Tag: Asylum Seekers

JHISN Newsletter 04/06/2024

Posted on April 6, 2024 by - News, Newsletter

Dear friends,

We bring you news this week from the community frontlines of immigrant justice, highlighting the recent work of DRUM—a local group building power among low-wage South Asian and Indo-Caribbean New Yorkers. We then offer a frightening look at the publicized plans to dismantle and re-assemble the Department of Homeland Security into a militarized, anti-immigrant agency operating with impunity. The plans are part of the notorious Project 2025, a right-wing fever dream should the Republican party control the White House after the next election. 

 In these final days of Ramadan, as neighborhood communities look toward the crescent moon marking the end of this holy month of fasting, reflection, and prayer, we remember the Palestinians facing hunger and starvation in Gaza long after the Shawwal moon grows full.     

Newsletter highlights:
  1. DRUM initiates community meetings with electeds
  2. Project 2025’s plans for immigrant injustice

1. DRUM Challenges Lawmakers

DRUM (Desis Rising Up and Moving) is known for its promotion of grassroots democracy. In February, instead of waiting for elected representatives to hold town meetings about legislation that DRUM supports, they arranged for multiple local community gatherings and invited the electeds to attend.

“For our community meetings, we wanted to invert the dynamic of us going to our representatives. We called on them to come and sit with the people of the districts they represent and hear directly from us about the issues we are organizing around.”—DRUM Facebook (March 15, 2024)

Four open meetings were held: two in Queens and one each in Brooklyn and the Bronx. These “were opportunities for [elected officials] to practice accountability and report on their actions that affect our lives,” DRUM says. 

Top issues of concern included the housing crisis, workers’ rights, education, and the genocide in Gaza. The corresponding legislation currently in the State Senate are the Good Cause, the Unemployment Bridge Program, and the Not on Our Dime bills.

The Good Cause law would protect tenants from arbitrary eviction and hold rent increases to 3%, or 150% of the Consumer Price Index, whichever is higher, as long as tenants continue to pay rent. Landlords could still evict tenants for non-payment of rent or lease violations.

The Unemployment Bridge Program would establish a fund for replacing lost wages for workers not eligible for unemployment insurance because of immigration status or the type of work they do. This proposed law is based on the principles of the historic Excluded Workers Fund. 

The Not on Our Dime! bill would end New York state support for Israeli settler activity by banning not-for-profit companies from supporting Israeli settlement activity that violates international law and the Geneva Conventions of 1949.

 DRUM’s reportback states:

“For all electeds, we call on you to take the time to be in the communities that you were elected to serve, and to show up in meaningful ways.”

WHAT CAN WE DO?

2. The Intimidating Mandate of Project 2025

“Project 2025 elucidates how the administration would halt legal immigration, centralize power in the federal government, decimate privacy protections, and risk American security and prosperity, all in pursuit of a political obsession with immigration.” —Cecilia Esterline, “Unveiling the far right’s plan to demolish immigration in a second Trump term” (Niskanen Center, Feb. 2024)

Project 2025’s 900-page Mandate for Leadership is a self-described conservative playbook to “guarantee implementation of the Day One agenda,” which Trump has, without regret, stated will be his day of dictatorship. As a guidebook to “deconstruct the Administrative State,” 35 pages of Project 2025’s Mandate focus on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its immigration procedures. If implemented, these initiatives would effectively give more militarized Enforcement and Removal Operations agents the authority to conduct warrantless searches anywhere in the country, and, when directed by the Secretary, enforce regulations internationally. Project 2025 creates a blueprint for the vast expansion of unaccountable executive power. DHS would be run by the executive office and its political appointees who will take novel approaches to circumvent the Congressional confirmation process. They will create data analysis and communication channels to control the flow of all information to justify and promulgate their anti-immigration stance without any checks and balances. 

A sample of Project 2025’s recommendations to dismantle DHS and its existing immigration system includes stopping funds for all NGOs that support immigration; budgeting more government money for the border wall and to increase security at Ports of Entry; prioritizing the immediate deportation of immigrants over citations to appear in immigration court; ending legal prohibitions on family separation and allowing the expanded use of tents for temporary ‘housing’ of migrants; repealing the unaccompanied minor rule and permitting children to be housed by DHS instead of Health and Human Services; raising the standard for credible fear claims and removing domestic violence or gang violence as grounds for asylum; expanding the use of Blackies warrants, which notoriously rely on profiling appearance and ethnicity, and allowing, with limited oversight, workplace raids and the arrest of immigrant workers; and reinstating the Denaturalization Department to remove US citizenship and deport people.

