A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:
Thank you. Thank you very much. Welcome to New York. First is Steve Choi who has been a phenomenal advocate and has done a lot of good work with us in the State and helped us on the language access initiative. He's done a great job. Let's give him a round of applause. And to Debrorah Axt with Make the Road NY which is a fantastic organization that we have partnered with. It is an organization that gets results. And at the end of the day, this is about getting results for people who need it so let's give her a round of applause. I want to introduce two people who work with me in the State government who have done an outstanding job. One is Alphonso David, my Counsel, please stand up. And the other one is our secretary of state Cesar Perales. Pleasure to be with you.
I welcome all of you to this great conference, I applaud you and I applaud what you do because you are the protectors of America's essence. You keep the dream alive and you do it one person at a time. At a very, very difficult time. It's fitting that you convened in this State at this time. Because this state is all but unique in its perspective and the way we treat immigrants. And at this time because this is a moment in history where we are evaluating how we treat immigrants and what our policy is toward immigrants. Our belief is very simple, when you attack immigration, you attack the very premise of our nation. And that is the very soul of America.
In New York, we are all immigrants and we are proud of it and we don't run from it and we don't try and forget it. My people were poor Italians. They were discriminated against, they were stereotyped and they were desperate. I will never forget my heritage and I will never forget the story from my grandparents about how they were made to feel like outsiders, and embarrassed and the pain and the tears on my grandmother's face when she would tell the stories about how she was treated by her neighbors. I believe government's role is to promote and protect immigration. Not passively, but actively. Not in words, but in deeds. Government should be aggressive, competent and muscular. It should deliver results. This State says to immigrants we believe in you. We see you as an asset not as a liability. We want to invest in you. We want you to grow, we want you to do better. We want your family to do better, because when you grow, we all grow. That is the essence of the New York way.
That investment agenda starts my friends with public education. Because public education was the great equalizer. What public education said was I don't care where you come from, how much money you have in your pocket, I don't care the color of your skin. You can go to a public school. And the public school is so good you can wind up becoming whatever you want to become. You can become Colin Powell, you can become President of the United States, and you can become Mario Cuomo, poor Italian who became governor of the state of New York. All from public education. Somewhere along the way that dream was lost. And the hard truth is that today there are two education systems: One for the rich and one from the poor. And you can go to a school on the rich side of town and you can see how first graders are already on the internet. And you can go to a school on the poor side of town and see how they don't even have a basketball net.
You can go to a school on the rich side of town and they will show you their computer lab with their Pentium processors and then you go to a school on the poor side of town and the most sophisticated piece of electronic equipment is the metal detector that you walk through on your way into the classrooms. That is not what we want from education.
Public education system in this state -- the most progressive state in the U.S. -- I'm proud to say. As we sit here today, 100,000 students are in schools that have already been determined failing schools. 100,000 students are condemned to schools that have been failing, many of them for 10 years. Just think about it. And those are not the rich, white school districts where you have failing schools. These are the poor minority districts, where you have failing schools. Because we as a society have yet to realize that it's not just an education issue. It's a poverty issue, and language issue, and a nutrition issue and a family counseling issue. And if we really wanted to serve that community and really wanted to help young people before they got into trouble, we would say this is not just a school, this is a community school. And get services into this school at a very young age. To say we are going to send 100,000 to a failing school is to give up on the promise of this state and this nation and we are not going to rest until every child has an education that makes the most out of his or her God-given talents.
Higher Education today is almost mandatory for economic success. And Higher Education is becoming more and more expensive. And I am proud to say that this state has one of the most aggressive tuition assistance programs in the U.S., but even we have to do more.
I am proud to say that this state has one of the most generous tuition assistance programs in the United States of America but even we have to do more. We have assembly Marcos Crespo who is with us today who has been working to pass the DREAM act because undocumented students should have a right to go to school and get tuition assistance and succeed for themselves and for their families.
Our investment agenda continues and it says that the highest unemployment rate in the United States is among young minority males. Black and brown males, highest unemployment and we have to do something about it. And we are in this state. We rated the first ever job voucher program, where a young minority male gets a job voucher that pays for training and education courses. An education program in a private sector job and subsidizes the private sector job while the young person is getting training. That has brought the unemployment rate in the Bronx in four years from 11 percent down to 6 percent and we have to keep going until it is zero but that is real progress and we should be doing more of that across the state and across this nation.
