Jackson Heights Community Board Debuts Immigration Committee

JACKSON HEIGHTS, QUEENS — The community board that represents Jackson Heights, East Elmhurst and North Corona has launched an immigration affairs committee, according to a news report.

Queens Community Board 3 has debuted a nine-member committee that will focus on addressing issues specific to local immigrant communities, according to a City Limits report. The new group launched in March but held its first official meeting earlier this month.

Such a committee was long overdue, its founder, Lobsang Salaka, told City Limits.

“We need a committee to build relations among various ethnic backgrounds and have a dialogue to promote our interest[s]," said Salaka, an immigrant himself.

A majority of residents in the community board's district are immigrants: Sixty percent are foreign-born, city data shows. There are 167 languages spoken in Jackson Heights, local City Council Member Daniel Dromm has said.

Salaka told City Limits he hopes the committee can help unite the neighborhood's diverse immigrant populations and work through local issues together. One of his ideas is a storytelling event for locals to share their immigration tales.

"We are here to show that immigrants are here to build the nation," he said.

Read the full story in City Limits.