What Philly immigrants want from the city’s next mayor

Longtime South Philadelphia resident Ivonne Pinto-García cannot vote. But that didn’t stop her from spending a downcast Saturday afternoon hearing from mayoral candidates about their policy priorities at the Community College of Philadelphia.

Pinto-García, 42, is an undocumented artist from Mexico. She has a 15-year-old daughter who will be an American voter one day, and wants to make sure her daughter is civically engaged. She was interested in seeing which candidates were “on the front line, interacting with our community,” she said, in an exchange translated for The Inquirer by Alana Adams, a coordinator with the nonprofit Juntos.

The forum was organized by United Voices for Philadelphia, a coalition of city organizations that support refugees and immigrants in Philadelphia, to allow candidates running for municipal office to interact with constituents in advance of the May 16 primary election. Six Democratic mayoral candidates participated, including Warren Bloom, Jeff Brown, James DeLeon, Helen Gym, Cherelle Parker, and Rebecca Rhynhart, while Allan Domb sent a representative in his stead.

David Oh, the GOP’s mayoral candidate, also fielded questions from attendees.

Among Pinto-García’s policy priorities: being able to obtain a driver’s license. Another attendee, Tina Tran, a Temple University pharmacy professor and immigrant from Vietnam, wanted to hear about plans to make health care more accessible to immigrants as she helps her parents address their medical issues.

Much immigration policy is federal, and states control consequential decisions about whether to allow undocumented residents to get driver’s licenses or how to cover them in insurance plans.

Philadelphia’s 100th mayor will necessarily be limited in how much change they can enact, but can still voice support for change. They can decide the extent to which local law enforcement officials cooperate with federal immigration authorities. And they can improve access to city services and economic opportunities among vulnerable populations who may need them but struggle to access them because of linguistic or cultural barriers.

Philly’s mayoral candidates made pledges along these symbolic and practical lines over the course of the afternoon. Oh supported the idea of giving undocumented immigrants licenses; Gym, Parker and Rhynhart reiterated their support for Philadelphia’s “sanctuary city” status; nearly every single candidate wanted to invest in translation and language resources. DeLeon said he would create a cabinet position dedicated to coordinating services for immigrants.

For Northeast Philly resident Asmaa Diab, a Syrian refugee and newly minted American citizen, English was a primary hurdle in adapting to American society. She hopes that the city will offer more opportunities for children to access scholarships and practice English, a language she didn’t speak when she arrived on American shores seven years ago.

This is the first election her family will vote in. “I like democracy,” she said.

Many candidates played up their personal experiences with immigration and immigrants in an effort to connect with attendees. Oh’s father started the first Korean-American church in Philadelphia, he said, while DeLeon emphasized his career as an immigration lawyer helping Korean and Hispanic residents. Parker stressed her training as an English as a second language teacher. Gym pointed to her efforts to prevent displacement in Chinatown, while Brown reminisced about his immigrant grandfather.

Many attendees were still researching candidates and hadn’t settled on supporting just one, though Gym got the loudest round of applause at the conclusion of her speech.

But South Philly resident Christina Coke’s experience with the American immigration system has her tentatively supporting Brown’s bid for mayor. Coke, 52, spent many years as an undocumented immigrant, and even stayed in an abusive relationship for a time because she feared deportation, she said. When she eventually did seek legal recourse, she was able to leave her relationship and even secure a visa through a program for survivors of domestic abuse.

She’s grateful for her new lease on life, and that’s intensified her support for Brown’s chain, ShopRite, hiring formerly incarcerated people, she said. Coke became an American citizen in 2022, and cast her first vote in a U.S. election in the midterms.

“At some point in time, I was an illegal immigrant. Did they ultimately hold that against me, that I was here illegally for an amount of time? No,” she said. “Not everything that you do should define who you are.”