quite modest ones and sometimes ones that really explode and continue to build well and hire people. So -- and that's where, again, you know, our entry with our universities, I think, becomes very important because those people are coming here. And the question is, can we make them feel welcome enough and attached enough to stay here and do that here rather than somewhere else.
I don't think you entirely have to abide by the theory of "if you build it, they will come," because immigrants are part of that building process and the immigration phenomena is a snowball effect. Once they're here, it just starts building on itself, partly due to federal immigration policy. So if you were to just take steps as simple as letting immigrants know that Philadelphia exists, I mean, Philadelphia's not on /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 the face of this map in many parts of the world, not like New York or Los Angeles or Chicago. So if you just let them know that Philadelphia exists and make it easier for them to get here and they'll, come they'll come.
We're going to go out of line now and ask Commissioner Timoney to come up because he has a meeting to attend and to we appreciate him being here. (Witness comes forward.)
Good morning commissioner. Thank you. COMMISSIONER TIMONEY: Good morning, Councilmembers. I am thrilled actually to be invited to Council just to spend a few minutes expressing my views on a variety of levels. One, obviously, as the police commissioner, and the impact that an aggressive pro-immigration policy 27 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 would have on City services, specifically the police. But just as important, maybe more important, from a personal perspective and philosophy that is about as pro-immigrant as you can get, I think. It is know exaggeration to say that this country was quite literally founded on immigration and it's the reason why this country is so great. Coming to New York as an immigrant and then growing up in New York and being in the New York City Police Department for 29 years, I have, I would think, lots of experience dealing with immigrant communities of all shapes and sizes, cultures and languages, and it does present certain problems in policing. The most obvious being, in some cases, the language. I know the last time I checked in New York, I think it was either 157 or 174 different languages spoken. My sense is that was about eight, nine years ago, and there are probably now more languages. But there are also other problems having to do with culture, and quite a few of the lessons that I learned regarding culture come from immigrant culture in particular. You know, I 28 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 served for two years as the commanding officer of New York's Chinatown precinct at the time when that community was bursting at the seams expanding. And so even though Chinatown is a bit of New York, the community, its big expansion really began in the mid-'80s straight through to today, particularly by the decision made by the British government to cede Hong Kong back to China, which, in turn, sent quite a few folks into the New York area. Let me just give you one quick example of how culture can affect policing. I can remember early on, I was reviewing police officers' records and I noticed a few civic complaints against police officers of seemingly minor situations that blew out of control, where the person wound up being arrested, you know, for disorderly conduct and things of that nature. And often they grew out of an issue of a parking summons or something very minor, and I was kind of confounded about that until I began to think about it and spoke with folks from the Chinatown community and began to understand that community. You know, the average New Yorker or 29 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 Philadelphian, if you get a parking summons, it's no big deal. Sometimes they rip them up and don't even pay them. But in the Chinese culture, the idea of doing something wrong, even if it was of a minor nature, brings about on them this idea of losing face, of shame, so that they actually regard things that are minor to be important. And so often, they would argue with the police officer, and the arguments would then lead to shouting matches, pushing, and shoving. So over the next couple of months during roll calls, I would explain to police officers, you know, you guys -- they have it right because you complain about most New Yorkers not taking your summonses serious, and then when somebody does take it seriously, you lose control. And I think that situation and other situations like that help, I think, build some of the community relations there. And by the way, that's just one minor example. There are all sorts of other examples but the problems for policing, I think, are minuscule in comparison to the benefits of being derived by encouraging very aggressive 30 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 pro-immigration policy. You know, the revival of New York is often credited to all things, especially Wall Street.
I can tell you, having been there and lived through it, the Korean green grocers were just as a significant part of that rebirth as anything else because they were in the neighborhoods that, by and large, the body politic and the police administrations had abandoned, and they were in there. And where stores didn't exist before, they went in and began green grocers and bigger stores and bigger commerce -- not without cost. There was some learning on both sides and there were clearly ethnic tensions involved that wound up with the Police Department having to get involved, but you can learn from those problems. There's no sense -- whether it's Philadelphia or Baltimore or some other city about to engage in a pro-immigration policy, there's no 21 sense in repeating all of the mistakes of Los Angeles or New York. You can learn from them. That would be the body politic, including institutions, policing and social services, making it clear that immigrants are welcome, that they 31 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 are viewed as an asset to the society and to the city as opposed to some drain on the economy or some threat to civil order or crime. Yes, you'll get some increase in criminal activity maybe, but to try and lay it on the shoulders of recently newly-arrived immigrants, I think, is bad. The best precursor of what happens in the future is to look in the past, there's nothing magical about this. Mr. Kenney, I'm sure you can reflect back on your American history and go back to the 1850s and talk about it as -- not mine, I was still over there trying to grow potatoes. But your ancestors and the complaints of Native Americans, saying, These Irish will never make it, they're different than the prior immigrants. Then I'll bring you 50 years forward and they're saying the same thing about the Jews and the Italians. Since the Jews and Italians look different, they're not going to fit in as easily. And then 50 more years forward, and we see the same thing going on about the Asian and Caribbeans and the South Americans. I guarantee you, they're going to fit in one way or the other, and you can be a city and 32 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 society that can benefit if you embrace these immigrants with open arms. I was just back about two weeks ago in my native city of Dublin. That economy over there is going great guns, quite literally bursting at the seams. When you go in now into the hotels and into the restaurants, you do not find any more Irish boys or girls waiting the tables; they're from Romania and France and other cities in North Africa. My sense is that this immigration, if you will, this leap towards one world is inevitable, so you need to make the best of it or you can fight it, but it's going to happen. My suggestion for the City of Philadelphia and certainly my commitment of the Police Department is to encourage it and make ways for it that it will do wonders for this city. My sense is government probably can't do a good job of doing that, developing businesses that are really low-level grassroots, if you will. And you don't have to build anything, this is not Hollywood. They'll come and build it themselves.
Thank you. A similar story about the Jersey shore, 33 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 where I go to for vacation, which is Wildwood By the Sea. Many years ago, for years, the Boardwalk, along all of the retail establishments, McDonald's and all of the other fast-food places, Wawa, they were basically populated and run by young Irish kids from Ireland who came over for the summer to earn money to and to go back and help their families and pursue an education. Within the last two or three years, they're virtually nonexistent. The people now running the WaWa's and the McDonald's are from Eastern Europe and African countries and other places around the world because the Irish economy is doing so well and these people, thankfully, can stay and work in their own city and own country. But it was always a fixture of my summer vacation to hear more brogues on the Boardwalk in Wildwood than in Ireland, I think. Thank you. Councilmember Rizzo.
Commissioner, thank you for coming today. You mentioned in New York possibly, they're dealing with 157 different languages. You talk about immigration and the 34 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 present policies we have. We all know of a recent high-visibility case where there was a language barrier. COMMISSIONER TIMONEY: Correct.
Right now, can you describe how the Philadelphia Police Department, based on the limited number of languages we deal with now, how do you deal with those? COMMISSIONER TIMONEY: Let me address the first. In case folks are not aware, there was an incident and an arrest where a Chinese delivery man wound up being arrested. As best as I can tell, it was unjustifiably ordered and an investigation going forward now. That's a clear example of where language becomes an issue. We recognize, as most other cities, the need to be able to get interpreters. So for example, we have the services of a bank of interpreters through the 911 system, and that's how we handle most of them. We also have another list of people within the department that may speak a foreign language or a sign language for a person who's unable to speak or hear. We should, I think, do a better job in that area. 35 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 The problem you run into -- and I don't want to prejudge this case because we're waiting for the investigation. My sense is that we have a tendency to think of interpreters only in the cases of 911, when we use that system. We've got to be much more ready to use them in interrogation or in an interview format, but it's a difficult situation. It's not a situation that you can easily overcome. You probably need interpreters on a variety of levels. Clearly as a result of this case and the investigation, there will be some recommendations that will come out, and I will make my own recommendations and we'll all sit down with the folks, maybe the DA to talk about a backup of interpreters that are available, at least for most of the common foreign languages. Clearly Spanish is no longer a problem. For example, 30 years ago, when I was a police officer that was a huge issue in New York, where less than percent of the force spoke Spanish. I was an official Spanish interpreter in New York -- hard to believe, I know. In the '70s, if a police officer from the South Bronx needed an 36 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 interpreter, they'd say call Timoney, and I would go over and do the interpretation. It's a huge, huge problem as the immigrant base grows.
I understand we do have technology to help, but I would assume as our immigration would increase, your personnel people would focus on recruiting those nationalities. COMMISSIONER TIMONEY: Absolutely.
Do we have a number? I know one chief inspector that's Chinese-American. COMMISSIONER TIMONEY: We have a few Chinese-American, one or two Cambodians, Laotian, one or two Vietnamese. If it runs, and it should run something like New York, there was this kind of hesitancy to come in. And then once it was made clear that you're welcome and serving in the Police Department is a good job, the Asian numbers in New York have gone from quite literally a handful 20 years ago to -- there's probably well over 6 or 700 now.
Thank you, Commissioner. 37 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good morning. COMMISSIONER TIMONEY: Good morning, ma'am.
Do our officers receive sensitivity training and cultural understanding, training during their course at the academy so that they understand that, you know, especially in the 9th Councilmatic District, we have sort of a melting pot of all these wonderful groups that are there. COMMISSIONER TIMONEY: Yeah.
And how do you handle educating police officers about the diversity in the City? COMMISSIONER TIMONEY: It's a tough issue and it's a tough issue that faces all police departments. There's two ways of doing it, and you probably have to do it both ways, you can't just do it one way. The overall issue of sensitivity and dealing with diverse groups, whether it's newly 38 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 arrived immigrants or gay and lesbians, or whatever it might be, at the academy level, but there clearly isn't enough time at the academy to go into all of the areas as in-depth as you want. What you want to do is lay the groundwork, if you will, and kind of tell the police officers, You know, there are others besides you on this planet, 'cause there's a tendency of all of us just to think of ourselves and ourselves only. And so you lay the groundwork at the academy and then depend upon -- depending on what district you go to, to bring in guest speakers at roll call. I know we try and do that, for example, in the Northeast with the Russian community, there's an Indian community up the 35th District, a variety of groups that come in and speak at roll call. It sounds great in theory, but in practice, I mean, how often can you rely on this gentleman or this gentle woman to come in and do your roll-call training? And so there's a tendency to get a certain amount of enthusiasm up front, but since it's based largely on volunteers, that also wanes. 39 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 So what you need to do is make sure that the district commanders are quite literally out there beating the bushes to get different speakers. Some people will come in all the time, but by and large, when you depend on volunteers, you can also depend on them not to show. So you try and do as best you can with what you have, given where most of the problems lie. It's not an exact science and I wish I had all of the answers, but I don't.
Thank you. Are there any other questions for Commissioner Timoney? (No further questions.)
Thank you for coming in and sharing experience with us. COMMISSIONER TIMONEY: Thank you.
Mr. John Tenhula from the Balch Institute. (Witness comes forward.)
Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Good morning, Councilman Kenney. I thank you for holding these hearings. 40 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2
I'm happy to give testimony this morning before the Council's Legislative Oversight Committee on strategies foreign immigration to Philadelphia.
John, if you could move your notes to one side and move the microphone closer to you so that it will be easier for the stenographer to hear.
I'm happy to give testimony this morning before the Council's Legislative Oversight Committee on strategies to increase foreign immigration to Philadelphia and to improve the immigrant experience in Philadelphia. I would like to focus on the first part of this topic. The Balch Institute, where I'm employed, is a 30-year-old educational nonprofit organization that collects and interprets the ethnic and immigrant experiences in the United States. Increasingly, we've reached audiences through the Internet. We have an average of 25,000 school children a year to come to visit, and our audience base continues to grow. 41 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 Let me throw out a few names for you. Madeline Albright, Mario Andretti, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Saul Bellow, Liz Claibourne, Gloria Estefan, Patrick Ewing, Peter Jennings, Henry Kissinger -- I could go on. What do they have in common? They're all first-generation immigrants who've left their homelands to live in the United States. The contributions of these and countless other immigrants have enriched our culture, advanced our sciences, and enthralled us throughout the years. The talent is still coming. In a sense, the United States is mankind, "a nation of nations," as Walt Whitman said, constituted of immigrants from every portion of the globe. For many, we have become one, not in the sense of uniformity but as a rich intermingling of diverse cultures. Sacrifices, courage, imagination of immigrants, their skills, talents, arduous labor created factories, farms, mines (especially in the case of Pennsylvania) from wilderness many generations ago. The United States is unique among the family of nations. We are composed of so many 42 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 different heritages, so many different cultures, and in Philadelphia, our neighborhoods reflect this. They also reflect changes that immigrants are bringing. One of the most needed sources of information in this community on immigrants is basic data. How many, where, with what experiences, and immigrants' needs should to be seen as an investment in our future. In the past few years at the Balch Institute, working with immigrants, we've come to believe that immigrants are a part of the revitalization process. Whatever neighborhood they live in -- West Philadelphia, South Philadelphia, Olney, the Northeast -- they start businesses, invest in the community, they pay taxes, and they vote. Travel abroad anywhere, ladies and gentlemen, and visit our embassies, and you will see the long lines outside that visa office. Go in sit in the waiting room and what will you see? Attractive posters of New York, Boston, and Los Angeles. Why not Philadelphia? Technology, travel, communication, and industry have brought us closer than ever as a family of nations. Last 43 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 year alone, over 50 percent of the B1 visas went to immigrants working in the technology industry in this country. This talent has been a major contribution toward the last decade of prosperity that most Americans have experienced in their lives. Why does the State of Pennsylvania rank 15th among states that receive immigrants? Why does Philadelphia rank 19th among major metropolitan areas? And I cite the Economy League figures on that. My question is, what are we as Philadelphians missing? Economic forecasts now being projected, like in the State of Iowa, state that demographics clearly indicate that immigrants of all skill levels are needed to keep the economy strong, so we need to create a campaign to attract immigrants. I want to make a few further economic arguments here. Although employers are now demanding a more educated workforce, they also continue to need workers across the entire spectrum of skills. So we're not, ladies and gentlemen, just talking about a brain drain.
In a 1999 Congressional research service study entitled 44 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 "The Education Skills Distribution of Jobs," stated the skilled distribution of employment in the year 2005 will look much like it did in 1994: 50 percent of the jobs will require post-secondary education and another 50 percent a high school diploma or less. The second point is that experts argue that the answer to the critical labor shortage today is legal immigration. In a speech by the president of the Chamber of Commerce in February of '99, Thomas Donahue said: The American economy will need 52 million new workers in the next 10 years, and 30 million of them must come from sources other than our existing work force. Third point. The tradition from a goods economy to a service-producing economy is going on in this country at a very fast rate. Retail and service industries will continue to employ clerks, cashiers, sales workers, home health aides, nursing aides, child care workers, where little formal education is required. Ladies and gentlemen, I call your attention to a very recent article in the Philadelphia Inquirer's front page. " They were referring to this area as well as national. In addition, there have been a number of studies made on the impact immigrants have made in neighborhood (unintelligible). Too here I find it noteworthy that in the first one compiled by the Alex De Toqueville Institution in Virginia, they looked at the years 1980 to 1989 and found immigrants to the District of Columbia substantially increased the population where they lived. I have given citations in my testimony, which I've given a hard copy to the committee. A second study was from Foundation Wards, which found that immigrants are the lowest group to default on first-time mortgages. So why not Philadelphia? Three considerations are involved. Historically, Philadelphia was a primary port of entry for immigrants. That last year was 1910. What we have always received is immigrants. What would make it work today? My first point is, it will take a very strong political, civic, and business will to work together (inaudible) interests and community concerns and come up with a plan. Perhaps this process is best placed on a 46 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 nongovernmental agency, giving all interested parties time to put together an action plan. People before me have testified about New York, Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles. All of these cities have offices for immigrant affairs. In the case of New York, the strength of the office rests at a cabinet-level position, in the office of the mayor, with staff persons in Albany and Washington that work on all issues of immigration and form a direct link to the Office of Planning Welfare of city government. Mayor Giuliani convenes his Mayor's Immigration Coalition of Civic and Business Leaders on a regular basis. He has submitted written testimony for the House and Senate subcommittees as an advocate for increased immigration and believes that immigrants are a part of the ongoing growth of the city. In Boston, an office was established at the impetus of Mayor Menino two years ago, called "New Bostonians," with a mandate to deal with all aspects of immigrants' needs. Los Angeles is about to open a similar office. What are we missing in Philadelphia? 47 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 Opportunities. The Philadelphia immigration history story can be told. We're a city of history, we put a great deal of value on our history. We could talk about William Penn, the Irish riots, when this city was the capital of American Jewry, Latino in-migration, refugees, foreign students. And we could talk about our police commissioner, a naturalized American from Ireland. This is still a city of immigrants. And here is my second consideration. We must do a better job in selling Philadelphia to immigrants.
