By Donna Lamb

On Jan. 29, the New York City Council Committees on Immigration and on Consumer Affairs, chaired respectively by Council Members Kendall Stewart and Leroy Comrie (above), held an oversight hearing on the implementation of Local Law 31 of 2004, which attempts to regulate immigration assistance service providers.

As Council Member Stewart explained, Local Law 31 is comprehensive and covers many items, including prohibiting providers from implying that they have special influence over CIS; from promising desirable outcomes to a customer; and from threatening to report a client to immigration or other governmental authorities. The law also prohibits service providers from calling themselves attorneys or using any other titles that would mislead customers into believing the providers are authorized to give legal immigration advice. Furthermore, it requires providers to enter into written agreements in English as well as the client’s first language, and customers have the right to cancel the contract within three business days after its execution.

Notably absent from the hearing was any representative from the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, which declined to come and give testimony. Several councilmembers expressed shock and outrage over this, for the misdeeds of immigration service providers is clearly one of the most pressing issues facing this city of immigrants, since the practices of unscrupulous providers have caused untold harm and even ruined the lives of countless people.

Therefore, it fell to Andrew Eiler (right), director of legislative affairs at the City’s Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA, to take the hot seat and answer for what his department has been doing to enforce the law.

Eiler spoke of various initiatives, including a new campaign that combines DCA’s annual compliance inspection of tax preparation services with inspection for compliance with immigration service providers, since both services are often performed by the same businesses. So far, nine inspections have netted seven violations that are now pending in the adjudication process. DCA has also published in 11 languages a pamphlet providing a summary of what immigration service providers are prohibited from doing, and what they are required to do.

But the sticking point came on the issue of immigrants’ hesitation to come forward and report abuses. Incredibly, Eiler said that DCA has received almost no complaints – zero in 2005, two in 2006, and four in 2007 – from immigrants regarding dishonorable providers, and that without complaints, his department can’t be very successful in prosecuting wrongdoers.

This statement – which seemed to blame the victim rather than address the issue of DCA’s ineffective outreach – stunned committee members and became one of the main focal point of the hearing. For starters, as voiced by Chairman Stewart followed by Council Member Mathieu Eugene, they all found it incredulous that there have been so few complaints since, if that were the case, the City Council wouldn’t have needed to pass the law in the first place.

Council Member Charles Barron (pictured right) added, "I find it hard to believe that you can’t put together outreach to get complaints. It would just take a series of town hall meetings saying, ‘Come and bring your complaint.’" Eiler responded that people voicing a complaint and actually filing a complaint with a governmental agency are two different things because people are afraid of consequences. But Barron came back with, "Before you say that people won’t lodge complaints, why don’t you hold town meetings and see what happens."

Other councilmembers inquired into what DCA has been doing to inform people that they could make complaints, such as requiring providers to post in their offices signs that read, "If you have a complaint, call 311. All complaints will be kept confidential." But Council Member John Liu pointed out that the problem goes far beyond whether people know to call 311. "People still aren’t going to report abuses if there is the feeling in immigrant communities that the municipal government doesn’t really care and isn’t going to do anything to enforce the law," he stated.

When the hearing moved on to taking testimony from immigrant advocates, one of the persons who testified was Atty. Jason Abrams (right), chair of the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s Committee on the Unauthorized Practice of Law. He said that his colleagues, his committee, and he personally have made complaints about certain individuals to the DCA, but to no avail. "More than once, we submitted sufficient proof of a perpetrator's giving of legal advice, his or her failure to grant itemized bills, etc., often providing either a telephone number or an address," he declared. "Each time, we either received no response at all or were told that this was a matter for the State Bar."

The one thing that everyone agreed on – committee members, Andrew Eiler, and immigrant advocates alike – is that the number of complaints in no way reflects the size of the problem, and that more must be done to stop abuses, including by increasing the number of DCA inspectors. Committee Chairs Leroy Comrie and Kendall Stewart both vowed to bring the issue up in City budget negotiations so that DCA can hire sufficient staffing to do what is necessary to protect New York’s most vulnerable consumers.