The reason given for these recommendations is that DHS has “suffered from the Left’s wokeness and weaponization against Americans whom the Left perceives as political opponents” (p. 135). The Mandate itself directly weaponizes all departments against immigrants, even the one agency people recognize as supporting people in dire need, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) (p. 138). After first asserting that the disaster response agency is not lawful, the Mandate then demands that any organization receiving FEMA funds should prove it is a lawful actor by: 

  • Forcing them to detain immigrants. 
  • Granting DHS full access to DMV and voting records of any state receiving FEMA support. 
  • Requiring them to register with E-verify. 

E-verify has been described by critics as an intrusive and expensive government surveillance of daily life that would create enormous privacy and security risks. The ACLU writes that “a mandatory E-Verify system—which forces everyone in the country to ask the government for permission to work—simply does not belong in fair immigration reform.” 

Project 2025 is not looking to create a fair or better immigration system; that is a legislative role. The Mandate’s primary goal is to reorganize DHS so that Congress has little power over the way the Department runs, or who runs it. A second goal is to further militarize the department and to convert administrative positions into enforcement roles. It will transform what is the third-largest federal department into a 100,000-person armed force that the president can wield, globally, without Congressional oversight. Another priority is to remove the options for asylum claims, including eliminating claims based on credible fear. The only time the Mandate adds an option for immigration is when recommending that people with wealth be allowed to pay for expedited immigration procedures (p. 146). 

Even if the recommendation is not adopted to deliver that department of 100,000 enforcers, the 2025 Mandate offers another option: combine Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) into a single department, the Border Security and Immigration Agency, (BSIA) (p. 138).  Given “the persistent need for and utilization of U.S. military personnel and resources to assist BSIA with increasing whole-of-government efforts” (p. 139), they go even further: the Office of Air and Marine (OAM) will share with BSIA its aviation assets across the globe, and in every state in the US. DHS would then have the option of using military/aviation equipment anywhere in the US or globally wherever it sees a threat. This militarized overreach was already tested in 2020 when CBP flew a drone outside of the 100-mile border enforcement zone to monitor a George Floyd protest in Minneapolis.

The 2025 Mandate also expands the role of the Secret Service Uniform Division which protects the physical White House grounds. Its jurisdiction would be expanded to cover all of Washington, DC, to counteract what is stated to be a “trend of progressive pro-crime policies” (p. 158). The ICE memoranda identifying sensitive zones where agents cannot go would be rescinded. By removing “self-imposed limitations on its nationwide jurisdiction,” ICE agents can pursue “the civil arrest, detention, and removal of immigration violators anywhere in the USA without warrant” (p. 142). This means any institution of learning, hospitals, places of religious worship, funerals, weddings, and public demonstrations, marches, or parades would become locations where federal agents can act unimpeded. 

The majority of people whose lives are vulnerable to the dehumanizing escalation and expansion of immigration enforcement practices, militarized throughout the nation, cannot vote in the elections which can stop its implementation. If US voters are fine with electing politicians who will enact these changes, that could be used to limit their own freedoms, it is because they don’t expect these tactics will ever be used against them. They could be wrong.

WHAT CAN WE DO? 

 

In solidarity and with collective care,

Jackson Heights Immigrant Solidarity Network (JHISN)

 

Follow @JHSolidarity on Facebook and Twitter and share this newsletter with friends, families, neighbors, networks, and colleagues so they can subscribe and receive news from JHISN. 

 

JHISN Newsletter 03/23/2024

Posted on March 23, 2024 by - News, Newsletter

Dear friends,

Spring is official, and we welcome our readers to the early bloom of change in the neighborhood. And in this sacred month of Ramadan celebrated by so many here in Jackson Heights, we wish you extra time for reflection, community, and connection.

Our first story also brings news of change: the shifting landscape of global migration behind an increasing number of West African immigrants arriving in New York City. We then turn to report on the largely invisible stories of Palestinian Americans in Gaza and the West Bank during a relentless war, and the obstacles to immigration even for close family members of Palestinian US citizens.

Newsletter highlights:
  1. Troubled routes for West African migrants
  2. Stranded and besieged: Palestinian Americans in the Occupied Territories

 

 

1. West Africa to NYC

“We always heard when you come here, you’re going to find two jobs, you’re going to work, you’re going to survive. But when you come here, it’s hard to even find one job. It’s a fiction, what we heard.” —Ibrahim Mbengue, recent Senegalese immigrant

Embodying the shifting currents of global migration, hundreds of thousands of West Africans, mostly young men, have been arriving at the US-Mexico border over the last few years, with tens of thousands ultimately making their way to New York City. In fiscal year 2023 alone, 58,000 Africans crossed into the US from Mexico, three times as many as the year before. At the end of 2023, about 14% of the people in New York’s migrant shelters came from Senegal, Guinea, and Mauritania, countries on the Atlantic coast embroiled in social conflict and economic crisis. Like other migrants, West Africans leave home for a range of reasons, fleeing organized violence, repression, discrimination, domestic abuse, climate change, and lack of economic opportunity. But their pathways of migration, and their experiences in New York, are unique.