We must better understand why more foreign university graduates take employment offers in this country outside of Philadelphia, after having spent their years studying here. We need to attract foreign students to the Philadelphia area with quality-of-life arguments as well as jobs. We are missing an important tax revenue, new housing starts, and all of the consumption of goods and services that new populations bring. Finally, the opportunities missed are in trade, technology, transfer of ideas, wealth. Immigrants help bridge tie between countries. 48 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 Wouldn't it be exciting to see "Philadelphia Loves You Back," a poster, on some of our sister city embassy walls when you visit? The idea of attracting workers and better addressing the needs of immigrants is not new. My final point. The third consideration would be that we elevate the level of thinking and discussion about immigration at all levels. Let's get an area-wide conversation started about immigration in Philadelphia in our schools, places of worship, and work. We don't need to wait for a report. It should be exploring attitudes, perceptions, and facts that could contribute to that report. We have some City models, as I have explained, to follow. We can create our own models. If we are serious, we move beyond anecdotal ethnic stories and celebration and into the realm of serious planning. I think that today's committee hearing is a very good start. Thank you.
Thank you very much and thank you for your testimony. (Applause.) 49 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2
Are there any questions for this witness? (No questions.)
Thank you very much for coming in and taking the time. We're going to go to Dr. Tsou and Jim Cuorato, the Commerce Director, to come up together, and then we're going to move around a little bit to get some people from advocacy groups and some people who are immigrants themselves, so we have not just government, but a balance of government and individuals. So these two here will be, again, representing the Commerce Department and the Health Department. (Witnesses come forward.)
Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee on Legislative Oversight. My name is James Cuorato, I'm the City representative and Director of 50 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 Commerce for the City of Philadelphia. I'm very glad to be here this morning to testify on Resolution 551 and share with you some of my thoughts on increasing foreign immigration in Philadelphia and improving the immigrant experience within Philadelphia. In my opinion, as Director of Commerce, there is one strategy above all to attract immigrants to the City: and that is to create and maintain good-paying and fulfilling jobs. I know that's a simple and very evident concept, but people flow to the areas where the jobs are. As a major East Coast city, we are, by location alone, a major gateway to all of Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and much of South and Latin America. Being a gateway is not enough, however. We need to give people a reason to walk through those gates. I believe that primary reason is job opportunities. More than just creating good jobs, I believe it is important to create a diversity of jobs so that immigrants of all levels of experience and training can come to this city and take advantage of all of the opportunities that we offer. 51 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 To that end, the City of Philadelphia intends to continue its aggressive efforts to retain, grow, and attract business and investment to this city. We will continue to work to improve the overall business climate by making the City a more business-friendly place, by streamlining operations, and by continuing to work with Council to reduce the tax burdens on businesses in this city. Just in the couple of months since I've been in this position, I have tried to instill throughout our department and have input into the Administration a renewed effort to make our department promote this business-friendly environment within the City, and I know that's an approach that the Chairman and the members of this committee share. Specifically, on the issue of immigration, we are going to be looking at investigating additional multilingual staff within our department so that if we get these requests for help for start-ups for small businesses, that we're able to respond quickly and effectively. We also need to ensure that our 52 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 training programs are in place and strengthened so that when the job opportunities are available, we can have programs in place to train people to make sure they can fill those jobs. On the City representative side, I believe a critical piece of maintaining this population is to make the City an enjoyable place to be. What happens when you're done work? Are there interesting and fun places to go and things to do? What about the arts and cultural experience both in Center City and in our neighborhoods? While we all know about the museums and theaters as well as the great festivals such as the Mummers Parade and the 4th of July celebration downtown, there are a lot of interesting and fun things happening in our neighborhoods, such as the summer concern series in Gorgus Park in Roxborough, the Jazz Festival on Cecil B. Moore Avenue, or the Old Village International Festival in Port Richmond. These events not only make a neighborhood fun, but they also often bring diverse groups together in a relaxed, friendly atmosphere. 53 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 Two other programs that we have in our department, which encourage foreign visitors and encourage the approach that Philadelphia can be an international city, are our Sister Cities Program, which is still being run and run effectively, and the International Visitors Council, which each year welcome thousands of visitors to the City from countries all over the world. On another front, the City Representative's Office has been leading the Philly College Town Program, an effort to retain the college graduates in our area.
As we all know, many students come from abroad to study at our fine colleges and universities. This program not only keeps the best and the brightest in the City, but it also opens the pipeline for the family and friends of the foreign-born graduates of our colleges and universities to come and settle in our area. And just to make the connection back to the issue that I touched on earlier about jobs, what we need to do as a city is to strengthen the growth of our small businesses so that the job opportunities are available. And then when our 54 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 students are coming out of the colleges, presumably they'll like the experience they've had here, want to stay here, and if the job opportunities are there, that will sort of close the loop. Finally, I feel it is important to note that immigrants, just like all of us and every other resident of the City, want to live in a clean, safe city. We must be diligent in making sure that, in fact, our streets and neighborhoods are clean and safe, our schools produce students who are ready to compete for jobs in the marketplace, and that there is a sufficient support system to address the needs of our citizens. That concludes my prepared testimony. Thank you for the opportunity to share these thoughts. My colleague, Miss Fields, is here from Philadelphia International Airport to offer some additional thoughts from that perspective, and I'd be glad to answer any questions you may have.
Mr. Cuorato, could you talk a little bit about some of the 55 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 opportunities we may have as a city to deal with some of the major industries that are foreign- related? For example, our South American fruit trade at the port and our cargo relationships as it relates to the port of Philadelphia, companies in the City like Augusta Helicopter Company, which is an Italian-based company, those kinds of opportunities to perhaps get our city message into foreign lands through companies that are existing here, employing people here, and have a good experience here. Is there any thought of that, or can we explore that opportunity? 'Cause it seems that those companies are here because they have had a good experience here in Philadelphia, and maybe through diplomatic sources, through business relationships, be able to tout the benefits and the liveability and attractiveness of Philadelphia.
Yeah, that's an excellent point, Mr. Chairman. And, actually, I'm facing that situation on a number of different fronts. I continue to believe that Philadelphia is a great city with a lot to offer, but part of 56 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 the issue that we have is getting that message out, both within this region, nationally, and internationally, as the point that you're making. We're facing this with the high-tech industry as well. If you look at the factors that govern where high-tech and e-commerce businesses want to be, this city matches up with every one of those criteria. So we've got the strengths; we need to do a better job of getting the word out. Specifically on your question, I think we've got to look to some of our sister agencies, the Delaware River Port Authority, are our own Philadelphia Regional Port Authority, and see what they're doing from a marketing standpoint. And if it we believe there's a situation where we need to devote more resources to that, to getting that message out that Philadelphia is a good place to do business, that's what I think we need to do, and I'll certainly be looking into that.
And I'm also glad you mentioned the issue of arts and culture, 'cause I remember back to the time of the Cezanne exhibit, I think it was displayed -- the exhibit appeared in Berlin, I think, and London and 57 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 Philadelphia only were the three cities in the world that had the opportunity to have that art exhibit. And it was interesting to see that that particular year, we generated more business for the City, both in hotel rooms and visitors than the Flyers Eagles, Sixers, and Phillies put together that entire year. Those type of cultural opportunities, I think, may be a chance for us to truly get our message out, not only to the people who are visiting here to see our museum and the exhibit, but also in the places where they're coming from. And could I ask Lynn to come up from the airport, too? Doctor, you can sit right there too. 'Cause I think this is related to the issue of the airport and aviation. (Witness comes forward.)
And if you want to just kind of say a few words about what the airport's doing and specifically on the Economy League's testimony on the number of international planes arriving in Philadelphia as opposed to some of the other cities in the country like Chicago and Boston and Los Angeles. 58 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 So please identify yourself for the record.
And members of the Legislative Oversight of City Council and Airport Advisory Board Member Tasco. I am Lynn Fields, Deputy Director of Aviation for Marketing and Public Affairs, Division of Aviation, Department of Commerce. Thank you for the opportunity to join the Commerce Director. And on behalf of the Acting Director of Aviation, Charles Isdell, I present the Philadelphia International Airport's perspective on supporting and enhancing foreign immigration to Philadelphia. Mr. Isdell asked me to let you know that he would have been here today were it not for the fact that he is at the airport, giving a tour to some of your colleagues, some legislators from Harrisburg. Our testimony focuses on the following areas: Philadelphia International Airport's expansion plans as they relate to increasing 59 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 Philadelphia's availability to countries around the world; Philadelphia International Airport's air service development and marketing efforts in the global arena; the Airport's current efforts and commitment to creating an improved and inviting gateway to the region; and support of legislation extending the Federal Visa Waiver Pilot Program. 7 million passengers in 1999. And we are in the midst of an ambitious capital improvement, consisting of the construction of two new terminals, the expansion of an existing terminal, two additional parking garages, and new I-95 access ramp roads. The two new terminals are Regional Terminal F and the new international terminal. For purposes of this testimony, let me focus on the significance of the new international terminal project as one that will greatly enhance the region's gateway and our capacity to accommodate additional international air service. The approximate square footage for the 60 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 existing Terminal Building A through E is 1,430,500 square feet. The new international terminal will add 785,000 square feet to that total, nearly half the existing terminal complex in size. The $325 million state-of-the-art facility, which is scheduled for completion in the spring of 2002, is a four-level terminal that will provide gates, 12 of which will be wide-body 10 international gates, capable of accommodating the 11 new generation Air Bus 330, 340 and the Boeing 747 12 400 aircraft. Adjoining to our existing Terminal 13 A, the new terminal's total international gate capacity will be 20. So we will be moving from 7 available gates for international traffic to 20 gates. Including the $90 million for I-95 exit access ramps and $25 million for aircraft parking aprons, this is a $440 million project. It will feature: A federal inspection service, or FIS facility, capable of processing 2800 arriving passengers per hour. S. Airways club and another 13,000 square feet for other airline clubs. The new international terminal is projected to accommodate 5 million passengers by the year 2010. In terms of air service development, the news here is good. David Thornburgh mentioned in the Economy League's report that in '96, we were servicing eight foreign destinations with nonstop service. Today, we are servicing 19. Next month, 20, and already announced for -- by May of 2001, that total will be 22. We believe that aggressively marketing the airport as an international gateway and encouraging airlines to increase the number of international destinations served from Philadelphia is further evidence of the City's commitment to attract foreign visitors as well as 62 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 new residents. Currently, Philadelphia International Airport is serviced by Europe's three largest-volume airlines: British Airways, Luftansa German Airlines, and Air France. Just within the past two years, our marketing efforts helped to convince Air France to resume daily service between Philadelphia and Paris, and that service was inaugurated in March of 2000. S. Airways inaugurated its new Air Bus 330 with a flight from Philadelphia to Paris. S.
Airways began nonstop service from Philadelphia to Manchester, England. Next month, it will initiate service to Santa Domingo in the Dominican Republic. Already announced for April of 2001 is a resumption of its service to Amsterdam. And in May, service will begin to Brussels, Belgium. The airport's air service development marketing plans include strategies designed specifically to attract service from both foreign and domestic carriers to various other European and foreign destinations, in anticipation particularly of the completion of our new 63 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 international terminal. S. S. citizens have cleared customs over that same period. Over the past years, the City has stepped up its efforts to enhance the region's gateway by providing services and amenities to assist foreign visitors. These efforts include providing airport bilingual and multilingual staff to assist visitors arriving from foreign destinations in their processing through the federal inspection services, and that's in addition to airline staff that's available generally to help visitors with their connecting flight information. We want to make sure that they get through as expeditiously and as efficiently as possible, without long waits. The area approaching immigration and customs, which is called the (unintelligible) corridor, has been equipped with a video wall in which we show local and regional attractions and 64 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 have audio messages produced there in five languages to welcome visitors. When the volume at the gates require the airport to utilize PTVs, which are passenger transport vehicles, mobile lounges equipped to off-load passengers from the aircraft and deliver them to port holes the terminals so that they don't have to go outside when the aircraft's been parked at a remote location, we have added to those PTVs information services staff to welcome visitors and answer any questions they may have on their 10- to 14-minute ride over to the airport. The City also provides bilingual staff, which staffs a passenger assistance counter in the international baggage claim area. The other point I wanted to make is that of the Visa Waiver Program. Through its involvement in membership in the American Association of Airport Executives and the Airports Council International, the airport has lobbied in favor of recently approved federal legislation to permanently extend the Visa Waiver Program. That program allows citizens from certain countries to travel to the United States as temporary visitors 65 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 for business or tourism without obtaining a Visa. Extending the Visa Waiver Program is also expected to help decrease delays at international airports in the country serving as ports of entry. In conclusion, these are some of the ways in which Philadelphia International Airport is aggressively seeking to make itself available to visitors and new residents from all parts of the globe by expanding its international arrivals facilities, by marketing the airport to airlines to increase international air service, by making accommodations more welcoming, and by supporting efforts to expedite processing of foreign visitors through FIS. We're anxious to participate as part of the City's Commerce Department in any unified City strategy developed to enhance and improve our ability to welcome and attract new immigrants. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Thank you for testimony. Dr. Tsou, I know you have a -- you're late for an appointment, so I'd like to get your testimony in now. And I thank you for your patience. 66 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2
Thank you, Councilman Kenney. I apologize because I'm actually already late for a national press conference on air pollution, so I'm going to actually just submit my written testimony to you and simply summarize the major points I want to make.
First is that I support strongly, as a son of Chinese immigrant, the importance of immigration to the City of Philadelphia. We, as the Health Department, have done many areas in which we can support immigration programs for the City of Philadelphia. And I'd like to mention four of them that our health department's involved in. The first is through access to health care. For many immigrants, their first encounter with City government actually is to get their job or school physical at one of our City health centers. The City health centers have been in the business for over 30 years, and we see any patient, regardless of their ability to pay, and we're very proud of that. But we do need many more language-competent individuals who can speak 67 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 and see patients in our health centers. The second area is tuberculosis. Anytime that we have more patients that come in with -- or immigrants, we do run the risk of increasing tuberculosis, but we have worked diligently with our bilingual to try to improve our TB education programs and to assure medication compliance. A third area is actually food inspections. And, in fact, there are over 14,000 food establishments in Philadelphia, and many of them are reflecting a wide diversity of ethnic tastes in our immigrant populations, and this food diversity actually adds to the richness of what makes cities unique. We work closely with the Korean and Dominican grocers to try to address many of their concerns. I should mention that we have to translate our own food regulations into some to 30 different languages to cover our 21 service areas. And, again, we need many more 22 bilingual sanitarians on our staff to adequately 23 address the issues that are raised as we have an 24 increase in diverse population. 25 The fourth area, of course, is that 68 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 immigrant minorities are going to be the going face of Philadelphia in the future, and that we as Asians are the smallest minority, but we are also the fastest growing. And our efforts actually to improve our outreach to prenatal care services and to translate our literature into different languages is an important role for us as health department. We also are involved with family planning services in terms of trying to outreach to all of our minority populations. So in summary, what I would like to say is that there are many lessons that we can learn for Philadelphia and I do realize that we do need to try to make this city more immigrant-friendly. Recently, I just returned from Toronto, Canada, which, I think is reflective of what I think we need to do in Philadelphia. Amazingly, 47 percent of their population are immigrants reflective of more than 200 countries. In fact, without that huge influx of million immigrants, Toronto would be smaller than Philadelphia. 4 million, with the optimism of making a serious Olympic bid in 2008. 69 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 So how did Toronto do this? First, they've embraced multi-culturalism in a very big way, both officially and unofficially. Second, they actually require 35 hours of training before certifying any translator, not using family members, but making it a true profession, and, of course, paid accordingly. Third, they strongly support hiring for diversity so that the city workforce reflects their neighborhoods. And, fourth, Canada offers many family-friendly support services, including universal health care, more extensive child care services, and heritage language classes for non-English-speaking students. Recently, Tony Proscio and Paul Grogan wrote in yesterday's Inquirer that the possible revitalization of North Philadelphia could depend on immigration and Latino service organizations such as APM and Congreso offer the important support services for these families in North Philly.
