Thanks to affirmative action, Latinos applying for city contracts in New York are now going to have to provide documentation of their ethnicity:
As part of the application, the city’s Department of Small Business Services asked the Leon-Veras, whose parents were born in the Dominican Republic, to furnish not just her birth certificate, but also a signed affidavit confirming her Hispanic identity.
“It’s ridiculous that I needed an additional document to prove that I am eligible for the program as a Hispanic,” says Leon-Veras, who employs 120 people in her janitorial services business based in Washington Heights.
Like Leon-Veras, all Latinos who apply for a certification under the city’s Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprise Program — known as M/WBE — have to provide an affidavit along with their application. None of the other ethnic groups the program serves, including Asians and blacks, must do the same.
Papers, please.