West Africa is much closer to Europe than to the US. But EU nations, with the cooperation of the Moroccan navy, have progressively hardened their borders, effectively discouraging West Africans from crossing the Mediterranean. At the same time, a new, circuitous route from Africa to North America has opened up. In what some commentators call a “weaponization of migration” intended to respond to US sanctions, the government of Nicaragua is providing unrestricted low-cost visas to African migrants. Flying into Nicaragua with legal status can be used as a stepping stone towards the US. In West African countries, ads for “travel packages” to Nicaragua are prominently featured on TikTok and other social media. Brokers buy up large numbers of airline tickets and resell them to migrants at a profit.

A series of flights from West Africa to Nicaragua is expensive, often costing $10,000 or more. Migrants often rely on loans from family members. The trip is also arduous. It typically begins by flying to international airline hubs like Istanbul, where migrants board the sold-out daily flight to Bogotá, Colombia. From there, they struggle to catch a connecting flight to San Salvador, and then another to Managua. Travelers often get stuck in the crowded Bogotá airport for days as they attempt to arrange the next leg of their journey. 

In Managua, migrant travelers meet up with guides and make their way north by foot, bus, and train through Central America and Mexico to the US border. By starting out in Nicaragua, African migrants have a head start: they avoid the dangers of the infamous Darien Gap, which lies further south between Colombia and Panama. Yet the trek north is still extremely perilous. Like other migrants, Africans may be preyed on by dishonest smugglers, officials, police, and gangs; they are sometimes subjected to violence or robbed of their possessions. After reaching the US border and requesting asylum, migrants undergo Border Patrol and ICE processing. The US government has found it difficult to deport Africans because of distance, and lack of bilateral agreements with the countries of origin. Most West African migrants are allowed to travel to a US city of their choice while their asylum court dates are pending.

Although a few African immigrants have come to New York on Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s infamous buses, most arrange their own transportation from the border. On arrival, they face daunting challenges. Mayor Adams has imposed a thirty-day limit on shelter stays for single migrants, including young people. Within the shelters, lack of translation resources has prevented some West African migrants—who may speak French, Arabic, Pulaar, or Portuguese—from accessing basic services or assistance with their asylum cases.

Once pushed out of the shelter system, New York’s African immigrants often struggle to find housing, food, and other necessities. Many are living in makeshift circumstances—in basements, crowded informal shelters, on the sidewalk, in the subway, or in ad hoc spaces provided by non-profits and religious groups. Usually, the community groups willing to provide emergency shelter are ineligible for government aid, since they don’t meet the required fire and building regulations.

A network of some 20 small mosques distributed around the five boroughs has found its open-hearted generosity overwhelmed by the needs of newly arrived West African Muslims. Community organizations like Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI), African Communities Together (ACT), and the mutual aid group Black and Arab Migrant Solidarity Alliance (BAMSA), are also swamped by the sudden demand for food and health care, ESL classes, housing and legal assistance. The Interfaith Center of New York (ICNY) is currently spending $22,000 to cater halal meals for 100 people at the neediest mosques across the city during the days of Ramadan.

Like other new arrivals, African migrants want above all to work. Lacking official permits, many have turned to day labor, street vending, and food delivery—including work for the major delivery app companies, using “shared” ID documents. These labor pools are already crowded and competitive. Nevertheless, many Africans go to great lengths to not just survive but send a few dollars back home.

A wide spectrum of community organizations and liberal politicians has called on the Biden administration to extend Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to African and Caribbean migrants who face unsafe conditions in their countries of origin. This would reduce fear of deportation and provide access to legal employment. So far, the administration has not agreed.

“By not taking action to address the specific barriers that Black immigrants face when seeking immigration relief, the administration is not only upholding the inequities that exist throughout many of the programs, but championing the continued silence around the experiences of the country’s fastest-growing immigrant population.” —Diana Konaté, Policy Director, African Communities Together

WHAT CAN WE DO?
  • If you can, donate to the groups linked to above that support West African migrants.
  • Urge Chuck Schumer to get the Biden administration to authorize TPS for West Africans.