We need to do much for social and health services for our growing Asian population in Logan 70 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 and Olney as well as in South Philadelphia and also our Slavic and Russian immigrant populations in Northeast Philadelphia, just to name a few. And we can also do more services for outreach at the INS itself and also to sponsor health fairs at the neighborhoods. An increase in Philadelphia immigration will also bring some urban problems, including a potential increase in rents and expansion of homelessness, increases in the uninsured and tuberculosis, but we can deal with those problems. The benefits far outweigh the disadvantages, and the City has much to gain by being, in the global sense, a real City of Brotherly Love. Thank you.
Thank you for your testimony, and I'm sorry we made you late, but I appreciate your patience. (Applause.).
I'm going to ask Mr. Jaime Figueras and Dr. Cyprian Anyanwu to please come forward together. We're going to start bringing people up in twos. Is Mr. Figueras here? 71 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 Okay, one of the things that I would suggest since we're at the stage in the hearing that we are is that any testimony, written testimony, you would like to submit, please submit, and then if you would synopsize your testimony and hit the highlights, that will keep the hearing moving. Anything that you submit in writing will certainly get into the record so that there will be no limitation of what you can say. It's just for conversation's sake, it will be easier if we can just deal with the issues that you'd like to highlight from your testimony. (Witnesses come forward.)
Good morning. Thanks for waiting and please identify yourself for the record.
I am with the African community, trading on the name "African Congress," we met. I received this letter from the Council (unintelligible) and the testimony, which we have already submitted this morning. 72 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2
But I'm so impressed so far of what I heard, and I think everything I have had written from (unintelligible) and the commissioner, it looks like what they wrote exactly is what I wrote. And I just want to say something. The commissioner here said two things. Language and culture and accent. It has been a big barrier for African community here in Philadelphia. Myself, I want to thank the late Cardinal John Krohl and Ted Kennedy, who made it possible for me to come here in 1963. And the things have changed from 1963 to today. And things are not quite the same. The African community are having a hard time now in the City of Philadelphia than we had 30 years ago. On Baltimore Avenue, from 45th Street, the 4500 block to 4900 block, there is a new construction going on there now, which is SEPTA reconstruction. I have seen and have had in the past, when any major construction is going on in the City or the center or whatever, they give the community notice that something is going on and going to be coming up 73 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 here. But in that community, it's all African immigrants who have businesses there, and they are just ignoring us. Nobody even informed them and their business is going down. About a month ago, I walked to some of the business owners who are part of African (unintelligible), what's going on here? They said, We don't know. So that's one thing. That's the way that African immigrants have been looked upon. Now, I came myself here in 1989 as a physician who is practicing medicine in the City of Philadelphia and the first minority to form drug and alcohol programs for women who are pregnant and abusing drugs. (Unintelligible) because it's a foreign immigrant, African immigrant, who has a program in the City of Philadelphia, and that's in southeastern Pennsylvania. Now, I will say that our children are having -- I have my uncle who came here last year (unintelligible) immigration with five children. (Unintelligible) at Gratz High School. Those children, I mean they were miserable for their 74 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 first year because of their language barrier. And we need the City and the City of Philadelphia officials to look into social services for people like that who are coming from foreign countries. It's not only in North Philadelphia; it's all over the City. And we talk about housing, we talk about dissemination of information for the African community. We have been completely neglected and ignored. And this is no surprise. I'm just very grateful today that Councilman Kenney has something of this kind in 36 years, I have never seen this before, to bring something, initiate something that perhaps we may juggle around to see how we can help these immigrants. Without saying much, I have a three-page thing I wrote here, which I have submitted to your office. I'm not going to say anything more. I'm happy to answer any questions.
Thank you for your testimony. It's been mentioned by a number of 75 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 witnesses that other cities in the country have established offices and cabinet-level posts for the Office of Immigration and Immigrants. Perhaps the establishment of that kind of level of City official would give the African-American community and other ethnic communities in the City some better informational access. 'Cause what I think I hear you saying about the SEPTA construction project on Baltimore Avenue, for example, is the simple taking the time to inform the business people there as to what was going to happen and what disruptions were about to occur would have done a lot to smooth some of the concerns and feelings about what's going on in that community, simply just talking to people, which is what -- doesn't going on, according to what you're telling me today.
Yes, Councilman. You know, if you go to Washington -- I mean, I just mentioned here (unintelligible) from Atlanta, Georgia, Louisiana, Los Angeles California, Chicago, Illinois, I have attended meeting of African people in these cities, and (unintelligible) how they live with the city 76 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 officials there -- (unintelligible), the mayor, everywhere. Atlanta, Georgia, for example, I've been there three times for meeting of African people, African (unintelligible), how to work together. Yet in Philadelphia, we don't have that kind of privilege. It's not a right, but we don't have the privilege. And then talking about Washington, DC here, the total immigrants in Washington, in 1997, they received $3 million from the federal government for the entrepreneurs. And we Africans in the City here (unintelligible). We drive cabs, we are garage attendants, we are not ashamed to do anything to earn a living, and that's the way we are brought up. So I don't see any reason why we should be ignored, especially now that (unintelligible). I know about two or three Africans working in general (unintelligible), I know about two or three of them. We don't have any Africans in any city working except what we made up as educated people. As we come here, went to school -- those who went to school and those who could not afford to go to school, they are washing dishes anywhere, 77 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 just to make honest living. And life is not perfect. We have people who have made mistakes, but the overall impression is that Africans are asking for your help, not for you to pity I mean, have pity on us. We just like to work and get on with you, because we have a lot to offer to the City of Philadelphia.
Yes. I just want to say that I appreciate your comments because as a Councilperson who represents a district that is quite diverse in the Olney area, certainly, we need to do a better job of working with our new neighbors. And I had asked the Commerce Department to recognize the fact that we had a large Asian business community in the Olney area and needed someone on staff in the Commerce Department to be able to communicate with the business owners in that community around Fifth and Olney, in those areas, because of the language issue, the cultural issues, and helping the business people understand what the City requires 78 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 and what is required and expected of them. And the City does have to do a better job of recognizing that the City is becoming more and more diverse. And one of the questions I asked the Mayor was if he was prepared to address the issue of the large diverse community that we have here. I've often asked the personnel department, do they recruit employees that reflect the diversity of this city? And so those are the things we have to think about, and some of us have been sensitive to it and care about it because we know that the City is going to becoming more and more diverse and that we do have to have a government which, you know, we can all rely on to bridge the -- bring people together and help people understand to work together. And I think it is very refreshing to hear that there is an office of immigration in New York and other places, and maybe Councilman Kenney is moving to it, and he and I will move to it together. But there has to be some way just to help neighbors understand each other. I often get 79 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 complaints from one group about another group. And trying to help neighbors understand the cultural differences and similarities between the groups is very important so that you cut down on the tension in the community. So we have a lot of work to do here in Philadelphia. If we're going to attract immigrants to come to this city, then we have to set up a system where they come in and it's a user-friendly city, that they're welcome, that neighbors understand the cultural differences, and that there are ways and support to help them come together, and that coordination of services like SEPTA -- I mean, that should be something that the Commerce should be dealing with. I'm sorry Mr. Cuorato left. Certainly, if SEPTA's going to cause an upheaval in the community, there has to be communication with the Commerce Department, with the businesses to let them know what impact it will have on their community. So I do appreciate Councilman Kenney's discussion this morning because it begins the dialogue around what will we do in Philadelphia once we bring all the different cultures here and 80 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 how do we take treat them and how do we work with them and how do we make the area a better place to live. So I appreciate your comments. I think you ought to contact the Councilperson -- I think that's Councilwoman Blackwell -- so that she can be aware of the situation and certainly she will move to do something about it.
My name is Jaime Figueras, and I'm with the Congreso de Latinos Unidos. In our agency, we are looking to the possibility right now of asking the City Council to pass legislation that makes it easier for immigrants to come into our city and to regulate important areas. In New York, Miami, and Los Angeles, we see it growing so much and, well, that is not the case in Philadelphia today. So if we can really look at that and make something different here, we do have a potential to help immigrants who come here, because there's really a 81 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 diffusion in the United States. Right now, at Congreso what we are doing is education, training, and employment and also health care programs, but that is not enough. We need to really consider in which city officials also really do something more. I agree with Dr. Anyanwu in what he say. We are trying to put together so many communities, not just the Latino community. But we see that we have to be working together with the main community to get the communities organized if we are going to be reaching out to other communities like the African community, the Asian communities and agencies as a way to really organize people in the city so we can really have to go and say, Well, this is what we need. Sometimes the job is just communicating because nobody really knows what these people needs. Now, we have been working also with the Police Department to try to recruit officers. We have been working with them and other organizations with the city to bring that about, but sometimes it's not enough, so we need the help of City Council to really pass legislation to 82 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 create this system which doesn't exist anywhere right now, to say okay to immigrants because they do have the potential to create something in our city. So it's that kind of initiative that we're coming here to ask the City Council to pass, that kind of legislation. Thank you.
Thank you for coming in. Dr. Francis Talangbayan, along with Ernesto Gange. (Witnesses come forward.)
It's a few minutes before noon, good morning, good day. Thank you for coming. Would you like to identify yourself for the record and you can proceed your testimony.
I'm Dr. Frank Talangbayan and I'm the President of the Filipino Executive Council of Greater Philadelphia. The 83 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 Philadelphia Executive Council of Greater Philadelphia has been the umbrella organization of 24 other political organizations composed of mostly immigrants. We have two cultural groups, we have one church group, one civic group, three medical groups, and four nurses groups. The Council of Greater Philadelphia (unintelligible) volunteerism and civic-mindedness. My experience as an immigrant here in the United States started in 1969. I came here on a visa and later applied for an immigrant visa. The experience that I have had in Philadelphia was quite pleasant and I was very much satisfied on the experiences that I have had. I have raised my family here in Philadelphia and all of my children are now contributing members in the City of Philadelphia, both in its fast pace and in its community services. At this point in time, the Council has several projects on hand, one of which is America Outreach, which was done in North Philadelphia at Fifth and Bridge Streets, where we gave free immunizations to the children of North Philadelphia. We have an ongoing program at 84 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 present on computer literacy, a program at the Free Library of Philadelphia at Sixth and Lehigh and we are about to complete this. It's four-week course and there will be a third session. The next session will be given at the library at Front and Dauphin as well as Sixth and Girard. Most of those are instructors in computer literacy programs and are computer programmers that have just migrated from the Philippines. They do appreciate very well the opportunity of being available not only to make a living here in Philadelphia but also to contribute to the education of the population of Philadelphia. Essentially, these are programs that the Executive Council of Greater Philadelphia has on hand and are willing to offer. And we would like to work hand in hand with the City of Philadelphia in extending these type of activities and to be able to notify all immigrants in Philadelphia and in Greater Philadelphia. And I'm sure that in doing this, we'll be able to make them more aware of what the City has to offer and for them to be able to participate in all of these activities. 85 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 Thank you very much.
Thank you for your testimony. Sir, please identify yourself for the record.
My name is Ernesto Gange, the Chairman of the International Offices and I co-chair with Dr. Talangbayan the Pennsylvania Chapter of the International Federation of American Associations based in Washington, DC. I just prepared a short testimony here. I would like to express my appreciation to members of the City Council for inviting me to testify before this Council. I immigrated to this city when I served under Governor's Casey in Pennsylvania from 1991 to 1996 and was elected chair of the Asian-American Caucus of Pennsylvania Commission. Pennsylvania is home to 28,000 Filipino-Americans, with 80 percent residing in the greater Philadelphia areas. The Philippines has an export total of 6 million immigrants working around the globe in service industries such as medical, technical, and military, and most 86 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 of them are skilled immigrants. Direct relations with the United States started in 1898 with the American Commodore U.S.S., which is right here at 18th and the U.S. Manifest Destiny of American expansionism (unintelligible) which were here in Philadelphia. I represent the effort of this Council in looking at the immigration possibilities. What I would like to recommend to this Council today is that, one, what we should do is, we should promote the immigration potentials of Filipinos in Philadelphia and other nations, and I would like to also echo what was expressed earlier, that we should create a commission or a body between government organizations to look into the possibilities of bringing overseas Filipinos and others to the country. And, three, I would like to be a part of that commission, if that commission were to be created. So I support all of this concept and the City, and I thank you very much.
Thank you very much for being here today and expressing your views. Mr. Liu Wen Cheng with his attorneys 87 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 Mr. Wiedemer and KiKi Wong, please. (No response.)
No? Okay, thank you very much. Mary Ramirez from the School District and Allan McIntyre from OHCD and Mr. Leonardo from City Planning. (Witnesses come forward.)
Miss Ramirez, please identify yourself and proceed with your testimony.
Buenos tardes. My name is Mary Ramirez, and I'm the Director of the School District Office of Language Equity, representing the School District of Philadelphia. Thank you very much, Councilman Kenney, for 88 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 convening this committee. We believe it is very critical that we discuss issues of immigration and we are very pleased to be invited to participate in this conversation. Our office represents the services of English for Speakers of Other Languages and Bilingual Programs in the School District. I'd like to talk a little bit about the children coming into our School District who are English language learners and the services that we provide. Approximately 10 percent of the student population, which is about 20,000 students, have been identified as student whose first language is not English, and the languages that are the major groups are Spanish, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Russian, Albanian, Arabic, and Creole. However, we have over 75 different languages represented among our children in the School District. We also have 2,000 students from who have English as their first language and are classified as English speakers but come from Caribbean and African cultures and do need additional culture and linguistic support in the 89 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 District. I have a chart in the packet, which I've passed out this morning, which gives you the data on our students. Right now, 10,000, or 5 percent of our students, are being served in the programs. I just want to point out that that is approximately 50 percent of the entire state total. So 50 percent of all students who don't speak English as their first language do reside in the School District of Philadelphia from the entire state. What kind of supports does the District try to offer? We have a Newcomer Center for low-literacy high school students and we have ESOL programs now in 130 schools from our 259 schools. We also have 30 schools which have bilingual programs in Spanish, Chinese, Russian, and Cambodian, and we are beginning a Vietnamese program. Hopefully in the next year, some of the supports that we are trying to provide in the District include professional development for all of our staff, emphasizing multiculturism, and translation services. We have a translation team and a recruiting effort within the District that 90 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 looks for diverse staff. And we have bilingual teachers, counselors, assistants and tutors. We also have a multicultural policy in the School District that emphasizes all of these issues and we have created many curriculum resources. In fact, the School District is recognized both at the State level and nationally for the work that it has produced. We get calls quite frequently from suburban districts asking us for support, and we are recognized nationally for much of the work we have done in curriculum and in assessment. We feel that our parents and our community organizers are critical partners and we have made a strong effort to try and work with them. We make sure that handbooks for students can be translated, that letters go home to parents and that forms sent to the home are in the native language. That is critical for us. In certain parts of the city, we have work that is incurred by the local area. In the Kensington Cluster, for instance, there's been a great increase of Albanian students within the past several years, and we now are working with the Lutheran 91 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 Settlement House to provide Albanian language supports. And the middle school, Penn Treaty, also runs Saturday Albanian and ESOL classes for parents. The Kensington Cluster also has a large increase of Dominican students in the school, where they offer Caribbean literature for students to study in their native language. In the Northeast, the Washington Cluster, we have a lot of Russian students, and parents meet regularly there.
The Bartram Cluster works with its Asian parents and has a support group. And in the South Philadelphia and Furness Clusters, there are Chinese and Cambodian advisory parent advisory groups. This past summer, a Freedom School was there working with Asian- Americans United. One more thing. Last year, the District sponsored an Immigrant Summit and connected with community groups all across the city in order to sponsor it. And I'm very proud that we have a good relationship with our local newspapers. Both the Daily News and the Inquirer have featured recent stories in the past several years about immigrant issues, and they've worked 92 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 with schools to produce data for those stories. So we are also working with local newspapers as well as higher education resources. Temple University, LaSalle and Community College are all working with us to support our English language Learner students. We've also developed contacts with arts organization, including the opera company, ballet, music and theater presentations. But all of this is difficult because resources, as you know, are scarce. The School District of Philadelphia is always discussing resource issues and we have been able to do some of these activities because we have received federal and State grants. S. Department of Education Title 7 grants to help support this. There's a new grant coming in from the State, the Refugee Grant. And we're working with the Refugee Coalition to set up additional and after-school programs. I'll close what we believe are good recommendations to the City, which we would like to see happen to support students. Of course, all 93 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 of this discussion here today promotes the advantages of living and working and learning in this diverse city. As was discussed, what we would like to see is a marketing plan and brochures and videos and posters that are translated into many languages and sent to the consulate and embassy and community organizations for them to share. We also see a critical need for cross collaborative information and resource centers which would allow government and nonprofit organizations to work together. Of course, we need to have bilingual personnel in all of these organizations. And, finally, we would like the City to consider having additional resources to support the adults who are coming to this city and providing them with ESOL courses, citizenship classes, vocational, and other education supports so that they may become a part of our city while the School District is serving their children. Thank you and we look forward to collaborating with you on these efforts.
