[1] In the 1950s it served Jewish immigrants from Romania, Greece, Hungary, and Egypt, and in the 1960s from Cuba, Czechoslovakia, and Poland.
[3] But it also served non-Jewish refugees, beginning in 1972 with Ugandans and continuing with Southeast Asian boat people, Cambodians, Tibetans, and others.
[4] NYANA sought from its inception to provide one-stop services to refugees, including assistance finding housing, health, mental health and family services, an English as a Second Language school, vocational training, and licensing courses in addition to legal help with immigration and adjustment.
[2] As the number of refugees from the former Soviet Union declined, it reshaped itself under the direction of Jose Valencia, who held many internal leadership positions before being appointed CEO in 2004,[5] to serve the broader immigrant population, also offering citizenship assistance, a center for women and families, a mental-health clinic, and a substance-abuse program and programs in workforce and economic development, community development, and bi-culturation.
Joseph Lazar, a management consultant who was himself born in a displaced persons camp in the late 1940s, was hired as director and a fund-raising dinner was held, but it raised only about $50,000 and the decision was made to close the agency in summer 2008.