NYC Immigrant “Crisis”
As a NYC anchor baby, I can’t watch another election cycle pass without naming what’s happening. We are in the middle of a slow war—on immigrants, on working-class families, on culture keepers. I know you feel it daily, and it’s as American as apple pie.
When city officials talk about food insecurity but criminalize the very communities who grow, cook, and deliver the food in this city—there is a disconnect. When policies aim to "clean up" neighborhoods by pushing out street vendors, small markets, and culturally relevant food establishments, it becomes clear: the future they’re envisioning isn’t for us.
At 212 nutrition PLLC, we work with high-achieving professionals, many of who are immigrants, first-generation, or deeply connected to the foods of their heritage. There’s a shared anxiety: will we still have access to our foods, our rituals, our community spaces?
This year’s mayoral conversations have made it clear that the immigrant identity in New York is being politicized for votes. The so-called “migrant crisis” language isn’t just dehumanizing—it’s inaccurate. These are families, workers, elders, whose value could never be measured by their productivity. Our presence and contribution to this country cannot be overestimated. And in most cases, we are the people feeding you, teaching you, consoling you.
My loyalty is with the undocumented kitchen worker clocking 12 hours, the street vendor setting up on 125th in 90-degree weather, to the grandma boiling herbs she brought from back home. These are my people. This is who 212 nutrition shows up for.
When I talk about food as medicine, I don’t mean $16 green juices or imported supplements. I mean the cumin in your mother’s soup. I mean the corn soaked in ash in your neighbor’s tamales. I mean the bitter greens your auntie still grows on her windowsill. These aren’t trends—they’re ancestral technologies.
Internationalism isn’t just a political stance—it’s a nutritional one. Across borders, food has always been survival, resistance, and celebration. When we lose access to our foodways, we lose a part of our ability to heal. And in public health, that loss shows up as rising chronic disease, disordered eating, and food-related trauma.
That’s why I see the future of food not in lab-grown meat or Silicon Valley startup diets, but in re-centering indigenous and diasporic food systems. We don’t need more tech—we need more trust in what already works. We need public spaces for community cooking, affordable land access for immigrant farmers, and protection for traditional food knowledge.
I’m calling on my peers, fellow providers, and our clients to pay attention to how the upcoming elections will shape not just food access—but food autonomy. Will our kids grow up thinking nutrition is something that comes in a plastic bottle? Or will they know how to recognize the healing in a simple bowl of seasonal soup?
At 212 nutrition, we believe access to culturally appropriate, nutrient-dense, and affordable food is a human right. And we believe those most marginalized by policy are the ones we should be centering in practice. If that makes our work political, so be it. Our whole existence is politized as is —thriving is resistance.
This summer, I encourage you to get involved in your immediate communities in a way that feels right—vote, speak up, and nourish yourself. To my fellow immigrants and children of the diaspora: you are the future. Not just of this country, you are a promise of the world. And I’ll keep saying that until my last breath.
In solidarity, Maria.
Founder of 212 nutrition PLLC.