I-ARC Member Spotlight | CUNY Citizenship Now!
Immigrant ARC is a coalition of immigration legal services providers and advocates working together throughout New York State to increase access to justice and access to counsel for all immigrant New Yorkers. Our coalition represents more than 80 member organizations across the state and each member brings a unique set of skills and expertise to the table which keeps our network strong.
Member Spotlights give our members a platform to showcase and share their milestones and accomplishments. Our next I-ARC Member Spotlight features CUNY Citizenship Now!, a member organization based in New York City. We would like to thank both CUNY Citizenship Now!’s Executive Director, Monique Francis, and Managing Attorney for Community Events, Tamara R. Bloom, Esq., for providing the answers to our interview questions on behalf of CUNY Citizenship Now!
CUNY CN! Staff Member: Karen Cintron, Paralegal, Medgar Evers Immigration Center
Description: A CUNY Citizenship Now! Application Assistance Supervisor reviewing an N-400 Application for Naturalization, prepared by a volunteer.
What is CUNY Citizenship Now? | Fast Facts
Organization’s Full Name: City University of New York (CUNY) Citizenship Now!
Address: 555 West 57th Street, 12th Floor, New York, NY 10019
Contact Information:
https://cuny.edu/citizenship (website)
(646) 664-9400 (phone number)
citizenshipnowinfo@cuny.edu (email address)
Mission & Vision: CUNY Citizenship Now! (CN) is a non-profit organization based in New York City, that has been providing free, high quality and confidential, pro se immigration legal assistance since 1997. CUNY Citizenship Now! believes in empowering immigrants in navigating their immigration case. Our legal team provides one on one virtual and in person support, group processing events and workshops. In efforts to combat misinformation and fraud we offer legal training and presentations to the general public.
Service Area: CUNY Citizenship Now! serves people throughout New York City.
Populations Served: Services are free and open to all immigrants regardless of income, location or other demographic factors.
Services: CN! provides consultations and application assistance in family based immigration and naturalization and citizenship cases. The scope of services can be found here: Legal Services.
Projects to Highlight: In 2027, CN! will celebrate 30 years of helping immigrants on their path to citizenship. Since 1997, CN! has expanded their community-based events into a nationally recognized pro se assistance model. Congratulations to CN! on this amazing milestone!
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In 2006, the CUNY Citizenship Now! Volunteer Corps began to organize volunteers interested in helping immigrants become US citizens. Over the last 20 years, more than 4,000 members speaking more than 50 languages, across personal and professional backgrounds, have contributed to CN!’s mission and model for assisting immigrant communities.
In addition to their long-standing national and state and city partnerships, CN!’s partners on the NYC Council made it possible to expand services directly in underserved neighborhoods in NYC and allowed them to extend hours of operation beyond regular business hours. Through the NYC Council partnership, CN! has launched a Supplemental Asylum Services Program in 2026, providing additional support to asylum seekers with existing immigration cases.
Doing not only one-on-one immigration legal services both in person and remotely CN! staff are embedded in more than 30 active service locations (from Council Member district offices to CBOs).
CN! also has a close to a decade-long partnership with CUNY School of Law, allowing the next generation of immigration attorneys to receive classroom instruction and hands-on experience assisting participants with their naturalization cases in real time.
How CN! measure its impact within the community?: CN! measures organizational impact in the thousands of immigrants who have been empowered to take charge of their immigration case, and that immigrants continue to seek their services despite an increasingly hostile climate.
CN! also measures impact by the technical assistance and legal expertise they provide to other organizations. As a university based legal service program CN! is heavily involved in partnerships, collaboration, and training efforts that helps increase capacity of immigrant legal services throughout New York City.
“For the first time since before the pandemic, we were able to host a Volunteer Appreciation Reception honoring close to 450 active volunteers in our naturalization clinics during FY 24-25 and FY 25-26. This occasion finally allowed all of us to truly appreciate and express gratitude for the volunteers who continue to give their time despite the personal and professional toll this administration has caused, the dwindling number of people coming forward for assistance and the increasingly fraught challenges involved. Their words of appreciation and gratitude for participating in a meaningful, high-quality program were a massive, rewarding, reminder that CN’s organizational impact can also be measured by continuing to empower this act of civic engagement, welcoming and support - while also providing CN! the opportunity to further empower the diversity and tenacity of NYC!”