Thank you. One 94 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 question I have. Perhaps this is an issue of academic development curriculum and maybe the District could get back to the committee on this question. I had recommended or we've had open discussions before with the past superintendent relative to the issue of English-speaking students speaking a second language. Probably one of the biggest negatives in the United States education system is that most Europeans, most South Americans, most people from other countries speak English. And while we turn out children that have some exposure to foreign language, they're certainly not always proficient in that foreign language. I had three years of German, but I don't think I could get by with that with someone speaks who speaks fluent German or in a conversational way. I sometimes think we're missing the opportunity of having children who speak English as a second language and integrating them with speaking children as first language so that they could, under the supervision of the right teacher, teach each other their languages so 95 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 that children in South Philadelphia who go to school in the elementary level with Cambodian students could at some point in time perhaps, if they're interested, come out of that educational environment with a better English and also a second language and vice versa. Now, I've never gotten an answer back as to whether or not they sensed whether or not it's doable, and, of course, what resources would be necessary to do it, but I really that think every child graduating from high school in Philadelphia, besides being proficient in math and science and other things, should speak a second language. One of the things that this country lacks is marketing to its own people, its own native people, being able to speak other languages. As we know, the second largest Spanish-speaking country in the world is here -- not -- it's Mexico and then here and then the other countries. So even though we're concentrating our efforts in the right area by getting kids acclimated and their parents acclimated and understanding what the system is, I think we do 96 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 miss something in not letting our own -- my child, for example, or someone else's child who was born here learn another language.
I'll quickly respond but will get you a more formal written response. Actually, the standards that were passed several years ago by our Board of Education do have a requirement for proficiency in a second language for all students. And in fact, within the next three years, the School District will be monitoring the students' proficiency in another language for 4th-graders. The idea you mentioned actually has a formal term. It's called the "dual language instruction" and Secretary Richard Reilly, in a speech at the beginning of this year, is asking the District to consider that kind of instruction and promote it. Philadelphia has another grant to do dual language programs, and we are looking to have 15 of those in place within the next five years. Certainly we do not have immigrant students and native speakers all across, but where we do have large populations of students, that's where we're going to try to initiate dual language 97 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 programs. That is one of our goals and it is recognized as an effective practice nationally for language learning. Thank you.
My name is Allan McIntyre, from the Office of Housing. I'm here representing John Kromer, who has jury duty today and couldn't be here. I'm very pleased, Councilman Kenney, to be here. I am the head of the City's Housing Program and Settlement Assistance Program, and I have been for years practically. I must say I 16 came here to tell you all of the things that OHCD 17 has done for immigrants over the years and I'm 18 going to do that, but I've also learned a lot in 19 the past two hours that I've been here and I plan 20 to stay for the whole day to learn a whole lot more.
I wanted to tell you a little bit about myself. I served in the army in Vietnam in 1968 and 1969. When I first went to 98 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 OHCD, I was very interested in helping the boat people, especially in West Philadelphia, but all over the City, and work with cultural family services to help the Vietnamese and Cambodians and Laotians in this area, especially in West Philadelphia. You may know that the City of Philadelphia spends about $5 million in community development block grant funding for housing and settlement, and that has to be one of the largest allocations for housing in the United States. And just doing some research, approximately percent 14 of that money goes to Asian, Eastern European, and 15 Hispanic people, many of them refugees, and some 16 people from the Hispanic community, which, of 17 course, is divided amongst Puerto Ricans, 18 Dominicans, Cubans, South Americans, and Central 19 Americans. But I'm hearing that there's a lot 20 more we can do, and I intend to take that back to John Kromer and to Mayor Street.
Also as a result of this hearing, I hope to issue some report that has some kind of blueprint for proceeding further. So if you would like to add anything in writing to 99 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 the committee, please do so, and we will try to incorporate those ideas in the final report.
Thank you, Councilman. I wanted to talk about what we have done over the last years. In the Asian 7 community, we, in addition to funding 8 intercultural family services, we've provided much 9 needed housing services to the Asian community, 10 especially Laotian, Vietnamese, and Cambodian 11 communities. We are an agency that serves 12 refugees in general. And I'm reading this from 13 testimony because I didn't memorize it. 14 We are currently in the midst of 15 outreaching to the Liberian, South African. 16 Pakistani, Haitian and Ethiopian communities. 17 Essentially anyone who is a refugee can go to the 18 services in West Philadelphia and get service. 19 And if they can't provide it, they will find 20 someone who can. We also fund a full-time housing counselor, an Asian housing counselor at United Communities in South Philadelphia, and we fund a full-time housing counselor at the Korean Community Development Services Operation. 100 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 But in addition to the Asian services, we also fund Eastern European immigrants partly through the Polish-American Social Services and through New Kensington CDC. New Kensington has a supervisor who speaks Ukranian, and I'm well aware of the influx of Russian immigrants into Philadelphia and the need to do more there. So we are also working with that community and several housing agencies that are not primarily involved in immigration but have people there that do speak several foreign languages. I want to end my brief discussion here and talk about the number of Hispanic housing agencies that we fund. Again, we probably fund six or seven agencies. And admittedly, the primary recipients of housing services are Puerto Ricans, but we do serve other citizens, including those from the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Central and South America. And those agencies that probably sprang up to serve the Puerto Rican community are now branching off to serve those other Hispanic communities as well. So, again, I'd like to thank the committee for entertaining this subject because 101 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 it's a very important subject. As I've said, I've learned a lot from what heard so far.
Thank you for your testimony. Donna Wolf, Otis Haigler and Lazar Kleit are the last three formal City witnesses. And then we'll work our way through the list. We appreciate your patience. Obviously, two or three people can come up at a time. It's been a long day and we'll move as quickly as we can. Thank you for being here and your patience. (Witnesses come forward.)
Good afternoon. I'm Donna Wolf, Director of the Targeted Office of the Managing Director's Office, which has been in existence for 17 years. We are the recipient of 100 percent federal funds for this activity, and I'd just like to say when thinking about this presentation, you can view it as the glass half full or half empty, but I think the glass is actually half full because from the statistics recorded in our City 102 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 Planning Commission document, Exhibits 1 and 2, you can see from the '80s on, the Asian and Hispanic population have actually increased. I think they were innumerable in all areas of the City neighborhoods and I think that, Councilman, one of your issues earlier about having Philadelphians being more receptive, I think they are more receptive than they were in the mid-'80s, when people with accents were often chased from street to street. That doesn't seem to happen now. If you look at Exhibit 2, I think you can say that Philadelphia, from its settlement, has approximately a quarter of a million new Philadelphians actually here from the '80s and '90s that are here due to Philadelphia having been identified as a settlement for refugees. There are slight differences between immigrants and those of refugee status, and that is, I think, because the State Department basically says if you're a refugee, you're coming here from fear of persecution, religious or otherwise, while immigrants are often motivated by economic betterment actually. 103 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2
I agree with you as far as some ways in which people are treated in this country or in this city have improved, but I was commenting more on some of the under-the- breath comments I've been hearing and some of the ugly mail I've been getting. And then you have some of the radio talk show hosts with vowels at the ends of their names, believe it or not, who would indicate that they think people coming to this country taking jobs are ruining their neighborhoods, just one or two generations after their own people stepped off the boat. It's just amazing to me, amazing. And it's saddens me that people who come here under bad circumstances have experienced that kind of oppression. I was in a local retail drugstore, one of those big chain stores, about three or four months ago. I walked in and heard an argument going on in the middle of the store between a South Philadelphia Italian-American woman and an Asian-American woman arguing about somebody being out of line. They were going back and forth, back and forth, but apparently, none of the management was even coming out to do anything about it. And 104 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 the Italian-American woman finally said, "Why don't you go back where you came from?" And the Asian bust out in tears and said, "I've been here for years. How long do I have to be here?" 6 And I stood in line behind the 7 Italian-American woman and quietly whispered to 8 her that what she said made was probably the same 9 thing someone said to her grandfather. Somebody 10 probably said that same thing to her grandfather, 11 but they forget that in just a short generation or 12 two. 13 I guess my point is that when the 14 neighborhood begins to change and new faces are 15 seen and new types of cultures and people arrive, 16 there's an immediate fear as opposed to an 17 immediate embrace. It's a weird phenomenon. I 18 grew up in blue-collar South Philadelphia, where 19 there were Irish people, Jewish people, black 20 people there and Italian people, and now some of 21 the things I hear and some of the things I hear 22 people do and say, it just amazes me that they all 23 came on the Mayflower. 24 I guess I do think people are probably 25 more tolerant and less visibly rude because they 105 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 wind up in jail these days, thank God, because of some of the laws passed, which at least put that kind of ugliness in the background as opposed to letting people expose it.
Your point about the Asian woman, twenty years, of course, that could have been due to the differences in color or whatever. I notice in these statistics from the City Planning Commission that they're not breaking down refugees of Eastern European or Soviet in the white population. Because they're all white, those immigrants in the Northeast are not really visible. They're visible by ear, if you want to put it that way, but not visible by sight. If you also look at the map, the distribution surprised me across Philadelphia. Except for Roxborough and Manayunk, there are significant increases in populations of Asian and Hispanic. And, apparently, we also have about 9, 10 percent of the City population that are currently refugees/immigrants. That's the national average too. So as far as that goes, we're not off the skew nationally but we really do have to force resettlement people from the State 106 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 Department and factor that because they relocated folks here. And the important point for us is the people who are residents who settled here as refugees stay actually and are now inviting in family members from their country of origin so we have tremendous strengths inherent in our community. And word of mouth, you know, is also a good way to attract what, you know, you're familiar with. And that would be a decent conduit for new people to come in to Philadelphia as opposed to making marketing posters but working, instead, with the population that's already here. The State Department originally identified Philadelphia because of our public transportation and affordable housing. Another one of our benefits that we do have not to underestimate, as the Health Commissioner talked about, is our district health centers. That was probably the number-one factor that Philadelphia was identified for in-resident settlement of refugees, because of this open access. And I notice that the -- well, I'll go through the list. The non-foreign citizens or the 107 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 native-born citizens are having a greater familiarity with the foreign-born, I think that's true. So we can build on that. And I don't know if anybody already mentioned it, but Community College is a great draw to the immigrant populations and the rest of Philadelphia. That's a real strength. Now, we have quite a bit of English-as- second-language resources to help the mass refugee migration repopulations, and we have established community groups and refugee mutual assistance associations that have a familiarity through these local grants processes of working with City government. So you have an existing structure there if you want to identify what already exists. The issue of entrepreneurship is -- I had read some statistics before I came here that said, for instance, 30 percent of the Korean population come as entrepreneurs, that's not universally true for other groups. Let's see, we already talked about development of the existing communities, of those who have already been resettled here or immigrated here. Again, don't overlook the existing 108 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 population for strategies. And then public service, which is especially customer service, like at L&I or business-related issues, we need to have additional bilingual bicultural staff there, which would be helpful because there's a lot of complaint about, you know --
My name is Lazar Kleit, the Acting Executive Director of Human Relations. I have provided a statement, and I just want to gloss over it briefly.
We are the agency of City government that does two things that probably impact most strongly on the immigrant minorities. One is, we enforce local ordinances that discriminate. We also deal with all matters of 109 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 conflict that occur in the City of Philadelphia. What I'd like to do, since I am of an age where memory is quite fallible, is just to read a few paragraphs from my prepared testimony to describe briefly the sorts of things that we do. Before I do that, I'd like to thank Councilman Kenney and the rest of Council for allowing this testimony. I actually learned a tremendous amount in the couple hours that I've been here listening.
And I'd like to provide whatever cooperation we can to assist Council in the future. Our staff includes individuals who are bilingual in Vietnamese, both major dialects of Chinese, Cambodian, Russian, and Spanish so that gives a sense of balance in the communities relations arena. Much of our work consists of developing and maintaining strong working relationships with all of the identity groups in the City, many of these groups being recent immigrants or refugees. Much of the work is done 110 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 by staffers who are bicultural, which is particularly important for refugee groups whose problems of language and culture disallow them the proper access to public services and legal protection. We frequently bridge communication between immigrants and nonimmigrant groups and individuals, and I've provided a number of examples in the testimony. Our staff currently has strong working relationships with immigrants refugees from Albania, Argentina, Cambodia, China, the Dominican Republic, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Jamaica, Jordan, Korea, Laos, Lebanon, Liberia, Lithuania, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Palestinian Authority, Poland, Serbia, Ukraine, and Vietnam. This is not an exhaustive list. We also work very closely with subgroupings based on national, ethnic and language and religious affinities from those countries. We do a lot of work with a very small staff, so I would encourage Council to consider an expansion -- not necessarily an expansion of our staff, but an expansion of the principle that government act as bridge of communication between 111 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 groups and individuals who are ethnically and racially different, whose differences divide them, in order to retain them our the city, enjoying the rights and privileges of being citizens. Thank you very much.
Good day, Councilman Kenney and members of the committee. I am Otis Haigler, Jr., Legislative and Regulatory Affairs Manager for the Department of Licenses and Inspections. Today I am here to provide testimony on Resolution No. 551, addressing the concerns of Council relative to increasing foreign immigration to Philadelphia. The Department of Licenses and Inspections, as a City regulatory agency charged with laws affecting the public safety and health of all citizens who reside or work in the City of Philadelphia, commends Council for this 112 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 initiative. When invited, the Department has often participated in workshops and community meetings with various diverse groups to explain our role and mission. We in the Department are very interested in exploring new ways to better serve our stakeholders and will be happy to work with Council in developing strategies for improving our community outreach initiatives. One of the initiatives that L&I is pursuing in the way of community outreach involves the translating of our requirements for child care providers from English into Spanish, Chinese, Korean, and Haitian. Within the past month, L&I was able the secure a private grant funding from the Child Care Resources Development organization for the purposes of having our in-house published "Guide for Day Care Providers," which lists all of our requirements for operators of child care facilities, translated and republished into the aforementioned languages for distribution to this diverse population. The amount of the grant the Department was able the secure for this project totaled $11,600 and is just the beginning of what we hope will lead to other opportunities to tap 113 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 into funding resources to assist us with our community outreach endeavors. On behalf of the Commissioner and staff within the Department, we would like to thank the Legislative Oversight Committee for extending an invitation to provide our testimony, and I wish to reiterate that we are always willing and available to cooperatively work with Council on strategies to improve the service we provide to the public. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Haigler. The only thing I would ask of L&I is in the next few weeks, if it would be possible to give us some recommendations on what it is you guys can do to better deal with the merchant community in the City, because a lot of our immigrant population is involved in small retail businesses. The Department of Licenses and Inspections, I guess, is always second to the Police Department and has very a strong ability to enforce and to shut down and to cite individuals for various violations, either of building code or commercial code or whatever. 114 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 It seems that a lot of the complaints that we get from merchants, again, has to do with issues of communication, understanding, and the appropriate expression of what the rules are. I think many of these merchants would love to be in compliance if they understood what being in compliance meant, so I really would like to see some recommendations from L&I, whether it's things you do now or things you'd like to do, to better serve those in that merchant class and to get them into compliance and to help them get themselves into compliance on various issues with not only L&I but with the Health Department also. So even if it's something you guys are doing or would like to do and maybe need some resources to do, that would really be important. Because I really think that where many of the people in the City meet the government is through either the Police Department or L&I. Certainly there are other departments, but when it comes to the Police Department or L&I, it's more of a -- not confrontational but more of an intense situation because it has to do with issues of surrounding crime and those things or has to do 115 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 with the operation of their business, either by citation or shutting down or those kinds of things. So I think it's important that L&I be involved in that area. Thank you very much for your testimony.
Mr. Marwan Kreidie and Martyn Miller. Is anyone else with them? You can please come up. (Witnesses come forward.)
Thank you for waiting. Please identify yourself for the record. And again, because of time, if you have written testimony, please submit it and then please talk about in general your issues you'd like to see.