2. Abandoning Palestinian Americans in Gaza

“And so … you see the same pattern over and over and over again. The State Department says something very basic and generic, and then they don’t do anything about it, and they wait for the story to fade away. And that sends the message to Israel: You can do whatever you want, even to American citizens, and no one will hold you accountable.” – Edward Ahmed Mitchell, civil rights attorney and national deputy director of CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), 2/14/24

The recent killing, arrests, and attacks on US citizens in Gaza and the West Bank are stories barely told in mainstream US media, or told only to soon “fade away.” Here are just a few. Samahar Esmail, from Louisiana, forcibly taken from her West Bank home in early February and detained without charges. Palestinian American teenager Mohammad Ahmed Mohammad Khdour, 17, shot in the head by Israeli forces on February 10 while sitting in a parked car with his relative near the West Bank town of Biddu. Borak Alagha, 18, and his brother Hashem, 20, both born in Chicago where they spent their early childhood, arrested on February 8 and now held in an Israeli prison.

Around 350 US citizens remained trapped in Gaza as of December 2023, with another 600 legal permanent residents or immediate family members of US citizens—eligible to come to the US—also unable to depart. That same month, two Palestinian American families sued the Biden Administration for failing to protect US citizens in a war zone, and denying their constitutional right to equal protection. (In early October as the war began, the US government chartered flights and a cruise ship to Europe for US nationals in Israel.)

Project Immigration Justice for Palestinians (Project IJP) was launched as an emergency response to the crisis in Gaza. The coalition of US immigration lawyers and justice organizations advocates for humanitarian immigration options for Palestinians, and offers legal services to US families with relatives in Gaza. The lack of accessible pathways to immigration for Palestinians is mobilizing an urgent fight for expanded eligibility criteria for who can get State Department assistance in leaving Gaza. Currently, even green card holders cannot bring their parents to the US. Aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews, and siblings who are married or over the age of 21 are also excluded. In other words, most family members of US Palestinians are not eligible for immigration even if they are facing starvation and a genocidal war. The one available immigration portal created for situations of humanitarian crisis, called humanitarian parole, usually takes years to process. It also requires paperwork—birth certificates, passports, identity documents—that for most Gazans have been destroyed in the bombing of their homes, buried under rubble, or left behind as they flee their homes.  

A lawyer with Project IJP explains: “Without the government coming out and saying that [they] are going to prioritize processing applications from Palestinians in Gaza, there’s no guarantee that any of our efforts will come to anything.”

We shine this brief spotlight on Palestinian Americans not because their stories are more important than others in Palestine, but because their situation reveals the brazen complicity of the US with Israel in devaluing Palestinian life and freedom—even for American citizens.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

 

In solidarity and with collective care,
Jackson Heights Immigrant Solidarity Network (JHISN)

Follow @JHSolidarity on Facebook and Twitter and share this newsletter with friends, families, neighbors, networks, and colleagues so they can subscribe and receive news from JHISN. 

 

JHISN Newsletter 03/02/2024

Posted on March 2, 2024 by - News, Newsletter

Dear friends,

For several years, JHISN reported on the anti-immigrant campaign of then-President Trump that mocked sanctuary cities and instead aimed to intensify surveillance, harassment, and deportation. Now, a Democratic mayor of New York is himself leading the charge to undermine the city’s decades-old commitment to legal sanctuary and urban refuge for recent migrants. This week’s newsletter offers an update on the cynical moves by the Adams’ administration to deny shelter and social supports to asylum seekers who are, literally, being left out in the cold by merciless new policies. 

As we wrap up this newsletter, protesters are concluding a 24-hour vigil in front of City Hall demanding that the City Council vote for a ceasefire in Gaza. Nearly 70 US cities have passed resolutions calling for an immediate end to Israel’s military assault in the besieged territory, now in its fifth month. The slaughter of civilians, including 12,000 children, has turned into an unfolding genocide. And the blockade of food and water is turning into a forced famine, as over two million Palestinians are facing slow death from starvation and disease, amidst the unending risk of sudden death from Israeli bombardment and snipers. Support a ceasefire now!

Newsletter highlights:
  1. Mayor attacks sanctuary

1. Adams is Everything Abbott Wanted

When right-wing Texas Governor Greg Abbott started busing migrants to New York City in the summer of 2022, he was hoping to “own the libs.” He planned to challenge NYC’s “sanctuary city” declaration and its immigrant-friendly reputation, exposing them as a bunch of virtue signaling—a hypocritical pose that he figured would melt away when confronted with the arrival of thousands of asylum seekers.

In fact, as we have reported, grassroots community groups, public workers, progressive activists, and ordinary residents have risen to the challenge, welcoming migrants and offering aid. And the migrants themselves have shown incredible fortitude and resilience.

