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 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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