Categories
Immigration

Tell the Biden Administration Not to Bring Back Trump’s Asylum Ban


SUBMIT COMMENTS BY MARCH 27 HERE:

https://immigrationjustice.quorum.us/campaign/44910/


The Biden administration is taking comments from the public about its plan to bring back an asylum ban – a new version of one of the most anti-asylum seeker policies of the Trump era. 

Please use our form to submit a comment telling them how this policy will hurt asylum seekers. To make sure your comment is counted and considered, please edit our pre-drafted suggestion to make it unique. Anyone regardless of immigration status may submit a comment, but comments must be submitted in English. Please note that comments submitted through this form will be placed into the public record.

While the administration has attempted to distinguish its asylum ban from Trump’s policies, it still has the same effect: denying asylum seekers the protection they need in the United States. The rule they are proposing would ban many refugees from asylum protection in the United States  based on their manner of entry into the United States and transit through other countries.

This asylum ban, like Trump’s, will separate families and lead to the return of asylum seekers to harm and possible death. It will disproportionately harm Black, Brown, and Indigenous asylum seekers requesting safety at the U.S. southern border – who often cannot afford or access a visa to arrive in the U.S. by plane and instead trek across multiple countries to arrive at the border. While the Trump asylum ban was in effect, immigration court asylum denial rates for these groups greatly increased. Indigenous women and girls, many of whom will likely be barred by the rule, are at heightened risk for sex and human trafficking, extortion, and violence due to the continued erasure of their Indigenous identities, language exclusion, and ongoing discrimination they face throughout their journeys. 

Our U.S. laws and treaties protect asylum seekers and prohibit their return to persecution and torture. Our laws also explicitly guard an asylum seeker’s right to seek protection regardless of how they arrive in the United States. The rule would unlawfully deny protection to asylum seekers and require them to seek asylum in countries that do not have functional asylum systems and where they may still be in harm’s way.  

The administration is asking the public what we think about this rule and will consider our comments before issuing the final version. Please add your voice to tell them how this rule will harm asylum seekers. 

The government is required to review and respond to comments in writing in the Federal Register. For example, this rule published in September contains nearly 100 pages of the government’s anonymized summarizations and responses to comments submitted by the public, including descriptions of where they made changes to the rule in response to public comments. To make sure the government counts and considers your comment, please edit our pre-drafted suggestion to make it unique – duplicate comments will otherwise be lumped together and responded to as one. 

Please add your comment to tell them how this rule will harm asylum seekers before the comment period closes on March 27. 

The organizations sponsoring this campaign will not be adding email addresses submitted through the form to any mailing lists.

Categories
Immigration Political Power

JOIN OUR LANGUAGE JUSTICE NETWORK!

Language justice is essential in our efforts to fight for full equality and political power. It is not supported adequately by the status quo and eventually we would like to build an infrastructure than can pay translators (written and in-person) for their valuable work. We think that if properly implemented, language justice can be the “secret sauce” to win many progressive agenda campaigns, particularly in our predominantly working-class immigrant communities. Most Asian and Pacific Islander communities are over close to 60% immigrant, and for many, English is not their first language, so this is really an essential component of the grassroots work if we are to empower our peoples!

If you have any API language skills or know people that you can refer to this important effort, send them to our sign-up form here:

https://bit.ly/API-LanguageJustice

Categories
Immigration

Support the VISION ACT in California!

The VISION Act passed the Assembly and is currently on the Senate Floor in the 2022 legislative session. The VISION Act would protect community members who have already been deemed eligible for release from being transferred by local jails and our state prison system to immigration detention. The VISION Act takes urgent and necessary strides toward ensuring that our local and state tax dollars are not used to funnel immigrants into dangerous health conditions in immigration detention, violate Constitutional protections, and separate immigrant families and communities.

VISION Act logo

STOP ICE from splitting up families and ruining lives!

(From our friends with Viet Rise) – AB 937, the Voiding Inequality and Seeking Inclusion for Our Immigrant Neighbors (VISION) Act, would protect refugee and immigrant community members who have already been deemed eligible for release from being funneled by local jails and our state prison system to immigration detention.

 

Prohibiting transfers to ICE would protect Californians from being subjected to inhumane and unsanitary conditions in immigration detention, close the main pipeline filling immigration detention beds, and reunite refugee and immigrant families and communities.