But Abbott scored a bullseye when it comes to our mayor. Eric Adams has played right into the Texas governor’s hands. Instead of welcoming migrants, as he solemnly promised to do, Adams now bullies and attacks them. His administration scapegoats asylum seekers, branding them as criminals. To complete his surrender to the Right, Adams has openly asserted that he wants to gut New York’s sanctuary city laws. “We can’t even turn [asylum seekers] over to ICE,” he laments.

Adams is doing everything he can to discourage asylum seekers, and to punish those who do make it to New York. In October, he made a trip to Mexico, Colombia, and Ecuador to “personally deliver a stern message to would-be migrants thinking of applying for asylum in the US and heading for New York City.” “There is no more room in New York,” he announced. Adams even had a flyer printed up for distribution at the US-Mexico border, telling asylum seekers—people fleeing violence and discrimination—that NYC, one of the richest cities in the world, doesn’t want them. 

Adams’ abuse of asylum seekers already living in NYC is similarly aimed at discouraging migrants and positioning himself strategically at their expense.  Embracing cruelty as a weapon of politics, the mayor is currently intent on forcing asylum seekers out of NYC shelters, As The City reports:

“Last fall the city began limiting adult shelter stays to 30 days, while beginning to dole out 60-day eviction notices to some migrant families with children. Families with children are now sent back to the Roosevelt Hotel for another shelter placement when their time runs out.

“For adults whose 30 days in shelter has run out, the wait for a new shelter placement can last more than a week, during which time people lining up outside the East Village site have limited access to showers, food, and even bathrooms. Once the site closes in the evening, 25% of respondents reported that they’d slept outside or on the trains, while 4% said a family member or friend took them in.

 “About 67% of those surveyed said they had spent the night in a “shelter,” with many ending up at the city’s five overnight waiting rooms where people can rest on the ground or in chairs without cots.”

Astonishingly, the mayor is now trying to close down even these five bare-bones waiting rooms—last-ditch places that at least have bathrooms and protection from the weather. 

For Adams, creating visible street homelessness or chaos among migrants isn’t a human tragedy—it’s the centerpiece of a cynical strategy. He hopes to not only force migrants to leave the city (and discourage new migrants from coming), but also to mobilize anti-immigrant sentiment and politics to his advantage. The mayor is trying to use homeless migrants—those who he literally is making homeless—to create a public spectacle of street disorder and budget cuts. He is creating conditions for the Right to manufacture xenophobic  “quality of life”  and “migrant crime” narratives.

“I’ve said this a couple of months ago, the visualization of this crisis is going to become aware for New Yorkers. We stated we were out of room. And the cost of doing this … it was a weight we could not continue to carry.” —Mayor Adams (The City, 2/16/24)

Eric Adams, mayor of a sanctuary city, has apparently calculated that it’s useful to position himself as the scourge of asylum seekers and the enemy of sanctuary. Disregarding his cratering support among Latinos, he seems to think that appeasing anti-immigrant racists and reactionaries is his best chance at getting reelected. 

But New York is a city of immigrants, and most of us like it that way. And despite Eric Adams, asylum seekers are quickly becoming part of the fabric of the city. They’re cooking, driving, cleaning, vending, delivering food, providing care, building scaffolding, and hanging drywall. They’ve become integral to the city’s schools, advocacy groups, churches, workplaces. They are New Yorkers now.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

 

In solidarity and with collective care,

Jackson Heights Immigrant Solidarity Network (JHISN) 

 

Follow @JHSolidarity on Facebook and Twitter and share this newsletter with friends, families, neighbors, networks, and colleagues so they can subscribe and receive news from JHISN. 

 

 

JHISN Newsletter 02/17/2024

Posted on February 17, 2024 by - News, Newsletter

Dear friends,

In troubled, even catastrophic, times we welcome news that brings hope and clarity to the fight for immigrant justice. Today’s newsletter focuses on the important work being done by non-governmental, community-based groups to support new migrant arrivals in New York City. We then turn to an in-depth story of Peruvian artist Olinda Silvano, co-founder of the migrant Shipibo community in Lima, whose indigenous wisdom sparks creative resistance to environmental threats both here and in Peru.

Newsletter highlights:
  1. Community support for migrant arrivals—Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) Report 
  2. The art of indigenous ecology: Olinda Silvano of the Shipibo-Konibo Nation

1. Local Community Groups Are Critical to Migrant Support

“Community-based organizations, grassroots advocates, and everyday volunteers have been critical to providing support to people arriving in NYC from the border to seek safety and stability while they go through their immigration process.” —Women’s Refugee Commission

Local community groups are gaining hard-earned recognition for the support they provide to immigrants. WNYC’s radio host Brian Lehrer announced on February 7 that his 2024 Prize for Community Well-Being has been awarded to three groups who welcome migrants to NYC. One of those is the Jackson Heights Immigrant Center, founded by Nuala O’Dougherty-Naranjo, which helps new arrivals apply for asylum and form a community. Another awardee is Power Malu’s Artists Athletes Activists group which JHISN wrote about last year in our June 10 newsletter.

