Food delivery company DoorDash said it will begin arranging free immigration legal clinics for its New York City delivery workers, in a pilot program administered by the New York Legal Assistance Group that begins this summer.
The workers, whom the company refers to as “dashers,” are among the 60,000 estimated delivery workers who navigate the city. Many are immigrants and include asylum-seekers as well as people pursuing legal permanent residency, citizenship and renewal of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, the company says.
DoorDash has more than 2 million active workers in its service.
Jodi Ziesemer, the director of the Immigrant Protection Unit at NYLAG, said in a press release that the legal clinics come at a moment when “New York City’s immigrant communities are facing a humanitarian crisis.”
In an interview with Gothamist she said that DoorDash had approached NYLAG and that she knew of no other instance where a company had partnered with a legal services group to help its immigrant workforce.
“I think that there is some hesitation on the part of employers to acknowledge that immigration is a complex and ever shifting situation,” said Ziesemer, “that people may have the authority to work but still may need assistance in making their status permanent and helping resolve any issues that have arisen regarding their documentation or their immigration status.”
Ziesemer said one of the primary challenges of the arrangement, which will start with an in-person clinic for 20-25 DoorDash workers, was ensuring that the service was exclusively for workers and not for the company.
“So we established a firewall that we will be consulting with their workers, but not sharing any information” with DoorDash, she said.
A DoorDash official initially said NYLAG was undertaking the initiative without compensation. Spokesperson Eli Scheinholtz later amended that statement and said DoorDash had provided financial assistance to the legal group. The…
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