- Tamara Bloom, Managing Attorney for Community Events
Major Accomplishments: In past years, CN! has been in regular collaboration and engagement with Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) and United States Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) which resulted in many tangible, positive impacts on those they serve. During the prior administration, CN! participated in the White House Task Force on Naturalization, the USCIS Naturalization Working Group, the USCIS Community of Practice Naturalization and Immigration Support Services meetings, NIICE Conference, and the New American’s Campaign (NAC) Naturalization Working Group. They also hosted a USCIS Listening Session with NYC Naturalization Service Providers. Several administrations ago, CN! assisted USCIS in testing their early online application filing platform and naturalization tool before its deployment. CN! also actively collaborated with USCIS to participate in community events and opened the college campuses to host naturalization ceremonies. CN! hopes for a meaningful return to surpass this level of collaboration and transparency to demystify, make accessible, center and celebrate the citizenship process.
CUNY CN! Staff Members: Susan Chong, Paralegal, Queens College Immigration Center
Yolanda Bastidas, Paralegal, York College Immigration Center
Description: At the Screening station, two experienced CUNY Citizenship Now! Staff members are reviewing a participant’s eligibility to apply for citizenship.
CUNY Citizenship Now! & I-ARC Membership
CN! is an active member of the I-ARC community, regularly participating in member meetings and working groups and serving on I-ARC’s Steering Committee. Our organizations have also had opportunities to collaborate more directly. Earlier this year, I-ARC supported two of CN!’s naturalization trainings by providing CLE sponsorship, helping support the continuing legal education of the attorneys participating in the program. Approximately 200 volunteers and CN! staff members attended the trainings, and I-ARC issued CLE certificates to 89 participating attorneys.
The trainings helped prepare volunteers for CN!’s successful CUNY Spring Citizenship Drive, held on May 16 at John Jay College. With the support of 164 volunteers, the clinic assisted 274 lawful permanent residents from 50 countries as they took an important step toward becoming U.S. citizens.
As an engaged member and partner within the network, CN! brings valuable experience and perspective to the I-ARC community. We asked the CN! team to reflect on their experience as an I-ARC member and share what makes this community and collaboration meaningful to their work.
“Especially during times where there has been no government transparency and the stakes are higher and more dangerous for those we assist, our I-ARC membership allows us to crowd source information and experiences, extend capacity for other organizations and remain connected to broader, real time updates while troubleshooting solutions across the spectrum of already taxed immigration legal service providers.”
- Monique Francis, Executive Director of CN!
“Looking back at the last 2 years just being in community with others and I-ARC’s role in monitoring and maintaining the various places where providers are staying connected is a tremendous value. With I-ARC taking the lead for things like the Signal chats, various listserv management, the weekly recap, and most of all the supervisor trainings have been instrumental to providers staying afloat. I-ARC’s strength remains stepping in to respond to our ongoing needs; we rely on knowing that we have an organization that acts as a convenor.”
- Tamara Bloom, Managing Attorney for Community Events
Field Insights | Excerpts from Our Interview with CN!
I-ARC: Currently, what do you feel are some of the most pressing concerns faced by those providing immigration legal services in New York State?
CUNY CN!: One of the most pressing concerns facing immigration legal service providers in New York State is the lack of coordinated leadership and strategic mobilization from city and state agencies responsible for overseeing and funding immigration legal services. Over the past two years, despite significant and ongoing challenges, the LSPs have largely continued operating under a "business as usual" model. Coordination among stakeholders often occurs only in response to immediate crises, even though rapid-response issues have arisen consistently since January 2025. As providers work on the front lines of an immigration system that is increasingly strained, staff burnout has become a serious concern, and there are not enough attorneys to meet the increasing demand. We are all witnessing the dismantling of family-based and humanitarian immigration systems.
With two years remaining under the current federal administration, there is an urgent need to rethink how immigration legal services are organized and delivered. Funders, particularly city and state agencies, should play a leading role in driving this shift by fostering greater coordination, specialization, and sustainability across the provider network.
A related challenge is the duplication of services among organizations receiving the same source of funding. New York would benefit from a tiered and triage-based service model in which organizations play distinct roles based on their expertise and capacity. For example, some providers could focus on conducting initial assessments and determining whether individuals can successfully proceed to a pro se model or if they require legal representation. This would allow groups to concentrate on providing full legal services for more complex cases.
Funding should be aligned with these specialized roles. Under the current system, immigrants often complete intake processes with multiple legal service providers, resulting in inefficiencies and the repeated use of limited resources. A more coordinated referral and triage structure would reduce duplication, improve service delivery, and allow providers to better meet the growing needs of immigrant communities.
I-ARC: What challenges has your organization faced during the past 6 months?