In addition, the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) praised the activist group NYC-TLC, the NY Chapter of the national organization Grannies Respond, in its recent report Opportunities for Welcome. The report identifies best practices and lessons learned from groups supporting asylum seekers in NYC, Chicago, Denver, and Portland (Maine). JHISN has previously reported on the work of team TLC-NYC which assists with the arrival of migrants bussed to NYC, and established the Little Shop of Kindness to provide free goods to migrants in need.

The WRC report is a comprehensive examination of the strenuous efforts made to support the thousands of migrants bussed across state lines by Republican governors as a political stunt. These politicians intended to teach a lesson to Democratic-run Sanctuary Cities that declare themselves a safe haven for immigrants. Despite the challenges, 190 cities and counties remain members of the Cities for Action group which advocates for pro-immigrant federal policies and recommends local innovative, inclusive programs and policies instead of vilifying immigrants.

The WRC spoke with over 50 support organizations in building its assessment of the current situation for migrants. Their report highlights the problem of 2 million court cases awaiting review by only 659 immigration judges. They stress that the backlog “leaves people seeking protection and permanency in the US in limbo for years.” It also extends the time that those immigrants cannot work: the 150-day countdown clock for getting work permission does not start until they file an application (p6). WRC states it is time to “end the inaccurate and unserviceable ‘crisis mode’ response to the durable reality of displaced people seeking safety.” (p2) 

While Mayor Adams is still requesting more federal funding for migrant services in NYC, this report reveals that our city has so far been the largest recipient of government support: NYC received $106,879,743, Denver was awarded $9,009,328 and Chicago $12,739,273. In looking at how this money was used, WRC identified several problems faced in all four cities:

  • Using emergency shelters instead of long-term solutions for housing.
  • Leaning on emergency responses that are expensive, unsustainable, and lack transparency.
  • Inadequate numbers of Legal Service providers for people seeking protection.
  • Some community tensions over new arrivals.
  • Incomplete coordination and support from the federal government.

They also identified best practices to address the problems, including leveraging public-private partnerships to offer support; providing rental assistance and establishing private hosting programs for people seeking asylum; and using a community-led case management approach with support services. 

WRC’s report concludes with comprehensive recommendations for local, state, congressional, executive branch, and federal departments. Instead of pretending that all will be fine if the border is simply closed, WRC emphasizes the complex breadth of structural and policy changes needed to address current challenges, as well as the terrible effects of five decades of inaction by our politicians to pass any meaningful new immigration laws. Without progressive national immigration reform, local groups have filled a policy vacuum with service. 

The WRC report ultimately suggests, as does Brian Lehrer’s recognition of the Well-Being Award recipients, that success comes from kind, supportive, and welcoming community initiatives. These model positive and engaged responses to how immigration can be properly handled.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

2. Shipibo Resilience and Resistance in DC

“To care and defend is to love, it is to prolong life, it is to combat the extinction of the region as well as its people.” —Ronin Koshi, Cantagallo Shipibo-konibo community, Lima 

The fight for environmental justice in Peru was put in the spotlight on January 23. Just a few days after a corrupt and illegitimate Peruvian Congress approved environmentally disastrous modifications to the Forestry and Wildlife Law, Olinda Silvano of the Shipibo-Konibo Nation opened the exhibition, Amazonia: A BioCreativity Hub at the IDB Cultural Center in Washington, DC. Expressing love for her ancestors, her culture, and the jungle, Olinda spoke and sang in her native language, calling for protecting the Amazon and the future of Mother Earth, while her finger ran the lines of the Kené in the mural. It was an apotheotic opening. Ironically, the IDB (Inter-American Development Bank)—whose actions do not preserve or protect the ecosystem of the Amazon—is the group that sponsored Amazonia, which has the stated goal of defending and protecting the jungle. 

Indigenous Nations in Peru have faced serious threats for decades from settlers or land traffickers. These outsiders illegally cut down cedar forests and take over Indigenous territory. The newly revised law will now allow these traffickers to change land use without carrying out a land classification study to determine if they are suitable for agricultural or forestry use. A preliminary report will no longer be necessary to authorize a forest to be cut down to become agricultural land.