Councilman Kenney and Councilman Ortiz, thank you very much for holding this hearing. My name is Marwan Kreidie, M-A-R-W-A-N, K-R-E-I-D-I-E. It's a real pleasure for me to come here representing the Arab-American community. We're one of the fastest-growing immigrant communities in the City of Philadelphia, 116 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 with over 20,000 people now living within Philadelphia. Our community is old, dating from the 1870s, and is constantly replenishing itself. We have a current exhibit right now at the Balch Institute till mid December, which talks about the history of the Arab community in Philadelphia. I urge everyone to go see it. Let me go into quickly some of things in this exhibit. We did an analysis of what Arab communities came to Philadelphia, an interesting phenomena about immigration at a secondary immigration point for our communities from the '50s. The majority of Arab business people originally migrated to New York and New Jersey and moved to Philadelphia because of better business opportunities and a better life style. We need to, when we do publicity and marketing, we have to look at those areas like New York and Washington, those areas, for bringing people in here. Secondary people migrate in what's called "serial migration," where once they get certain people in from a village or from a family, the other people continually come over. 117 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 The university is very important. All of the non-serial migration in Philadelphia was influenced by our universities. Many members first arrived and other people have stayed here and opened business. The interesting one is the Free Trade Zone Office in Philadelphia. The reason it's here is one of the families' sons went to Temple University, loved the place, and then opened their major American trade office in Philadelphia because of that. And also people have the desire to work and live in proximity to one other. We have three distinct areas of habitation in Philadelphia: Feltonville, Front and Girard, and South Philadelphia. In my opinion, there's a couple of ideas we need to do as a city to make Philadelphia more attractive. Many people who come here, especially my clients, come from areas of political strife and oppression and they initially have big fears of government. This is compounded by the fact that -- let's be honest here -- government is not a user-friendly institution in Philadelphia. So we need to do more and we have 118 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 to be proactive to get our government, our City government, to go up and deal with immigrants in a positive way. Let me give you examples, just basics. First, the Commerce Department. The Commerce Department has a lot of good things they can do and good programs. But the Commerce Department and most City government agencies, with the exception of L&I and the police, is not reactive. You don't go to the Commerce Department, you don't find out about the services they offer. It takes people like our organization to go out and tell people about security rebates and various programs they can use. I would suggest that they create units that, instead of waiting for people to come over, go to the various business strips throughout the City. The business strips have high degrees of immigrant owners. Go there and talk to people. Again, people should able to speak the language or have ideas of their unique culture. But they should go up there once a year perhaps and talk to the owner to find out what we do to make you expand, how to get you to hire some more people. 119 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 PIDC, again, a very good agency, but the perception in our community is that they're interested in attracting big-ticket development rather than expanding or bringing in smaller businesses.
Also the perception is, again, in my community and, I believe, in other communities that it's easy to get grants and aid from the City if you're just coming in rather than for existing businesses trying to expand. I think we need to look at that. L&I -- I'm glad to hear that L&I is going to be changing. But, again, the perception is that L&I is just there to fine you or shut you down. While we shouldn't break laws, L&I, instead of being reactive to that work more closely and proactively with groups to hire diverse staff. The Police Department, I think the Police Department is -- it was very impressive to hear the Commissioner but we wish the Police Department would add Arabic as a language of need. I know of people who are unwilling to report crimes and work with the police because of fear of uncertainty. I know of one Arabic speaking officer; I hope there is more in the 120 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 future. The Minority Business Enterprise Council. I support disadvantaged groups, but my experience is that MBE/WBE members are not really disadvantaged. We need to look at giving real opportunity to small groups who are expanding, not large groups who happen to be very wealthy and successful just because designated city based contract. I think we need to look at the creation of ethnic based business teams like Korean- Americans or Arabic-Americans leaders to attract both new people to Philadelphia as well as try to bring export and import opportunities. What better group than Arab-Americans to go to the Middle East on a volunteer to try to bring in exports and imports Philadelphia. City employment. Usually the first activity of the immigrant is to look to the Tamany Hall machine or boss politics where people came in and got jobs because of their ethnic background. I am not advocating the return to a patronage system, but we should look into language issues and testing and ensure that there is English proficiency. 121 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 Lack of English proficiency in schools. It's nice to hear the School District here but we do not -- this is probably not the place to discuss problems with the Philadelphia School District. Suffice it to say that the schools are a major component of the problem we have in attracting immigrants. Even if do attract them, there's the risk of them going to the suburbs for what they perceive to be a better education opportunity. However, in the short run, we need to look at small changes. Our schools probably do teach tolerance and diversity better than most suburban schools but we should really look into supporting charter schools. I think a lot of immigrants are looking at charter schools as an option to stay in the City. Also there is the impact and importance of private schools. We have a private Arabic-Islamic school paid for by the community mosque, and the community subsidizes it. We have 280 students now in grades through 8. Hopefully, if our city government's more responsible, we'll be able to expand this school. We need to look at private schools. And I'll tell you what, those 280 122 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 students have parents who are not going to be leaving the City because they have the school. With 20,000 Arabic-Americans, the City offers tremendous opportunities and life styles in housing and business that is second to none in the United States. I urge you, Mr. Kenney, and my good friend Councilman Ortiz, to create an committee. I think you need to do it because any other commission will take forever to do it. I think City Council is the place to do it and I really urge you to put a lot of effort into creating this committee. We can't let Philadelphia lose more citizens. Thank you.
My name is Martyn, M-A-R-T-Y-N, the last name is Miller. I am the Director of the Office of International Service at Temple University. My primary reason for coming today is to let you know about the economic impact that international students have on Philadelphia. I 123 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 think it might be surprising to learn that in '99, the international higher education students in Philadelphia represented a gross contribution to the local economy of Philadelphia was $265 million. That was for one year alone, $265 million. S. funds. That's not true. S. or other local government. When you take that out, we're left with a net contribution of $208 million to the Philadelphia coffers alone. Take that and expand it to the Commonwealth, and you're looking at $55 million dollar of new money each year. S. economy, based on figures from the Department of Commerce, has realized $11 billion in new dollars in 1998-'99 specifically as a result of over 450,000 international students. It is ranked as the fifth largest service export from the United States. These numbers are not small; they speak for 124 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 themselves. " On April 19th of this year, President Clinton signed a memorandum and sent it specifically to the Department of Education and the Department of State. The International Education Policy that was formulated and distributed by the White House is in the packet that I left with Mr. Hawkins. In this policy, President Clinton mandates, or strongly suggests, that the Department of Education and the Department of State work together to improve international exchanges. I would like to see local efforts -- in this case by City Council -- to take the policy statements that President Clinton has put out and develop specific things in Philadelphia. And, of course, I do have a couple of suggestions, such as the development of something like a Philadelphia Ambassadors Program, for 125 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 example, that might send out students from Philadelphia and international students who are currently here, trying to let others know about the benefits of study in Philadelphia and working with the foreign consulates located in Philadelphia and higher education institutions to develop joint projects, improving the numbers of our students going out and bringing students in here. And I believe, Councilman, you may receive a letter requesting support for the development of a World Congress in Philadelphia. We don't have that. There's no place here in which international visitors can feel comfortably basically as a whole as a body. I strongly support the development of an international curriculum -- I've heard it a few times already -- increasing the foreign language skills of Philadelphia students. I think that would be helpful. Frankly, the fact that most of our students cannot speak a foreign language is embarrassing quite honestly. If the Philadelphia government or City Council could work on a Web site that would give 126 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 prospective international students information, that would be excellent. A number of potential international students find out about Temple because of the Web; that's the way communicate. Now, we are woefully behind in the United States. As much as we seem to think that we're technologically advanced, the rest of the world is ahead of us in using the Web every day. So we need to provide the resources for that. On this Friday, October 21st, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology is hosting something called "a welcome reception" for all international students in Philadelphia. Last year, approximately 100 students arrived, and I would invite you, Councilman Kenney, and any other members of City Council to attend. It will be a 5 o'clock to 7 o'clock in the museum. I think we need to set goals for American students to study abroad specifically. In the memorandum put out by President Clinton, there are goals.
He is looking at increasing up to 20 percent, for example, of students in the United States who would have to study abroad by 127 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 the end of the year and 50 percent by a certain year. If we do that for Philadelphia, say that a specific number of students from Philadelphia must study abroad, I think that would be a huge move forward. Finally, I think City Council needs to work with high schools in the area to create and expand exchange programs and set up specific sites they can go to and also bring students from around the world to study here. One more thing. The Association of International Educators is hosting the largest international conference in Philadelphia on Memorial Day weekend 2001, and they have asked me to extend to you and all Councilmembers an invitation to attend the opening gala on Tuesday, May 27th, if I'm not mistaken. You will receive formal invitations.
I appreciate the invitation to that event. Thank you very much. Judy Bernstein? I'm sorry, one more. I apologize. Good afternoon.
Good afternoon, 128 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 Councilman Kenney and fellow Councilmembers of the committee. My name is Majid, M-A-J-I-D, and the last name is Alsayegh, A-L-S-A-Y-E-G-H. I'm the owner of a small business in Philadelphia. We manage projects for local state and federal government in the Northeast area. I am one of those international students that came here to the United States in 1975 at the University of Pennsylvania, where I graduated from, and I really fell in love with Philadelphia and decided to make it my home and where I base my business. It's been a challenging place to work but a rewarding place to work and I think Philadelphia is a hidden jewel. I think it's not recognized outside of Philadelphia what a great place Philadelphia is, and I certainly try to make it a mission of mine to promote Philadelphia everywhere I go. And as a small business owner, I haven't heard yet today anything mentioned about some of the burdens on businesses in Philadelphia. I know, Councilman Kenney, this has been one of your goals, to really work towards reducing burdens on business, whether it's in 129 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 taxes or business privilege taxes. I just wanted to urge you to continue those efforts because all of those efforts result in an increased investment in bringing jobs to the City. I think Philadelphia is starting to become a place that's really attractive for investment outside the City, and real estate values have been increasing. If we work hard, we will be able to bring investment and we will try to do that in a small way if we can. I just want to thank you for bringing together this diverse group today. It's been a real eye-opener for me personally and I enjoy the diversity of immigrants in Philadelphia. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Thanks for your testimony. Councilmember Ortiz?
I wanted to say something. Last week on the radio specifically (inaudible) Arab-Americans assaulted in there and has been described in really the most vile and racist terms that I heard by the community, and not by people calling into the show; this is about 130 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 people who host the show. And listening to the radio, I never thought I would -- I heard phrases like "they should go back to where they came from" because they were exercising lessons to their First Amendment rights of the Constitution that this city created it. I heard things like "If feel so strongly about their country, then they should go back to where they came from." And a lot of us who have grown up in this country and are not so-called Native American. And by that, I mean Anglo-Saxon, white, blue-eyed individuals, not Iroquois and not the Delaware and not those individuals that actually are the Native Americans. And I heard relative silence to all those insults, and those attacks have been really uncontested and received in silence. And they are racist and they're xenophobic. They are statements that really do not understand the Arab-American community here in this city. And they really showed their lack of understanding because they said that -- they kept on speaking about people coming here to be maintained by welfare and the public dole, without 131 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 knowing that it wasn't actually employers who gave them time off to go demonstrate at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. If he read the Inquirer, he would find out that most of those individuals that were there demonstrating owned their own businesses in the City of Philadelphia and they gave themselves the afternoon off to be able to go in and demonstrate for peace and such. And -- but it is a part, I think, of what Jimmy was thinking about when this resolution 12 was passed, because people wonder about what does City Council have to do with immigration. Well, we have a lot to do in terms of immigration because we are and we have become a very diverse city in the last years. We have become a city 17 of immigrants as such -- and not just European 18 immigrants. And I think that is the issue here, 19 that as long as you're an European immigrant, you 20 are quite accepted, you're quite acceptable as long as you're a European immigrant. But if you happen to come from anywhere else and you happen to be a shade darker and speak different languages, then it becomes much less accepted, even though you bring skills, even though you 132 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 bring art, even though you bring a whole series of things that this country and this city needs. And I think that we should not allow the insults and the outright bigotry that takes place in this city over the air waves whenever Palestinians or Arabs demonstrate and exercise their First Amendment rights in this city. And I think the Arab community, from us at least, deserves an apology for all of the insults that they have taken and even in this newspaper, the way that the issue has been portrayed, but I believe that is something that we have to stand up and speak out against. Thank you. (Applause.)
Thank you. Judy Bernstein-Baker and Bob Klotz, if they are here. And Marina Kats. (Witnesses come forward.)
My name is Marina Kats, and 133 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 I'm an attorney practicing in the Northeast and also on the board of the Federation for Operation Outreach. I am a Russian immigrant and came to this country in 1979, went to Temple University, went to Temple University Law School, and I am in child advocacy. I want to talk about problems with the Russian immigrants in the northeast. When it comes to Russian immigrants in the Northeast, they definitely -- I take a little issue Councilman Ortiz, who has my tremendous respect. In a sense, when somebody comes from an European country, they are accepted but they are not in the Northeast. They are the largest immigrant population in the Northeast area and are being discriminated on a daily basis. We hear it in banks, lines, or anywhere else. When they hear our Russian accent, they look at it suspect. There are two police officers in the Northeast area that -- one of them speaks a little bit of Russian and one speak, but Ukraine neither one of them usually gets called to the accident if it involves Russian immigrants. Normally, American comes to the scene and do not even make 134 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 an attempt to speak with the Russian immigrant if they hear an accent. What they do is talk to a person who speaks perfectly English, they take the statement, and that's the end. My suggestion is to have some centralized area in the City that employs people who speak Russian and English, and in the event of an accident or any kind of dispute, whether it's a Russian or some other foreign person who does not speak English, they can get called in and give the service, or have something similar to like AT&T interpreters that they could talk to over the phone. I had a case the other day where the police officer was, you know, the accident happened, and it was a Russian-speaking individual who doesn't speak any English, and they had a portable phone, and they said, could I please, you know, call my family up and they will be able to explain to you what happened. The police officer refused to talk to somebody on the portable phone. So there has to be more awareness made to this kind of event. Also, the Russian community is slightly 135 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 different, I guess, in their needs. I don't know the statistics are, but I would bet that over 60 percent of the Russian immigrants have a high education. They try to establish themselves to try to establish the small business or whatever job they can get, and most of them are two-parent working families. About a year ago, two years ago, I set up a meeting with the then-Mayor Rendell with representatives of the Russian community. What they wanted to do was ask for the City to provide a building, like an old building where could do renovation, for example, with volunteers, to have an after-school program for the children, or where children come in, you know, to learn the Russian language or have a chess club, have a dance club, whatever else, and do it with all the volunteers. The only thing we asked for is for the City to give us a building or location to build a building. At that time, Mayor Rendell informed us the City doesn't have any money for after-school programs. I don't know if the situation is changed now. The other thing is that the Russian 136 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 community is deprived of -- during the election, everybody is trying to court the community, but after election, the community again remains neglected as far as transportation is concerned and other City services. If we call the City, they have English-speaking and Spanish-speaking, but there is no one speaking Russian or any other language. They do not have that option. I think that's probably all I'd like to say.
A couple comments. Certainly I, as a 42-year-old Irish-American have not experienced the discrimination that was heaped upon the Irish when they came here in the late 1840s through the late 1880s, 1900s; nor have I experienced personally the discrimination that even, I guess today, the Italian-Americans experienced by people thinking that every successful Italian American is somehow involved in criminal activity. Every one of these groups, similar to what Russian-Americans are going through now, have had to fight for these rights. But whether it's African-Americans or Italian-Americans or Irish-Americans or the Jewish 137 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 community, these groups can really deem their power through the politics. It's been possible to ignore some of the smaller immigrant groups because they've voted in such small voting blocs. I think that does not excuse the way the police treat the community and the way in which the government treats the community. But generally I think, as time goes on, in a relatively short period of time, you will be a major voting bloc in Northeast Philadelphia to the point where no one can ignore what your needs are. No one does anything in this world, in this country 'cause it's the right thing to do; they normally do it because they're afraid not to do it, and that goes for the politicians and just about everything else. But I think what we would like to do as a result of this hearing is to try to get some of feedback as to what can be done specifically to make life better and more comfortable and more accommodating in Northeast Philadelphia or anyplace else for the Russian community. My wife is half-Russian, she's a Ukrainian. Her grandfather and grandmother were Russian immigrants from the Ukraine and had 138 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 difficulties assimilating with the English. It's world history that makes people feel the way they do, but they assimilated, did well, worked hard -- just like the people who you represent every day, I'm sure, in your legal practice. But I think there's a need for us to be more understanding of needs and I do believe that voting registration and voting in a bloc really is what puts immigrant groups on the map.
