Nisha Agarwal, commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs hopes that the municipal identification cards will revolutionize the way New Yorkers interact with their city. All New York City residents will able to apply for their cards from January next year. The cards will be issued to all city residents irrespective of their immigration status, Agarwal said, adding that the cards will not get undocumented immigrants deported.
The commissioner was speaking at a roundtable hosted by the Center for Community and Ethnic Media at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism Oct. 30. “It’s not like if you have the card you reveal yourself as an undocumented immigrant,” Voices of NY, a CUNY Graduate School of Journalism website that curates the best journalistic work being produced by community and ethnic publications, quoted Agarwal as saying. “The information that will be associated with the card will certainly not be shared with the federal government,” she added.
Agarwal was joined by Bitta Mostofi, director of the municipal ID program, and several members of the NYPD’s Community Affairs Division.
The initiative, launched by Mayor Bill de Blasio in September, will give all card holders access to one-year free membership packages at 33 of the city’s leading cultural institutions, including museums, performing arts centers, concert halls, botanical gardens, and zoos in all five boroughs. The Municipal ID/CIG one-year membership will be comparable to each institution’s standard one-year individual or family membership package, depending on the institution, and will give ID card holders a range of benefits including free admission, and access to special events, and discounts to museum shops, according to a Sept. 18 press release issued by the mayor’s office.
“The municipal ID is a powerful tool to bring more New Yorkers out of the shadows and into the mainstream. It is now also a key that opens the door for hundreds of thousands of more New Yorkers to our City’s premier assets in culture, science and entertainment,” de Blasio said at the Sept. 18 launch. The ID will be for New Yorkers above the age of 14 and will be valid for five years from the date of issue. There will be no application fee the first year of the program but it’s not clear whether there will be a cost associated with obtaining an ID later on, the Voices of NY report said.
The city is currently in the process of organizing and staffing several enrollment offices in each borough and is still determining which forms of documentation will be accepted as proof of identity and New York residence when people apply for the card. The eligibility requirements though, the commissioner stressed, are simple. “One, you can prove you are who you say you are,” Agarwal said. “And two, that you live in New York City.”