Every year 150,000 hectares of virgin forest are lost in Peru, endangering the sustainable management of forest resources and the protection of ecosystems. Now, a new European Union law that prohibits imports of coffee, cocoa, beef, soy, and palm oil that have been obtained illegally from deforested forests has become a threat to forest profiteers. That is why Peru’s congress acted so swiftly to change the law. By formally legalizing predatory practices, they are protecting the profits of the export companies.

Another danger that threatens the jungle is illegal mining. The industry’s chemicals and destructive methods have seriously contaminated the region’s land and rivers. The Integral Registry of Formalization (Reinfo) was organized in 2017 to regulate small and artisanal mining. Although it was supposed to go into effect in 2020,  a corrupt Congress has kept extending the deadline. Meanwhile, a proposed “reform” bill would further weaken registration provisions.

The new legislation legalizes deforestation and degradation of Amazonian forests and ruthlessly violates the prior consultation with Indigenous peoples. It was approved through an irregular process, being opposed by Indigenous organizations, academia, and a significant majority of Peruvians. 

Olinda Silvano, who arrived in Washington with her son Ronin Koshi, showed us that the struggle to preserve our environment can and must be fought in all forums. She spoke with the wisdom imparted by her elders, insisting that the love of nature, of animals, of rivers, are the only guarantees of avoiding a climate catastrophe. 

The Shipibo people, who live on the banks of the Ucayali River, are one of the most numerous nations in the Peruvian Amazon. People like Olinda are said to have been shown the crown of inspiration. She is one of the founders of the migrant Shipibo settlement in Lima on the right margin of Rimac river, now called the Cantagallo community. She’s a leader, muralist, and lecturer, who has shown her art and her knowledge in several cities in Europe, Russia, and in recent years in North America. 

In the IDB gallery exhibition, Olinda’s 24-foot-long mural was the center of attention. It reflects the kené, which refers to traditional designs painted by women and men on ceramics, textiles, wooden surfaces and on the bodies of the Shipibo-Konibo people. Kené is made by drawing geometric patterns that express the Shipibo worldview and spirituality; it indicates identity, beauty and quality. 

The Peruvian communities of Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia (DMV) mobilized to disseminate Olinda’s work and message through local workshops and exhibitions. Prior to the workshops Olinda, with the help of Ronin, drew up the designs that we were going to paint; they made straight lines, curves, geometric figures, perfect circles, all came from Olinda’s ancestral wisdom and were applied directly to a piece of tocuyo (raw cotton). Every participant with a stick or brush used paint prepared with cedar and other plants to color the design. After it dried, mud from her town Paohyan (Shell Lake) in Ucayali was applied to fix the color. With the accompaniment of Olinda’s songs and stories, and with the tapestry, ceramics, bracelets and earrings around us, an atmosphere of a Shipibo community was created during the workshop. Olinda told us how she received kené art, her training with plants, her decision to take the art with her; she shared her migration story and her significant work of cultivating and keeping the Shipibo-Konibo Nation alive through kené. 

Indigenous people continue to sacrifice their lives to defend the forests and rivers of the jungle. Thirty-three environmental defenders have been murdered in the last decade. It is urgent to protect Indigenous leaders. Indigenous artists like Olinda, with her unconditional dedication and love for her ancestral Amazonian culture, help raise awareness of an ecosystem as important as the Amazon in order to protect it, defend it, and fight for legislation that preserves it. 

WHAT CAN WE DO?

 

In solidarity and with collective care,

Jackson Heights Immigrant Solidarity Network (JHISN) 

 

Follow @JHSolidarity on Facebook and Twitter and share this newsletter with friends, families, neighbors, networks, and colleagues so they can subscribe and receive news from JHISN. 

JHISN Newsletter 11/18/2023

Posted on November 18, 2023 by - News, Newsletter

Dear friends, 

As the UN announces that millions of displaced people face starvation in Gaza, JHISN adds our voice to the humanitarian calls for an immediate cease-fire and for an end to all war crimes, Islamophobia, and anti-semitism. While, at home, our mayor scapegoats desperate displaced migrants as the reason for cutting city services, JHISN calls for strict adherence to international law regarding asylum seekers and taxing the rich to pay for the needs of all New York residents, new and old. Our libraries are threatened by budget cuts despite providing critical community services including their Winter Coat Drive which we encourage our readers to support with donations at the 81st Street location.

In this newsletter, we offer an additional way to listen to local coverage of immigrant stories online with WBAI in partnership with the DocumentedNY team. Happily, we lead with the excellent news about the power of immigrant labor that has resulted in the hired car workers in NYC getting back hundreds of millions of dollars in wages stolen by Uber and Lyft.