I'd like to add something to what Councilman Kenney's saying. I believe that voting is important, but in my previous life, in my previous life, I used to be an attorney for Legal Services. In fact, Judy and I -- I think Judy might have been my paralegal in this case, but I represented -- in the late '70s, there was a first wave of Russian immigrants to the City, and I represented around 40 Russian families in landlord-tenant court when their gas had been turned off by PGW. The landlord had not paid PGW and owed PGW over $90,000 in gas. The Russian families did not know how the system in the United States worked 'cause they never had gas turned off. They might have suffered some cold in 139 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 Russia for some reason but the government never turned off the gas as such. And so we went to court and I remember the landlord at that time -- and these are actually on the record. And that landlord at that time actually said, Well, Your Honor, you have to understand who these people are. And they come here from Russia where they don't have toilet facilities and they don't have those facilities and they come here and they eat chicken and throw the chicken bones into the toilet and so on. I turned to my paralegal -- and I don't know whether it was Judy or somebody else, and I said, Who are they talking about, are they talking about us Puerto Ricans? Because these are racist remarks that had been labeled and thrown at us when we first got here, like they throw the garbage out the window, and that was actually said in the courtroom. Like you said, most of these Russian families were all college graduated, heavily educated, very professional, but they did not understand the system. We won the case. However, the judge could not turn on the gas, so we took -- 140 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 I took the over 40-something families and we took over PGW and we took over the president's office, and the families were very quite afraid that the system and the police would come in to arrest them. And as such they came from Russia but we got their gas turned back on. We had everything turned on through CLS. And what we did was, a federal investigation was established. And by the way, Jim, you'll be interested to know, most of the apartments that we were representing were Section 8 apartments and this guy, this landlord, just took the federal money and did not supply the services. But that was one of my cases way back then and I started learning a little Russian at that point. But that was blatant, open discrimination up in the Northeast, but I know exactly what you're talking about.
I'd like to thank the distinguished members of City Council for this hearing and how to see you make advances and show that a diverse community is good to come in and live and have families.
That's our hope 141 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 thank you.
Name is Bob Klotz, Executive Director of Lutheran Children and Family Services, and I also serve as the director of a refugee settlement program with the Department of Public Welfare, which administers federally funded grants across the states for refugees and in the City of Philadelphia. We contract with 10 organizations services for refugee health service 11 and employment services, and we also contract with 12 the City of Philadelphia for funding for 13 interpreters in City health centers. 14 I'd like to summarize some of the 15 points I think that other people made today. I think that, first of all, I'd like to make reference to the fact that things have improved in the City as far as immigrant and nonimmigrant populations in the City, but while it has improved, it has a long way to go in terms of building the kind of trust that's necessary to really stabilize neighborhoods and to welcome immigrants into the neighborhoods. I think in terms of developing programs, developing anything for immigrants, it 142 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 has to be done while remembering that a lot of people in Philadelphia do not have economic stability and do not have access to certain benefits, and that we have to make sure that nothing is done for immigrants that is not also being done for the rest of the residents of Philadelphia. That will make help the process a lot smoother. I'd like to just mention some suggestions for how the City might deal and work with immigrants. First of all, I think it's really important to look at the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in particular Title VI, which provides for many accommodation for translators and interpreters that are federally funded and other governmental offices, that that be made a priority that people accesses City services or publicly financed private health services, for example, and are given the opportunity to receive services with an interpreter. This is something many organizations claim they can't afford to do. S. citizens born in Puerto Rico, for example, who have the same type of issues -- discrimination and access issues that immigrants have as well. I believe that the City has a lot of history working with immigrants in the Latino community and all of them can draw together to work to build some kind of system for dealing with immigrants as they're coming in. I think funds and promote foundations and with the state programs that foster building better communications between main stream and immigrant populations. For example, joint training programs with immigrants and mainstream folk, and then also neighborhood community development projects which emphasize integrating immigrants into the community. I think that work has to be done with the Chambers of Commerce and other business-based associations to make sure that employers are aware of the fact, first of all, that immigrants, whether they are immigrants or immigrants coming 144 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 here to work, you know, on the basis of employment visas, that they have a right to work here, and also that they are going to be contributing, that there are incentives to employ them and protections for foreign-born workers to make sure there is an advantage to hiring refugees and immigrants. They also need to be aware of the fact that they cannot discriminate while they're doing it. One group that has not been mentioned today directly is the undocumented. Many of the population referred to earlier today probably included people who do not have a legal right to be in the United States and also do not have the right to work. My belief is that the City has to deal with the issue, that there's a growing number of undocumented immigrants in the United States and in the cities, who are here to stay. If they have no right to work, what happens is they survive through what I will call "the underground economy," but they are not contributing to the tax base in any way.
I think that our city and all other cities have to deal with that also and understand that undocumented immigrants also use 145 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 city services and are all of part of our system. They are here to stay here because they chose to be here (inaudible) in fact potential assets to the City because they are people who decided to live a very difficult life but chose Philadelphia to live. Two recommendations. Most people who are undocumented have very little chance of actually remaining here in Philadelphia, but for those who do, we need programs to make sure they can come out from the underground and become a part of the economy and system. Others, employers locally and others interested in economic development, need to back legislation when it comes up for legalization of undocumented immigrants. I say this because in 1986, the Immigration Control Act, which allowed for the legalization of thousands and thousands of undocumented immigrants was actually pushed through. It was pushed through because there was a great deal given to the part of employers, particularly agricultural employers. I think for all of the wonderful advocacy we do as nonprofit 146 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 agencies or human services agencies, that ultimately it will be the economics of the situation that will actually move us toward getting more immigrants legalized in the City, and then they will be able to participate and to become a part of above-ground economic situation.
I'm Judy Bernstein. I'm the Executive Director of the Council of Migration Services of Philadelphia. We've been in business since 1882 and have probably brought over a 100,000 people in the last few years. As a result of requests by the government and as a result of our concern about the City, we've worked with refugees not only from Jewish communities but from Southeast Asian and are currently work with over 50 countries. And we are a part of two invisible populations. In some ways, I think our immigrant 147 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 community in Philadelphia is very vibrant but invisible to main stream Philadelphia. And the other invisible community, I think, is our faith-based organizations and the nonprofits that help immigrants come here and stay here and get their status. And so I brought today, in the interest of networking, a list of these organizations, and all of them, including some community-based organizations is a coalition called "the Southeast Regional Immigration Coalition," and I want to make three different points. The first point is, how do immigrants come to Philadelphia? Well, first they have to come to the United States and there are three main ways immigrants come to the United States permanently. One is family-based immigration, that's the most common way, and approximately half a million people come every year through that system. And our organizations deals with people who are sponsoring family members. We help them bring their family members here -- not as refugees, that's a separate category. One issue that I want to express is 148 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 that there's no government financing for these families that come here. And while they're here, they --
Do me a favor. Could you say that again. I'll tell you why. I have lived with and have listened to, time and time again, the myth that people who immigrate to this country are being given everything, including a business, new cars.
And I know that that's part and parcel of the lack of acceptance and the fear and ignorance that people express, but it's important that you expand on that, because one of the obstacles to Philadelphians who are here already or Americans who are here already is that new groups coming in have some distinct government-funded advantage that they didn't have when they came here. And I know it's not true and I do need to know how --
Well, we do have some 149 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 help for refugees fleeing persecution with only clothes on their backs. The third thing that I was going to address but, actually, I think this is an issue because many immigrants who come here as family members don't know their way around the City because, unlike refugees, they have to come to one of our programs, and we need to think of creative ways to welcome them to our city and to increase the services, but I do want to express that that is the biggest way immigrants come -- family-based immigration. And to the extent we have immigrants and refugees here who later become citizens, they will draw in their family members. When you think of the immigrant family, you think of the adjectives that describe this family. You think of "for the children," they do it for the children, and they are a resourceful and very tight family unit. So family-based immigrations are important. That's why I want to share with you some of the groups in this city who help people bring family members over. But I also want to challenge you, Councilman Kenney, and I also want to congratulate 150 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 on you on your vision for having us here, but here's the challenge. There are many federal policies that interfere with families, and there are now 3 million people waiting in backlogs to come to the United States. For example, for an immigrant to sponsor a family member from the Philippines, they would have to wait years. If 9 this city becomes an advocate to work with our 10 Congressional delegation to make an in-row into 11 these backlogs, we will be known as a city that 12 welcomes immigrants. 13 Immigrants are taught to be patient because of these long waits. Of course, we've been very patient today with these hearings, but this is a big problem and there are many problems with INS and there are some problems where city government can play a role, like the New York City government does when they advocate for changes in policies that will help families be strong and stay together.
I'm a firm believer in the Statute of Liberty's promise, with the exception of health issues or criminal issues or things like that. I think that the immigration 151 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 policy in this country is amazingly restrictive and was put in place for the most part after people whose people came here, after they got here and said, We're fine, let's close it up now because we don't want anyone else to come.
I'd like to go on record to say that if we should come together and let them know we do feel that way about these policies, I guarantee you, people will think of Philadelphia as a city of destination. The second way people come -- and this was addressed previously -- is employment-based immigration, and I only want to say that I think we could do better along those lines. And in this situation, we should probably work with our institutions of higher education and our private attorneys. We have many private attorneys, including nationally known private attorneys, who advise all kinds of employer groups on bringing in immigrants for employment needs, but I don't want to stress that because I'm from the nonprofit sector and I work with more modest immigrants. And the third group of people that come over are the refugees. This is one group that 152 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 gets very limited government funding. They do get -- some people do get assistance for the first eight months they're here, but that's it. And for many people who come here as refugees, the nonprofit sector and faith-based community actually puts up that assistance. So, for example, the Jewish community helps fund 50 percent of what it costs for a family to live for four months with a grant from the federal government. Our refugee numbers have increased by -- have decreased by 50 percent. In 1992, we were letting in 131,000 refugees nationally; this next year, it will be about 76 to 78,000. Again, because of the federal changes, many will not be able to bring in family members as refugees. This is another area where we could work with the City as an advocate to look at how that policy affects families in this city. And one final point. There are special populations within our city who have a chance to stay here permanently under federal amnesty of legislation. The Liberian community is a very successful community, the Latino community, and finally the Russian Jewish and Christian 153 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 communities are all beneficiaries of federal legislation, which is all up for renewal right now. And City Council and us coalition groups and advocacy groups need to track this and have a dialogue because to the extent this legislation is passed, this will bring in families to our region. Now, once people get here, then the issue is what services are available, and I do want to say that all of the comments that have been made prior to me I totally endorse, and I want to congratulate the Philadelphia Department of Health for making their services available to everybody regardless of insurance, and to the School District. I think what you've done here is wonderful. I think you've opened a wonderful door, and I think what we can do now is work on a more long-term basis with the groups that participated in this hearing and other members of City Council and other members of our business community to really look at recommendations. I was a little more ambitious when I prepared, but I'm not going do read them all now, but I put down 12 from our coalition. I guess 154 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 it's a 12-point program, one recommendation a month. But there are many ways, including developing promotional material and working with existing organizations. One group that isn't here today that I hoped to bring to the table is our trade unions nationally, recognizing that increasingly the workforce too in becoming immigrated in Philadelphia is the health care workers, which has many, many immigrants among them, and this is a group where the leadership has already come out and started looking at issues around immigration. And because people are more threatened to the extent that they feel like they're lower on the economic rung than somebody else and think that immigrants are going to take their jobs away, I think it's important to bring trade unions in on this conversation and have them sit at the table.
From experience, my mother was an immigrant, brought over by my immigration, and became a very active trades union leader. There never used to be dichotomy between being an immigrant and a working person, and I think that's something that we need to overcome. 155 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 And I want to end by saying that our coalition has about 25 members who want to work with you, and the idea of setting up an ongoing body that really addresses some of these issues, particularly some of those that address the city services and language access. I also think it's very important to be supportive of people who are here as well as families that come here because strong families make strong communities. So I did want to underscore that aspect of how we can work together and have our nonprofit and faith-based groups work with City Council to develop better policies and more support to keep these families together.
Thank you very much. Thanks for your testimony. Paul Uyehara, Father Jerry Burns, and Arrefe Tsegaye, T-S-E-G-A-Y-E. (Witnesses come forward.)
We're going to continue hearing testimony until we're finished. If anyone has to leave and wants to leave their testimony for the stenographer, please just make sure that John here gets it before you leave. 156 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2
Good afternoon. My name is Paul Uyehara. Chairperson Kenney, I'm a staff attorney with the Language Access Project of Community Legal Services, which focuses on the legal problems faced by clients with limited English proficiency. I'd like to commend you at the outset for having the foresight to hold these hearings a as a means of strengthening the city. It's refreshing to hear a government ask what immigrants want from the city. First is what everyone else wants: good schools, safe streets, decent housing, and jobs. But there are other things that are also important to foreign-born Philadelphians in particular. Examples will help to illustrate. There are three recommendations I would like to make. A colleague told me of a client who came to her office recently. She doesn't speak much English. She had a 3-year-old child being treated at the hospital, and the client had provided her with some medical care. The hospital staff did not properly explain to her the medical 157 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 procedures because they could not speak to the mother in her own language and they failed to obtain an interpreter to assist them. Then DHS took that child from the mother and shipped her three hours away so that some stranger could assure that the child received the proper medical follow-up in a foster home. You know what? No 9 one at DHS could speak to the mother either, but they took the child anyway. As frightening as it is, that's a true story, which illustrates that the City of Philadelphia must first of all assure all City services accessible to those with limited English-speaking ability.
Those of us who have occasion to work with City employees know how hard it is to communicate with them in English. Imagine how hard it is to speak to them if you don't speak English. We need bilingual staff to build in-house language skills. Or the staff must 158 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 be trained to access interpreting services wherever needed. It's the responsibility of the agency, not to the consumer, to provide the interpreter. It is not proper to require a relative or a neighbor to provide interpreting services because such individuals may lack competency in English or their native language to properly interpret. Even with proper language skills, they cannot be expected to discuss particulars of problems through a relative or a friend, considering the inappropriateness to use a contact with the police or with DHS. Chinatown is a good example of the power of immigrants to strengthen the city. As we all know, the population of whites and African-Americans has diminished in the city year by year while the number of Asians continues to grow. During the decades, the Chinese businesses in the area have grown stronger and are contributing more tax revenues to the City. About half the businesses in Chinatown are also used by Chinese speak (unintelligible) to the attractiveness of Philadelphia for new Chinese immigrants, and it makes the city good for 159 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 everyone else as well. However, the City has not done a good job of nurturing this neighborhood. In the past three decades, Chinatown has been encroached by a string of development projects, which have erected a wall around it. And despite a large number of children, Chinatown has elementary school, no 9 library, no rec center, or health facility in this neighborhood. Imagine how much stronger the area would be and how much more attractive to new immigrants it would be if the City were to spend money to support the neighborhood rather than continue to condemn it for use by others. The second recommendation is that the City nurture its ethnic communities. The physical community can be critical in a transition to life in a new country. When such a community takes hold, it provides an inviting environment that will attract others. The vibrant immigrant communities are distinguished from the cosmopolitan blandness of life elsewhere. Which leads to a third illustration and recommendation. Last spring, the Mayor, on short notice, called a meeting of leaders of the Chinese 160 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 community and listened to them explain why they didn't want a certain development project in their community. There was little in the way of exchanges. The Mayor brought Chinese food but not Chinese interpreters, so some people could not participate. And those who could felt outrage that later resulted in much more feelings of exclusion from the decision-making process. Trust me when I say that Asians across the country have not been encouraged to move to Philadelphia by this decision. So my third recommendation is that there be more immigrant participation in the political process. It should be encouraged by officials from the Mayor to Council to commissioners. You should always think about what can be done to promote immigrant communities, about how to improve their services to get them more involved in government, and pay attention to getting immigrants involved in policy-making decisions and in the business environment. It will make the city a better place for all. Thank you.
Thank you. They 161 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 actually brought Chinese food to the meeting?
That's probably the last thing that they wanted to eat. I'm sorry. Thank you very much.