CUNY CN!: Number one has been staff burnout and the struggle to protect their well being. For CN!, where many of the staff are immigrants, dealing with the trauma of detainment, disappearances, their own loss of status and job loss, and it is hard to work around or compartmentalize. There is no way to separate what is happening to the person you are assisting from your own lived trauma.
I-ARC: How has your work been impacted by this Administration’s anti-immigrant agenda?
CUNY CN!: We are forever in crisis mode, waiting for the next policy memo to be issued. Established partnerships and points of collaborations with USCIS and DHS have ceased. More tangible is the impact on CN!'s ability to host large-scale group processing events, our contribution to immigrants in underserved communities who on a single Saturday can get help with their application and take it to the post office. With fear of ICE and online trolls tagging DHS to target our events, we have been forced to scale down this service model.
I-ARC: If you woke up tomorrow with a magic wand, what is the number one barrier you would make disappear for the immigrant community? What barrier would you make disappear for immigration legal service providers?
CUNY CN!: Get rid of the current administration. Providers continue to operate under the established immigration laws, while the government blatantly disregards the laws. We are not operating under the same rules. A magic wand would make it so that the government would be held accountable and there would be a system of checks and balances as the founders intended.
I-ARC: What message do you have for people who are not ingrained in immigration law on a daily basis, but are trying to understand the black box that is immigration court?
CUNY CN!: Since we don’t assist with immigration court cases, we can reframe this question around the black box that is ‘legal’ immigration generally. This administration has implemented unprecedented restrictions to all ‘legal’ immigration categories as well as the processes and procedures that underlie access to these benefits. Not only has this administration villanized immigrants, it has targeted immigration attorneys, punished countless individuals and families who have ‘followed all the rules’, decimated the immigration courts, dismantled due process and irreparably damaged an already broken system with actions and policies that threaten the fundamental rights of both US citizens and immigrants.
Those not ingrained in immigration law daily, US citizens or immigrants, should be aware that these issues are not isolated to immigrants or isolated to matters of immigration law. Cutting off pathways to legal citizenship is an act of voter suppression. Voter suppression will not end there. US citizens have also been subject to massive acts of voter suppression. The systemic undermining of the ‘legal’ immigration system is a gross abuse of power and a step towards normalizing stripping US citizens of THEIR basic constitutional rights and legal protections overnight, separating their families, taking money out of their pockets and threatening everyone’s privacy and safety. Everyone should be very concerned about the integrity of our collective rights.
I-ARC: As your organization remains committed to helping immigrant New Yorkers, what major activities/efforts are you planning next?
CUNY CN!: In addition to a few days with evening hours available, for FY 2026-2027, CN! Is restructuring our long-time community events service delivery model to prepare for and respond to impending, significant alterations to the naturalization process and a reduction in the number of applicants coming forward for assistance. Our model for most of our 30 years is rooted in providing high-quality assistance to large groups of immigrants which we have adapted over the years to assist DACA and TPS applicants as well. Due to rapidly dwindling attendance, we are now preparing to host 2 smaller events per month instead of a once monthly event to assist 100 applicants. The two smaller events will have a broader set of assistance types than just naturalization application assistance for LPRs ready to apply. Our marketing will reflect that other consultations are available in addition to N-400s and fee waivers such as I-90 green card renewals and N-600 citizenship for children consults in an effort to bring in more LPRs without the pressure of completing an application THAT day. While completed applications remain important, we are emphasizing the value of having a thorough screening to find out if filing for naturalization is right for the applicant at this time. The events will assist around 40 people in the door. This helps us scale back our extensive advance planning and preparation and is a smaller, less splashy setting for the comfort of applicants.
CUNY CN! Staff Member: Angie Vasquez, Administrative Assistant, CUNY Citizenship Now! in the Heights; Micheal Nunez, Paralegal, City Council Member Services, Valerie Auguste, paralegal Medgar Evers Immigration Center
Description: CUNY Citizenship Now! staff members greet and sign in participants at one of our citizenship application assistance events.
How To Reach Out to CN!
Are you an immigrant in New York City in need of help?
All of CN!’s services are free and open to all New Yorkers. Individuals seeking assistance can contact CN! via the following methods:
Call: (646) 664-9400
Text: (929) 334-3784 or (585) 232-3051
Visit: https://cuny.edu/callback
Note: The current response time to return calls is two business days.
Are you a legal services provider looking to connect with CN! for potential collaboration?
Please email citizenshipnowinfo@cuny.edu and your email will be forwarded to the appropriate staff member. To request CN!’s collaboration on an event or to request an attorney training or presentation, please complete this form: CUNY Citizenship Now! EVENT REQUEST FORM.