 

READ MORE HERE:

http://www.iceoutofca.org/ca-values-act-sb54-408546.html

 

Categories
Immigration Working-Class Power

SLAVERY AND TRAFFICKING IN THE MODERN ERA

Former El Monte garment worker recalls imprisonment, forced labor

A recent exhibit at the Museum of Social Justice in Los Angeles brought attention to the anniversary of the El Monte Garment workers fight in 1995 – where a modern slavery compound was discovered and exposed. 

At 4 am on August 2, 1995, Chanchanit Martorell, Executive Director of the Thai Community Development Center, met with government authorities and law enforcement at a doughnut shop in El Monte, California, blocks from the slavery compound that they would raid, a row of apartment duplexes on a residential street, eerily surrounded by barbed wire. The US Department of Labor, California Labor Commission, California Employment Development Department, Cal-OSHA, federal marshals, and the El Monte police participated in the raid.

Thai CDC mobilized a coalition of nonprofit organizations, attorneys, and community members to offer shelter, food and clothing, medical care, jobs, and legal services to the workers following their liberation.

El Monte was the first recognized case of modern-day slavery in the United States, leading to the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act in the year 2000. This exhibition tells the story of the case from the perspective of the survivors, featuring their testimonies, images and maps of the compound, and other artifacts.​

Sweatshop slave: Former El Monte garment worker recalls imprisonment, forced labor

When authorities raided a row of townhouses in El Monte they found 72 garment workers from Thailand who were imprisoned and forced to work in terrible conditions.

https://abc7.com/sweatshop-thailand-immigrants-el-monte-human-trafficking/6351732/

Support Thai Community Development Center and their ongoing work for the rights of Thai immigrants and workers! Visit: https://thaicdc.org/

Categories
Immigration

PANA Endorses Emergency Week of Actions for Haitian Refugees!

Biden: Halt Your Racist Border Patrol and Stop the Whippings and Racist Deportations NOW!

 

Haitian refugee crisis made in the USA, border patrol agents whip migrants

 

Endorse the Emergency Week of Actions

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc_517R0yLvCb372GmJ_5-n9Kc9Ko5uAIhvGnE0_E9YREgPoA/viewform?fbclid=IwAR30Abi4-gsHUk05vDprtO_I5gJkPlJRlNcCxMwUFdchVZp2cWyU729k2ms

Call to Action and Demands

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UzKvr1kYphH_nBPFmdC1saB0exg3m7O-o8qlhhw5mEY/edit?fbclid=IwAR0QlOhhzBMwf1cLft9zYsFi7swAuKAf2BvNc0KtVsfLSjcP5QTB82ciU54#

Haitian Activist Calls Out Biden’s Border Response as ‘Unacceptable’

https://www.lx.com/politics/haitian-activist-calls-out-bidens-border-response-as-unacceptable/43261

PANA speaking in support of Haitian Refugees
Stop Racist Border Patrol Whippings and Racist Deportations NOW! (Sept. 24-Oct.2)
Categories
Immigration Uncategorized

PANA Working Platform on Immigration Reform

PANA work-in-progress framework for approaching immigration reform work

March 10, 2019 (v.1f)

• A fair pathway to citizenship and full integration for immigrants, trafficked victims, adoptees, asylum seekers, and refugees while offering them a protected status against criminalization, detention and deportation while they plead their cases.

• We call for an end to re-criminalization and deportation proceedings against all reformed immigrant inmates and support full pardons including a fair pathway to citizenship.

• We demand the repeal of unjust policies that remove due process of for non-citizens.

• We demand reduction of visa backlogs, removal of national origin quotas, and granting a speedy process for family reunification, and increased funding for immigration courts.

• We call for the eradication of ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement), termination of the immigration-related components of CBP (U.S. Customs and Border Protection), the demilitarization of all U.S. borders.

• We oppose all policies that enforce, enable, allow, or otherwise support any systems or acts of child abduction, incarceration, or human trafficking.

• We oppose the businesses profiting from for-profit prisons and public financing of entities which engage in human trafficking activities.• We oppose U.S. military, political and economic intervention which brings death and destruction to sovereign nations, giving rise to, and exacerbating climate change and the human refugee crisis.

As Asians are a majority immigrant population in the United States, it only makes sense that an organization dedicated to fighting for full equality and justice for Asian people operate according to basic guidelines specific to the question of immigrant rights.  We welcome any volunteers to help us further develop this position and continue to integrate the addressing of this issue in our work in various arenas including healthcare, education, language justice, etc.

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