Good afternoon. I'm Father Gerry Burns, and while I have Irish ties to Philadelphia, I'm here today to speak on behalf of Father Tom Betz (ph.), who is the Director of Care for Refugees from the Archdiocese. Great American cities have always been centers through the years. Many immigrants arrived first in the Philadelphia neighborhoods and churches, where they raised their children, worked long hours, and created a strong city of immigrants, being the heart and spirit of the city. However, the communities are constantly changed in composition of demography, and as people move out, others move in. That has always been the way and is something that's a reality. However, sadly for Philadelphia, the number of people moving in is far less than the number of people moving out, and a tiny population is a disaster for any large city, and this does not 162 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 bode well for Philadelphia. Some people see immigrants as problems and may feel threatened by their unfamiliar languages or different customs. Today immigrants often come from non-European countries and many here fear a changing racial composition of the city. Father Betz wants to assert on behalf of the Archdiocese that immigrants are not problems but that they present great opportunities for the City. Immigrants may have problems, as any person, but they themselves are a sign for the future of the City. Sometimes immigrants are viewed as intruders who come to take advantage of opportunities that they did not work for. This is just not so. They come to the United States to enjoy freedom and prosperity, but they know that they will have to work for what they have in this country because hard work can mean social and economic advancement. Immigrants are willing to work hard and hope to see their work pay off for their children, and not from city government and other institutions. Immigrants are often invisible and are 163 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 not welcomed to participate in civic life. Their needs often are not considered and their input not solicited. And this attitude is a great injustice and not worthy of the founding principles of William Penn, who founded Philadelphia as the City of Brotherly Love for all people. I commend you, Mr. Kenney, for raising this important issue, and I would like to encourage the City to develop a policy for immigrant assistance. Father Betz also pledges his support and assistance. Just two other comments. As an Irish person working here, I'm delighted to hear concern expressed, number one, about the undocumented workers, because I too work with the undocumented. Despite Ireland's booming economy, they have problems as well, so undocumented immigrants still are coming here but are kind of doing the best they can. And, secondly, I'd just like to make a comment. Even if for you are English-speaking, it takes an effort to assimilate into the community as well. And maybe I might have misinterpreted something I heard earlier, that because you are 164 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 English-speaking, that there's no problem. Well, problems do exist even for white, European blue-eyed, English-speaking.
My name is Tsegaye, T-S-E-G-A-Y-E, Arrefe, A-R-R-E-F-E. I came here to testify in this (unintelligible) City of Brotherly Love of Philadelphia. I am with the Nationality Service Center, formerly known as the International Center of (unintelligible). (Unintelligible) is our president at the Nationality Services Center and has been known for his staunch support of foreign immigrant issues. He has supported the cause of immigrants throughout and has worked for the public for 30 years now. He couldn't be here today but he asked me to share a few words on his behalf and on behalf of the agency also. There is a something that I really like by the Nationality Service Center. It reads: We are what we were, we are what we are becoming, many traditions, one nation. This should be quite the defining 165 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 principle for a city as Philadelphia, which is consisting of many, many different people. (Unintelligible) to be presented in the City of Philadelphia is going to grow by the years because a lot of immigrants are going to put good works on what they're experiencing from others than people from ethnic group that we never heard before will be quite attracted to living and residing in Philadelphia. So I say that we have to appreciate the fact that we could always be accommodating of those different from us. The center has a few activities dealing with education, migration, community development, counseling, and nationalities program, where we serve -- I think we are the only center who serves a diverse groups up in North Philadelphia. The migration service deals with immigration issues ranging from refugee asylum, and citizenship adjustment of status. As former speakers have said, issues that concern immigrants are changing quickly with federal laws that are making it more and more difficult for immigrants to sponsor families and for undocumented immigrants who would like to have 166 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 residence in the United States, and this is really very staggering. And I would like to ask add to what Judy said earlier. It's taking longer and longer now, and (unintelligible) that might lead to the federal government legislation to support that, but the City could do its share. Earlier, there was a mention about the needs that the immigrant community takes up or the economy in terms of benefits and the like, but there was a report that came out about eight years ago now by Business Week, which reported that immigrants in the United States earn a total of $240 billion and they pay 90 billion a year in taxes and receive only 5 billion in public welfare. So if we do the math, technically, what the immigrants have contributed is always bigger than what they're taking back. Now I will just switch. I am originally from Ethiopia and I would like to comment on a few things regarding that aspect of my experience also. The City of Philadelphia has at least about 5,000 Ethiopians in mostly the west and southwest Philadelphia areas. I think our 167 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 people wanted the need to experience their own food, so they have a lot of restaurants and we now have our own church in the Southwest Philadelphia area. And in the future what happens is we will probably have our own school and the like. So I would like the City of Philadelphia to encourage people when they form communities and when they form their own churches. I know it is separation of state and church, but one experience that I would like to point out here, when we wanted to get our own church and incorporate it and make it a nonprofit organization in our neighborhood, we didn't have anywhere to go looking for information. We had to (unintelligible) personnel and we were able to incorporate in the State of Pennsylvania and from the federal government, but we all did it by trial and error.
So if the City would have certain targeted district-wide offices that may address other issues like business opportunities, where to go when you are looking for, what probably people who've experienced will tell is good words about what is happening in Philadelphia. 168 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 And one speaker mentioned the serial migration aspect. I know that a lot of community members in Columbus, Ohio -- I don't know what's going on in Columbus, Ohio, but that's where a lot of people have gone and we hear a lot of good words about Columbus, Ohio. If we could make the people of Philadelphia, the immigrants say good words about the City of Philadelphia, they would come.
Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. I'm sorry we're going a little longer. I appreciate your patience. Are Manuel Portillo and Pedro Rodriguez still here? And Ping Leung Cheung and Frantz Latour? (Witnesses come forward.)
I am a retired physician since three years and I am devoting my time to the Haitian Community Center, who really needs it and deserves it. This is a work done with the Haitian communities in Philadelphia and is a nonprofit organization which is the only one in Philadelphia 169 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 to serve the Haitian community in its own language and certainly knows the culture. By the way, we are not restricting our activity on the Haitians; we do serve other people who request services from us. The important things we do is interpreting because the Haitians very often do not have the ability to express themselves in English, and we have been doing that for five years or more and translating and interpreting for different agencies. As a matter of fact, on Thursday, the center is sending someone for the third time for interpreting for a woman with a retarded child and she cannot communicate with people. We do have an after-school program for two years in West Philadelphia. And we are really proud of what we have achieved there so far, despite not too much financial help. We do have (unintelligible) in the citizenship class for Haitians who are interested, and we do believe with the adults that it's very important that we communicate with them even teaching them language so they can understand things teaching them in 170 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 their own language. Now I'd like to thank you, Councilman Kenney, for inviting the Haitian Community Center to this hearing for suggestions, as you said in your letter. There are three main components. One which is strategies to increase foreign immigration. " We as immigrants shouldn't have a sensation of being in a safe city. After living almost 30 years in Philadelphia, which is otherwise a nice city, it still happens to me to have to lock my windows when I go through some areas, and for a city which is trying to attract people, this is not good. And what we would recommend would be number one to improve the City's physical appearance. When you go through some neighborhoods, you see the decay of houses. You know, it's not very conducive to look at. We would also like to see reducing the crime rate. I really dream that sometime we'll come where we can see that Philadelphia is a city 171 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 with the lowest crime rate in the United States, and I would be very proud of that. We encourage the organization of neighborhood watch programs while providing material in (unintelligible) support. This is in addition to what has been said already. Coupled with good publicity for the city, it would certainly increase foreign immigration to Philadelphia. Number two is strategies to improve the immigration experience within Philadelphia. I would summarize those strategies under better services and greater opportunities to immigrants, better access to services, Social Security, easier and better access to the health care system. Incidently, both of the systems are not approached by immigrants because of annoying bureaucracy that is vexing to the immigrant who comes in with the language. We recommend greater viability advisors who speak the language of the immigrant. Greater if not universal English as second language assistance in the public schools because the parents feel comfortable if they know that the children are accommodated in that direction and 172 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 they will feel better to move and stay in Philadelphia. We would also like to recommend full support for after-school programs so the natives as well as the children of the immigrants don't have to be the risky experience in after-school hours and during the summer time. A city which manifests a general interest in the welfare and blossoming of the youth has got to be attractive to a foreign immigrant.
We would like to recommend that the (unintelligible) be educated and making the police aware of cultural and linguistic characteristics which make the immigrant not a weird person but someone different who is deserving respect. Language difficulties and body gestures all too often lead to misinterpretations or even brutalities. We know of at least six different cases like that. The undocumented immigrants has been already addressed. And also, the City playing a more positive role in the INS to improve its practices. This is something that we would like to recommend, too. 173 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 Number three has to do with the progress the City government immigrants need for assistance. We believe that the situation can be largely remedied by offering real assistance to those nonprofit organizations who give services to the new immigrants in their own language because their personnel know better the culture and know better how to deal with those immigrants in the language spoken by those immigrants. In certain situations, if they need no interpreters and most of the time they are dealing with people whose language they know, they can do better and they can help better. Now when such organizations dealing with their countrymen or countrywomen, when they ask for assistance, often they get no attention or they are given the runaround. As a personal experience with the Haitian Center, let me tell that you, between 1997 and now, the board of directors had approached the Mayor and three City Councilmen to help the community in getting an inexpensive City-owned property to house more programs that they would like to create. And so far, it has been nothing but constant frustration. 174 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 The Haitian Center's suggestions should be given proper consideration. And once again, Councilman, Kenny, I thank you for opportunity to speak of this. The written testimony will follow. Thank you.
Thank you, Doctor. Please identify yourself for the record.
Yes, good afternoon. My name is Estella Rayes (ph.), and I am here representing the people which (unintelligible). I am one of the leaders of this organization. I'm originally from Honduras, South America, and I came here ten years ago and I think one of the reasons within the last ten years since I'm here I have seen people and families moving out of the City is because they feel not very welcome. But in the meantime, other people is arriving in the City. I'm talking about immigrants bringing business. And still, they move to the suburbs. I think if the City would do something very beneficial for immigrants, one of the things that I have been talking to people about is how we 175 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 can participate in decision-making, how can the City have a commitment to help these people to have their services to participate when L&I is saying that about the business and people don't speak the language. Even in immigration office, sometimes our people, our immigrants feel very intimidated just for the fact of looking for general information. I'm going to let somebody here express something else. Good afternoon.
My name is Manuel Portillo. We have changed our name to the Eastern Pennsylvania Organizing Project. We have a statement in writing here that we will make copies of. I want to point out a few things that are contained in the statement, a way of recommendations for the city. By the way, our organization is made up of institutions, mostly 20 faith-based institutions but also parents and 21 public schools and community organizations, and we 22 represent more than 35,000 families in the city. Our experience has been such that we believe that the City will definitely benefit from a number of immigrants increasing not only from 176 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 the ones already here but those we might attract to come in and make it their (unintelligible). However, in order to be able to attract people, we believe four things are critical to happen. The first one is that there's got to be public commitment to attracting immigrants. By that, I mean that our leaders have to speak very firmly and strongly in favor of everybody who lives in the City, not just some, but in the same way, and service everybody equally. And from our mayor to our Council leaders, we expect them to speak strongly in support of new residents of the City. So that is as a primary thing. Secondly, we believe that the City needs to make an effort to create changes in the way that it delivers services to residents. There is a need in City services that when one department is doing something, it may not necessarily feed or combine with what other departments are doing. There's a lot of times and situations in which you could save resources by being more effective. But in the end, each department keeps its separate maps and systems for labor and services and should be looking at 177 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 cooperation between departments. So services is critical and services have to be offered in the language of the people whatever that is -- Chinese, Spanish, Creole, you name it. The City also needs to pay more attention to the small businesses, particularly those located in neighborhoods. We have been working very closely with the Dominican Grocers Association, which is made up of 142 Dominican grocery stores located throughout the City. There are an estimated 600 of these stores, and we work with 142 of them, and every single one of them is going through a lot of trouble to try to get L&I and the Health Department and other departments to support them and to service them in a fair way. I hate to say it, but with the Health Department, we had an experience where they keep changing the ways they go about offering health services to the community, mainly through adapting their materials into Spanish and being cooperative and attentive to the needs of people in the neighborhoods. But small businesses really need a lot more support. We learned recently that the program 178 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 for the entire City only has $200,000, and this is a city with thousands and thousands of small businesses, many of which are located in neighborhoods with high crime, drugs, and all of the problems. So it's very, very little money. So we have to put the money where our mouth is, so to say. Another thing I noticed that's very important to change in this city is the way the City works with people. We need to create partnerships so that community organizations and residents can work with City officials to develop new strategies and do research together as to what are the best practices that we can find and develop new systems in the City based on experiences already proven. We've learned, for instance, that in Boston, the office for New Bostonians has changed the way the city goes about the community. This office serves as a welcome center for many arriving in Boston for many years now. In New York City, the Mayor's Office for Immigrants offers language services, which also coordinates all of the city efforts towards servicing immigrants better.
179 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 And so we believe that the City, before trying to bring people to Philadelphia, needs to really consider changing its structure and investing a little more in preparing the foundation so that those immigrants that arrive in Philadelphia will get an equal chance as everybody else to contribute and to be integrated into a productive life in the City. So thank you for your efforts in bringing these issues to the public eye. We hope this is not the only time that I and many others who have been testifying will have an opportunity to work with you toward not only engaging in the dialogue but also taking specific actions to changes that are required for making the City a better place.
Thank you very much for your testimony. Sir, could you please identify yourself for the record.
My name my name is David Liu and I am a representative of the Chinese community and Chinese Development Association of Chinatown. Members of the City Council, thank you 180 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 for holding this hearing and giving us the opportunity to express our views to you. We are very happy to help you search for ways and means to attract immigrants to the attractive and wonderful life of this city and its educational and cultural advantages and to improve the quality of life for residents already living here. However, it's a terrible and grievous mistake to destroy a community of citizens of this country while welcoming newcomers, but if you locate the proposed stadium in Chinatown, that is exactly what you will be doing. You would destroy a vibrant law-abiding hard-working family-oriented community of Asian people who have been in Chinatown for -- it goes back to at least 150 years. The Chinatown community is a unique cultural enclave which helps tourism and gives an international flavor to our city. And Chinatown has a vibrant economic which has produced for the City, as cited, jobs and industries and homes for many new Asian immigrants to our city. If you locate a stadium in Chinatown, you will destroy businesses in Chinatown and cause the depopulation of the area. Center City will be a traffic 181 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 nightmare on the days and nights of the ball games, and everyone in our city will be the losers. I strongly urge you to oppose the proposed location of the stadium into Chinatown and give Chinatown an opportunity to grow and prosper for the benefit of all citizens of Philadelphia.
Thank you very much for your testimony and patience. We have a few witnesses left, Cindy Suy, Rorng Sorn, Dr. Vuong Thuy and Lequyen Vu, and Narasimha Shenoy. If you'll come up together. Thank you for your patience. (Witnesses come forward.)
My name is Cindy Suy, S-U-Y. I am Director of the Cambodian Association of Greater Philadelphia. First I would like to begin by thanking members of the Philadelphia City Council for giving me the opportunity to speak before you. I would most especially like to thank Councilman-At-Large Jim Kenney for inviting the Cambodian Association of Greater Philadelphia to 182 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 participate in this public hearing. Secondly, I would like to take this opportunity to share with you briefly about our agency. The Cambodian Association of Greater Philadelphia is a nonprofit agency and founded in 1979. Our mission and goal is to improve the quality of life of Cambodian refugees by addressing issues in areas such as education, health care, social, economic and culture. Over the course of years, our organization has 12 become well known and well respected for a wide 13 variety of services we offer. This program 14 addresses those specific issues facing the growing 15 Cambodian community. A few of our programs 16 include Cambodian culture, classes in English as 17 second language, citizenship classes, translation 18 and interpretation services, emergency food bank, 19 and a basic and social awareness initiative. 20 We have had a positive impact of the 21 city government on Cambodian community for the past nine years that I have been with been with the Cambodian Association. A way in which our organization has been able to work with the City government, for example, is by working with the 183 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 Philadelphia Office of Human Relations to organize special events such as the Cambodian Celebration, which brings about 1,000 people together at one time. We have citywide, in terms of permits, to use public facilities as well as obtaining the support of City departments for security and construction needs. The police community relations department has been generous in their support of our various community and workshops. They have sent representatives to our meetings to speak on topics as widely deserve as drug and alcohol awareness, crime prevention, and gang violence issues. Additionally, the City of Philadelphia operation of Town Watch has been invaluable in supporting our organizations efforts. The director of the City Target Assistance Program has been especially helpful and accommodating to our organization. Over the past four years, we have been privileged in working with her and consider ourselves fortunate to have someone of her caliber organization within the City government. And the City government could be more responsive to the needs of people of the Cambodian 184 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 community especially in requests for funding submitted to both City and various agencies. The Cambodian community has serious needs in terms of children, our families, and our elderly. Because we're such a small organization serving the unique segment of Philadelphia population, we are often left out of the City outreach effort and various opportunities for organization. Our community is in need of service because we're only agency in a position of addressing the needs and long-standing assistance within the community. And the fact that our board members and our staffs are also a member of the community and our staff is both bilingual and bicultural and thus able to bridge the community gap that many constituents struggle with our organization, our full-time staff of only four struggles with meeting the needs of the Cambodian community. Unfortunately, we cannot (unintelligible) to comparable programs offered by other organizations simply because none of those programs can begin to meet the specialized needs of our community. As for our staff and program funding, we are finding ours unable to meet the 185 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 dire needs of a community of over 14,000.