One of the best programs and initiatives we can run is one that gets investment capital to minority and women owned businesses. Willie Sutton was once asked why do you rob banks, Willie Sutton's answer, because that is where the money is. Where the money is in government programs is in the government contracts. This state does about $30 billion a year in government contracts. We want Minority and Women-Owned businesses to get a significant percentage of that government work. We have said in this state, 30 percent of the state contracts as a goal to go to minority and women owned businesses that is the highest percentage in the United States of America and I am proud of it.
We have the Office of New Americans which was formed by my Secretary of State Cesar Perales. That is a full service center that helps people on the path to citizenship from dealing with the federal government to filling out documents to legal assistance. Over 90,000 people have already been served by Cesar Perales and the Office of New Americans and we are going to keep that going.
We must make work pay. Make work pay, which means that people should not have to choose if they are working fulltime between paying for rent and buying food. The minimum wage in this state and in this country simply has not kept pace with the cost of inflation. It wasn't indexed. People are being left behind and we are going to work with those in the legislature this year to raise the minimum wage in this state to $15, the highest in the United States of America and make that statement that work should pay.
In total, this state spends $1.8 billion per year, more than any other state per capita just on serving immigrants and I am proud of it and I would like to do more. Besides investment, there is a second part of the agenda if we are doing our job which is the protection of immigrants because the truth is besides the positive there also has to be a protection agenda that does along with our immigration initiatives and the truth is though it is hard to say discrimination is still alive and well in America today. I used to be the Secretary for Housing and Urban Development under the Clinton administration and I fought discrimination then. We had parts of the country where you still had the Ku Klux Klan operating and you had people moving into neighborhoods where they would plant a cross in the front yard and burn it. Luckily, the State of New York, we don't have that type of discrimination but we have discrimination. Don't kid yourself. It is a little more subtle. It is the banker who looks at the loan sheet and says I am sorry you don't qualify but really only saw the color box. It happens in employment, in housing. It is insidious but it is systemic and we have to fight that discrimination whenever we see it. We are stepping up against fair housing discrimination, leading discrimination, employment discrimination because we have to have zero tolerance for discrimination in any of its forms and faces in any of our aspects of society. That is job one.
We have to protect the undocumented Americans and protect the exploited workers. And this is very graphic for me. I was standing on a street corner one day here in Manhattan and I was waiting for the light to change and next to me was a delivery person on a bicycle waiting for the light to change and a car came around the corner and went right through the light and hit the deliveryman. The deliveryman went over the hood of the car, over the roof of the car, fell down on the other side, the bicycle was demolished, the car stopped, everyone ran over the driver got out of the car and the delivery man jumped up and started to head to the bicycle to get the bicycle. I said to him, "Hold on stay down, let's get an ambulance and let's find out if you're okay." He said, "No, no, no. I have to go I have to go." Why? I believe he was undocumented, he didn't want the ambulance to come, he didn't want the police to come and he didn't want to have to deal with any authorities. The man limped up and grabbed the bicycle and ran down the block because the bicycle wouldn't work.
Now this person in that accident should have had health care, should have been looked after, should have had a civil lawsuit, he did absolutely nothing wrong, the other person was exactly right. But all he could prove was --"Let me get away. Let me get away." Undocumented workers are defenseless and people without principle, without scruples, can exploit them whenever they want and it happens every day because the unscrupulous person thinks, "What are they going to do? Call the Department of Labor? Call the policemen? They'll be in more trouble than the complaint that they're filing."
I was the Attorney General of this great state and I had a complaint that restaurant workers in the back room were being exploited. People who worked in the kitchens of very fancy restaurants here in New York -- the dishwashers, the kitchen help. So we did an investigation and I went to our investigation staff and I found a fellow who was Ecuadorian and he looked Ecuadorian and they said, "This is what you're going to do. You're going to say you are undocumented and you're going to go to a restaurant and you're going to get a job and we're going to see what happens." Great. Sounded like a great plan. Went out, got a job the first day. Was hired in a big, fancy restaurant here in Manhattan as an undocumented worker. He was put at work washing dishes in the back of a restaurant. A week later, he walks into my office. This is what happened. He said, "I got the job and they had me working. They had me working 16, 18 hours a day. No breaks. No lunch. No overtime. They wanted me to work seven days. I physically couldn't do it. I just couldn't do it." I said, "So what did you do?" He said, "I quit." I said, "You quit? You have to go back." He said, "I can't go back. I can't do it." We went to a second investigator -- same thing. He lasted three days and came back. He said, "I can't do it, I physically can't do it."
