On Immigration, a Huge Job Ahead

There is an immigration crisis looming, but it’s not at the border. It will be hitting in offices and courtrooms, and be measured in mountains of paper and strained bank accounts, in long lines and delays. It will be caused by the critical shortage of lawyers and other legal assistance for families navigating the immigration bureaucracy and justice system.

The problem long predates President Obama’s recently announced executive actions on immigration, but those actions — while worthwhile and necessary — in the short run, will make the administrative problem worse.

More than four million people are theoretically eligible to be helped by Mr. Obama’s plan, which provides unauthorized immigrants temporary protection from deportation and permission to work. Not all of them will apply or qualify, but those who do are likely to push the limits of an already strained system. Immigrant advocacy groups and community organizations that are already helping those in the clogged deportation pipeline will have to find new resources to help those coming forward to apply for Mr. Obama’s program.

The challenge is acute across the country. In New York City, advocates expect more than 250,000 applications in the first few months, many from people who can’t find or afford lawyers and speak little or no English.

How best to help them? With money, ideally from Congress, but that is a lost cause since the Republicans are not going to do anything to help unauthorized immigrants with legal problems. It will be up to states, cities and advocates to patch the system’s holes.

In New York, the City Council and Mayor Bill de Blasio have done much to strengthen a web of legal and other services for immigrants. The Council last year allocated $18 million to help young immigrants known as Dreamers apply for the existing deferred-action program, which Mr. Obama said he plans to expand.

The Council has also helped pay for legal and other aid for migrant children who arrived at the border this summer, and it committed about $5 million in June to the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project, an innovative public-defender program for detained immigrants. Immigration advocates say that with just $3 million to $4 million more in state aid, New York could expand the program to cover every family that needs it. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has made promises to be a leader on immigration, should heed their call.

He could take his cues from Mr. de Blasio, who plans to convene a meeting of other mayors this month to coordinate efforts on immigration, as local advocacy groups already do. Most weekday mornings at 26 Federal Plaza, where immigration judges conduct removal proceedings for the New York area, unrepresented immigrants, many of them children, receive help from lawyers and volunteers from a coalition of groups, including the Safe Passage Project of New York Law School and the Immigrant Justice Corps, a groundbreaking effort created by the federal appeals judge Robert Katzmann and financed through grants from the Robin Hood Foundation, the antipoverty philanthropy.

Programs like these are a bright bit of progress when the news from the federal government on immigration is unrelentingly grim. Congress still refuses to act. President Obama has moved to tilt the odds toward justice for immigrants, and his executive action is the most promising step forward on immigration in decades. But it would be tragic to have its potential fall short on the ground for lack of money and support.