Funding for a variety of our long-standing programs, such as those that benefit our youth, our elderly, and our struggling communities, are being sharply reduced or cut. Additionally, we are in need of place where we can serve, a multipurpose community culture center for our community. It would be a place where our youth could meet and could be a safe haven where children could come in after school and engage in a variety of healthy activities designed to promote positive youth growth and development. Our children need a place where they can turn for help as they struggle academically as well as socially. Our elderly need a place where they can come and meet others of similar Asian backgrounds as well as engage in a variety of recreational, cultural, and community service activities. For future actions, we would like to recommend that the City make an effort to develop a special outreach service for organizations such as ours. The service would include ensuring that the smaller segments of Philadelphia under- 186 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 privileged community such as the ones served by our organization receive their share of City funding and City resources. Some additional areas, such as organization and city support and (unintelligible) resources would include equal access to health care, ensuring that funded is provided to provide appropriate health care service to all residents of our city. No one should hesitate to avail themselves of needed health care simply because of the lack of service interpretation that is necessary to facilitate communication with the health care professional. Equal access to government housing. There are very few Cambodian-Americans taking advantage of housing in our city. The reason is that there is little or no outreach service taking place within the Cambodian-American community. Currently there is no alternative for Cambodian- Americans and those few who have taken advantage of public housing in Philadelphia are forced to relocate to neighborhoods far removed from the Cambodian community. This increases their sense of isolation. 187 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 Access to government employment. There are few Cambodian-Americans employed in the local city government. Again, an effective outreach approach is needed. As a result of our small population, we have little representation in the public sector and in the employment opportunities whereby small nonprofit service organizations such as ours could partner with the City in serving the diverse needs of the immigrant population. With the City as a substantial resource to improve the quality of life, we can encourage immigrant population to be made in Philadelphia as well as encourage others to settle here. By working together, we can ensure that immigrants' needs are met, from job training to referral services, to and educational workshops. We can become known as an immigrant-friendly city, a place where disadvantaged will know they can receive the necessary resources to become a viable contributor to their community. And in conclusion, Philadelphia will be served by attracting more immigrant populations and ensuring the diversity of our people only by cultural diversity and the sharing of the unique 188 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 traditions of each with the community at large, that Philadelphia will continue to live up to its reputation as the City of Brotherly Love, a place where immigrants are welcome. Our agency, the Cambodian Association of Greater Philadelphia, looks forward to working with the City of Philadelphia to achieve this goal. I thank you for the opportunity again to share this information.
Thank you for your testimony. Do you have something to add relative to that? I would just ask -- one, I know it's been a long day, but if you have written testimony, please submit it and try to synopsize or highlight the testimony that you're providing as opposed to reading the testimony into the record. Identify yourself for the record, please.
My name is Rorng Sorn. (Unintelligible.) I have been in Philadelphia since I arrived 13 years ago and I enjoy many things that the City has to offer. People have worked very 189 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 hard and built a strong family. We have people who work in different fields -- police officers, people in medical field, a lot of different areas besides that. For people who have limited education and English skills, we also (unintelligible) different manufacturer, such as employer who hire more be responsible. So instead of negative activity that may be outside to lock out our community, we happen to be a very big effort very big dollars to the city also. All of the problems that Miss Soy just mentioned is true, and from the research I've done, and, of course, with the poverty according to the 1990 census, we found that 47 percent of Cambodian living in poverty. And we believe that these problems is among Cambodians especially in Philadelphia. So we would like to work with the City Council and with the City officials to address any issues that we can work together on. And as a whole, it might be a small community but, again, it's a small problem but can become a big problem and affect the whole society that we live in. So thank you very much for your time 190 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 and for having us today.
Thank you for coming. Please identify yourself for the record.
My name is Marasimaj, M-A-R-A-S-I-M-A-J, also known as (unintelligible). Councilman James Kenney, thank you, sir. I appreciate it. I know it's been a long day. I'll be brief. I represent the Association of (unintelligible) of Philadelphia, which is an organization for all Asian communities. We have already heard from members of our organizations, the Cambodians, so you probably have heard of the problems we have and the opportunities we seek. Let me give you briefly a perspective of the community. You know, we are a small community of the United States, yet we live in a city that's a very diversified community. To let you get the grasp of in the community, for example, there are 17 major languages and 48 dialects in one community alone. You put together the Koreans, the Chinese, the Vietnamese, and it becomes a major diversified community and a 191 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 cultural (unintelligible). The two aspects of immigration is (unintelligible) issues. One came through to make the dream of America. The other immigrants came through the refugee system. So we have to look into both of them. And today I've heard that the City is doing their best to take care of the refugees and the need, but I have yet to hear what it is doing to attract the businesses of the Asian community and the professionals. Also, the businesses are high-tech businesses doing work outside the city. As I look into the city system, I do not see variations in the system, although especially if you look at the managerial system in the City, I do not see many managers in the level, so these are what attracts the professionals to the community. And I think we need to work in those areas. And the second, the other area is, basically in order to attract the professionals and the businesses to the City, we need to have neighborhoods where they can live comfortably, and that has been a key issue. Education is why 192 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 people are living in the suburbs. I love the City. I work here in the City for 15 years, but the general electorate -- and I started my own business in the City of Philadelphia. So the immigrants if given an opportunity can be productive and can be useful. And I appreciate the opportunity to express that point of view. Thank you, sir.
Thank you, thank you for your patience. ASIAN AFFAIRS CHAIR: My name is Skip (inaudible), chairman of the Mayor's Commission for Asian Affairs. I want to say first of all that I heard about this hearing early this morning, which shows a little bit about how the communication goes, but I could not for any reason miss it so I changed my schedule.
Thank you. ASIAN AFFAIRS CHAIR: I want you to know that in the refugee community, this has gained a lot of respect for you, Councilman Kenney.
Thank you. ASIAN AFFAIRS CHAIR: One of the things 193 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 is -- and I'm bypassing a lot for the sake of time -- the commission has done is -- there are a lot of things, but we'll get to that some other time. You know, I was involved with the census in 1990, and the census showed that the Asian-Pacific community is growing at a 145 percent growth rate. I was involved with the 2000 census and even the census didn't provide enough people. There was one full-time and one part-time Asian working on the census, which means -- that's for five states. So even though the census did better this time, your census figures are not going to show how much of a population you have in the Asian community and also in the other refugee community because of translations and because of fear of government. One of the things that I do want to point out is the issue of migration of people from the City of Philadelphia, both white and black. The one population that is growing in the inner-city is the immigrant refugee population. I do want to caution you too because I work in the areas of Upper Darby and I see how fast they're growing, where the immigrant populations are going 194 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 directly to the suburbs because of lack of inner-city amenities. An issue I want to cover is, I'm on the Mayor's Scholarship Committee, and I see all of these lists of people getting scholarships. I see a lot of Asian names and a lot of immigrant names getting scholarships. It's great that we have a great number of minority applicants and how much they've achieved. The one issue that was not brought up is, I visited the Youth Study Center, I visited the prisons, visited the state prisons and have seen an increase of Asian names in prisons too, mostly stemming from substance abuse and behavioral health issues. So that too must be addressed in the total immigrant community. There is some kind of a grant going around within the City which hasn't even been announced. It was supposed to have been announced in September. The other thing is, I think that there should be a connection for entry-level jobs where corporations can work to attract entry-level jobs in the immigrant community, because I did something with the Ritz Carlton Hotel, the only 195 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 ones out of the whole hospitality industry that approached us aggressively to try to recruit in the Asian community. So I think that that's another issue that should be done. For the sake of time, I've submitted everything, but I want to mention the Small Business Task Force, which Mayor Street and I serve on. One of it's recommendations is to coordinate service delivery to immigrant neighborhoods and non-English speakers and to market Philadelphia to potential immigrants. Now, who else could market Philadelphia to potential immigrants than satisfied immigrants and refugees and affiliates? That would strengthen the ability of people from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds to play an active part in the economic, social, civic, and culture life of the City. We can do this by conducting a public education program to inform immigrants about City services. We have all of these problems with L&I and the Health Department. We have to do something within the City agencies to make them more user-friendly for new Philadelphians to 196 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 report demographics and to create positive effects in order to increase the City's population of new immigrants. I just want to talk about some of the duties for this agency, if it's created. Translations. You know, everybody's talking about translations and interpretations, but there has to be guidelines, you can't have a teenage son at a health center doing the medical history for intimate details of a mother's medical history.
We need representation at City agencies for new immigrants and economics, like somebody talking about human services, health services, police, licensing, and legislative matters. This department would have to testify in legislative matters, whether it's City Council, whether it's with the State. It would also have to track demographics in ethnic leadership. And you have to attract ethnic leadership, you have to know who the leaders are and protocols you have to go through when addressing certain ethnic groups, and you have to go through the proper protocol outreach for City agencies and distribute information for minority bids, streets, licensing, 197 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 and health information, and you need a direct communicator and a sounding board for the Mayor's Office with an immigrant association and neighborhoods to represent the Mayor or even City Council where necessary. Okay. Maintain -- this is important -- connections with ethnic media outlets for the delivery of City information. You don't have to get a lot of this stuff translated; you can go right to the ethnic meeting and survey immigrant services and facility recreation of non-English efforts. I just want to say that I appreciate the opportunity for being here and for this long day. Just a little story. You know, a lot of politicians come into our community and we're glad to have them and they give pats on the back, but we need services. We have so many people and the commission and everybody else who have volunteered for years, since the new administration came in. People have translated for free, attended meetings for free, done everything for free. We need to get City services now and through this agency, it would be great. 198 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 One quick thing. When Mayor Street came to Chinatown, I remember he did a forum one, and of the things we requested was a recreation center for Chinatown, but we didn't expect such a large one. Thank you. )
Thank you very much. Thank you for your testimony. (Applause.)
Mr. Liu Wen Cheng and whoever is accompanying Mr. Cheng. (Witnesses come forward.)
First of all, you have to identify yourself for the record.
My name is Kirk Wiedemer. I represent Mr. Liu Wen Cheng. With him is KiKi Wong, who will be the interpreter, and who is also vice president of the Chamber of Commerce in Chinatown. I know time is of the essence. Mr. Liu Wen Cheng was arrested and charged with robbery when making a takeout delivery at a restaurant by the owner. He really 199 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 was the victim. I think he has been invited here to tell you and this committee what a nightmare it was for him that night.
Before you start keep the microphone close. INTERPRETER: Discrimination. I believe the Police Department didn't follow standard procedure and created this dilemma to me and created great damage to me and to my family. When I called 911 for rescue after I was robbed, the police came to the scene, and at that point, everything looks normal. My son was on the scene because he was the only one speak English and the police knocked the doors with the guns in their hands as a gesture to arrest the robbers. I don't know for what reason, after one of the policemen came scene, the whole thing turned around. They arrested me, they handcuffed me, and just looked at me as the robber. I don't understand, without any communication with me, the policeman arrested me and handcuffed me. One of the reasons I was arrested, I believe, it's because I couldn't communicate with the 200 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 policeman. But on the other hand, it's so clear to me that they just ignore me, didn't pay attention to our version of the situation, didn't pay attention to the facts and they just arrest me in this case. I am very grateful, after we went through the legal procedure and I got my justice back, so I was undifferent from before. I was suspicious about the outcome but I'm very happy with the outcome that all charges were dropped, and I'm innocent. So for the last two or three months, me and my family have suffered greatly emotionally and, you know, financially. We feel that it is a great damage to us. Because of this incident, my restaurant business cannot continue regularly, my son has to drop -- he cannot go to school because he's busy in helping me to straighten out all of the facts. And we can now -- it's onerous to us that we cannot take the facts, we cannot bear this whole incident, it's a nightmare to us. So we didn't have the peaceful life as we had before. So after this incident, I just -- the whole family, you know, couldn't describe the 201 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 suffering we have been -- went -- you know, we have gone through.
Thank you. Is there anything else you would like to add Mr. Wiedemer?
Only, Councilman, that we're going to be presenting some recommendations to Commissioner Timoney about this incident and hopefully, he'll follow up on it.
I appreciate that, and I'd just like to it say, if I may, as a member of City Council and as a lifelong citizen of this city, I would like to offer my apologies to you and to your family personally and on behalf of this government for the wrong that was done to you. It was a terrible situation, a terrible experience, and we do humbly apologize. INTERPRETER: Thank you for the remarks you made.
Thank you. Thank you very much. I believe there's one more witness left. (Witness comes forward.) 202 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2
It's Mr. Neary? Please identify yourself for the record and proceed.
I'm Bernard Neary, N-E-A-R-Y. I'm an attorney in private practice. I promise to limit my testimony to one minute and thirty seconds. Councilman Kenney, thank you for the opportunity to appear today before the Legislative Oversight Committee and to testify on the matter of how we might make Philadelphia more friendly and open to new immigrants. I share your concern that Philadelphia may be falling behind other cities in attracting new arrivals, who bring with them the tremendous, drive, energy, and will to succeed that is the hallmark of every immigrant group that has come to our shores. My particular concern and the concern of my clients are the recent steps taken by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation that limits the access of new arrivals, particularly Chinese- and Russian-speaking immigrants, to a Pennsylvania driver's license. As you know, a driver's license is a privilege conferred upon 203 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 individuals who can show proficiency in both an actual driving test and in a written test. This written test measures the applicant's understanding of the rules of the road, traffic, and safety driver courtesy. The road test measures the applicant's ability to properly handle and control a motor vehicle within the rules of the road and also to prove their physical ability to control a motor vehicle. As you may or may not be aware of, the written portion of the test has been offered in a number of languages other than English. They include Chinese, Russian, Vietnamese, Armenian, an Spanish. Within the last 60 days, the Department of Transportation, without notice or explanation, stopped offering the written portion of the test in Chinese and Russian. This is a serious blow to two of the largest immigrant groups in the City of Philadelphia. While the department -- while the Pennsylvania driver's license is indeed a privilege, a license to operate a motor vehicle is a necessity, especially for the new arrival who may find himself traveling great distances to and 204 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 from his job or find himself working in a job or profession that requires the use of a motor vehicle. As a result of terminating the driver's test in Russian and Chinese, non-English-speaking immigrants will be precluded from receiving a driver's license, thereby impairing their ability to work. It will also have a negative effect of further exacerbating the problem of unlicensed and uninsured drivers in Philadelphia. When faced with an inability to pass the driver's licensure examination, many new immigrants may simply decide to drive without a license and, thereby, without motor vehicle insurance. I respectfully that City Council contact Bradley Mallory, Secretary of the Department of Transportation, and Joy Gross, Manager of the Department of Transportation Driver Licensing Division, and prevail upon them to have the written portion of the driver's licensure test reinstated in the Chinese and Russian languages. In addition, City Council should take steps to determine what other immigrant groups would be aided by offering the written portion of 205 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 the driver licensure examination in their native languages. Council should make every effort to convince the Department of Transportation to expand, not contract, the number of languages in which the written test is offered. In a perfect world, it would be desirable if everyone could sit for the driver's license issue examination in the English language. In a less than perfect world, we must recognize that a driver's license is becoming as much a necessity of life as food, shelter, and employment. In Philadelphia, a driver's license needs to be made available to all who can show proficiency in driving skills and pass the written test, even if the written test is offered in their native language. To do otherwise will turn Philadelphia into an economic backwater, where unlicensed and uninsured drivers rule the road.
Thank you. I did write to Secretary Mallory. Have you seen his response?
I believe Secretary Mallory 206 /00 FISCAL STABILITY - BILL 2 has communicated to some individuals in the driver training business, or the driving school business, that he believes that there was massive cheating in the Russian language test and in the Chinese language test. I don't suspect he only means that Russian people cheat and that Chinese people cheat.
I remember older guys telling us what the answers were too when we were --
Right. I suggest the way to deal with that problem would be to have multiple copies and multiple questions of both the test in Russian and Chinese. It seems that if there is a problem with cheating, the simple answer is to create more tests defeat the cheaters, not -- I repeat not -- to preclude honest individuals who can't read and write English from driving a car.
Thank you for your testimony. And thank you all for being here today. I appreciate your time and patience. Thank you. (Adjourned at 2:57 p.m.) - - - 208 C E R T I F I C A T E I HEREBY CERTIFY that the foregoing proceedings of the Council of the City of Philadelphia of Tuesday, October 17, 2000, were reported fully and accurately by me, and that this is a correct transcript of same. RE: COUNCIL COMMITTEE LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT RESOLUTION NO. 000551 __________________________________, JOSEPHINE CARDILLO, Registered Professional Reporter