Just imagine what these undocumented workers are going through. They can't quit. They have no choice. They have to bring home bread to put on the table for their family. And this isn't just restaurant workers and delivery men, it's all throughout industry and it's throughout society. It's the seemly underbody of this economy that nobody wants to talk about, but everybody knows it's there. It's the gardener, it's the day laborer, it's the nanny -- the hidden economy, the exploited economy, the economy that is repugnant to everything we stand for in this nation. But yet we tolerate it every day. We put together the Exploited Worker Task Force, partnering with not-for-profit organizations. We assigned 700 investigators. In five months, we found 2,700 violations against employers and this year we will have recovered $28 million in recovered wages for 24,000 workers. Just think about that.
My last point is this, my friends. You've been generous with your time. This is a critical time in this country's development and this is a moment in time that I believe can shake the soul of this country and the character of this country because the American people are afraid. Make no mistake -- there has been economic anxiety for years. The middle class, working families, feel like they're not getting ahead anymore. They feel like they can't get ahead. They're not so sure their kids are going to do any better than they are. They're angry about what happened with the recession in 2007, where the Wall Street bankers ripped off the country, stole the equity from their home. The bankers get off scot-free and the American citizens paid the price in bailing out the banks and saw the value of their homes fall. You have many people who live in homes that still are not at the level they were in 2007 -- just think about that.
You have many people who are living in homes that are still underwater. So they start anxious and they start angry, and then on top of that, you have this international situation and you have these terrorist attacks. You have San Bernardino, you have Paris and people say, "Well I thought that was over with 9/11. I thought that was the last time this was going to happen." No, no, no. It happened again and it happened again and it's happening more and it's happening more and it's more casual and it's more frequent and people are afraid and people are nervous. When people get afraid, the natural instinct is to close down. When you get startled, right away, what do you naturally? You tighten up, you close down, you protect yourself. And that's the American people's natural instinct as a response to fear. And that natural instinct, that fear, can be preyed upon, especially in a political environment.
And people can say, "I know you're afraid. I know you think we have problems." I have the solution and it's a nice, simple solution. Here's the solution: we have to stop the immigrants from coming into this country, because they're competing with you and they're taking your jobs and they're taking your money and they're costing you money when it comes to Medicaid and education and they're not paying their taxes. So if we can keep them out, you will be stronger and you will be better and I will solve your problem and I will end your pain. American people will say, "Oh that sounds great. That sounds great. How do we do it?" "We're going to build walls and we're going to keep people out and we're going to close the gate and your problems are going to be over." We say the exact opposite. We say, "We believe in the American Dream." This state is the laboratory of the American experiment in democracy. This state is unique in the way it said -- "You want to build walls? We want to open our arms." And we want to invite people in and we're not threatened by diversity; we celebrate diversity. We think it's our strength. Come, bring your culture. Bring your people, bring your cuisine, bring your skills. And we believe you're going to enhance our society and enhance our community. You want to build walls. You want to keep the Muslims out. We believe in the freedom of religion -- it was one of the founding principles of the entire country. You're going to keep the Syrians out. You're going to keep the Syrians out. You're going to keep the Mexicans out. This is our land. By the way, who are you that this is our land? Who are you? Who are you, are you a Navajo? Are you an Apache? Are you a Sioux? Are you a Native America? Otherwise you're an immigrant too and don't you forget it.
It's not your land. It's our land. It's the land of immigrants and don't you tell anyone that you're closing the gate and you're shutting down opportunity. That's not who we are and that's not who you're going to make us. We say our belief is very simple. We have the Statue of Liberty in our harbor who says it all. She holds the golden lamp and she invites all here. And not the rich, but the poor and the homeless and the tempest-tossed. Join us, come to New York, come to America, join us, and we will forge one. We will forge community. E pluribus unum: out of many, one. We can take faces and people from all different places and we can make one. And we will forge a community because we believe that there is a cord that connects you to you to you to you and you don't see the cord but that cord weaves the fabric and we've become one and when one of us is raised, we are all raised in that fabric. And when one of us is lowered, we are all lowered by that fabric. So I want you to do well; I want to invest in you; I want to help you; I believe in you; I love you; I want you to excel and excel as part of a community and if you need help, I will help you. Because if you sink, we all sink. That's the basic essence of how we founded this nation. That's what it's all about and I know people are scared and I know there are those who will play on those fears but I know we are better than that at the end of the day. We are smarter and kinder and stronger and we will not allow fear to overtake optimism and we will not allow hatred to overtake love. That is not the New York way and it is not the American way and we're going to stand up to it and make it a reality right here, today.
Thank you and God bless you.