1. Taxi Workers Alliance Celebrates Massive Wage Theft Settlement

“NYC Uber and Lyft drivers were cheated out of their hard-earned income at a time when an independent study found drivers were earning below even the minimum wage, and when out of that income drivers must pay for operating expenses. On top of that, drivers are locked out of the courts due to arbitration. Tens of thousands of drivers were cheated out of a better life and then kept from pursuing justice.” —Bhairavi Desai, New York Taxi Workers Alliance Executive Director

The taxi and hired car industry, powered by immigrant labor, is an essential part of NYC’s economy. It’s also a site of constant cutthroat struggle, where billionaires fight for market share, and weaponize political connections and technology to ruthlessly extract profit from hundreds of thousands of drivers. Remarkably, the drivers, led by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA), not only manage to survive in this merciless arena, but continue to notch up significant victories.

NYTWA started in 1998, defending the rights of yellow cab and black car workers—long before the advent of ride-share apps. But once Uber and Lyft started flooding the streets with tens of thousands of cars, the union pivoted to include the app drivers’ concerns. Today 70 percent of the 21,000 NYTWA members are Uber and Lyft drivers. 

The union soon learned that ride-sharing companies were engaged in widespread wage theft, including illegally deducting passenger sales tax out of driver’s pay. Employer-friendly arbitration clauses, included by default in drivers’ contracts, severely limited the ability of the workers to sue. In 2015, NYTWA asked the governor and attorney general to do something about their stolen wages. They were turned down flat.

Undeterred, the NYTWA began a relentless campaign to bring Uber and Lyft to account. In 2016, they filed suit and publicized the app companies’ blatant lawbreaking. Soon, Uber “discovered” that they had “made a mistake” in the way they calculated commissions, and promised to pay back tens of millions of dollars—a small proportion of what was owed. In 2019 and 2020, the NYTWA went back to court, challenging the arbitration clauses in cases of wage theft, and demanding full reimbursement for all drivers.

On November 2, after eight and a half years of NYTWA organizing, State Attorney General Letitia James announced that Uber and Lyft had agreed to a massive settlement; one of the largest wage theft recoveries in history. The companies will pay back all the stolen wages, amounting to $328 million. In addition, Uber and Lyft have agreed to guarantee drivers a minimum wage and sick leave. As NYTA’s Desai says,

“You can’t turn back the clock and feed a hungry belly, but this money is going to help drivers get the life that they should have had in the years that this money was initially stolen. I hope that drivers will be able to move into that bigger apartment, put a down payment on their next car, or have their kid go back to college – that’s how significant this is.”

Attorney General James praised the drivers for their unrelenting efforts. She thanked the NYTWA specifically “for bringing the matter to this office.”

As we write, another uphill NYTWA battle against the ride-share companies and the city administration is underway. The union supports the longstanding cap on the number of ride-share vehicles in the city. The cap serves to prevent the companies from oversaturating the city with cars and pushing down driver income. But Uber and its captive mouthpiece, the Independent Drivers Guild, have been pushing for an exemption from the cap for electric vehicles. This would do more than weaken the cap: because of a city mandate for all-electric fleets by 2030, exempting electric vehicles essentially does away with the cap altogether. As usual, the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission has taken the companies’ side.

For now, an injunction stemming from a NYTWA lawsuit has stopped the city from issuing any more electric for-hire vehicle license plates.

WHAT CAN WE DO?:
  • Donate to the NYTWA
  • Read more about Uber and Lyft wage theft and the campaign to stop it

2. DocumentedNY on the Radio

“Our journey on earth, though difficult and long, shall be filled with happiness and in the end everyone gets their due, either good or bad.”—Irinajo Lyrics by Beautiful Nubia as translated from Yoruba by Fisayo Okare, host of Documented Immigration News Roundup

The online free speech radio station, WBAI, has been elevating the work of the DocumentedNY news source with a half-hour show airing at 5 pm on Saturdays. The show host, Fisayo Okare, has brought attention to migration issues ever since Texas started busing migrants to NYC. She brings to us not just the words, but the live voices of people advocating for the immigrant populations coming into New York City. 

In the November 11 episode, Okare spoke with Diane Enobabor, who grew up in Texas and is currently a PhD student at CUNY. Enobabor co-founded BAMSA, the Black and Arab Movement Solidarity Alliance, to support men placed at the Stockton Street “respite center” in Bushwick/Bed-Stuy after they arrived from Texas. Along with other members of BAMSA’a rapid response team, she advocated for the City to better support these immigrants, including ensuring that the men had access to showers. BAMSA originally planned to volunteer support work for no more than two months, so as to not cover over the need to address systemic problems about the way the city was providing support services.

BAMSA used monies from a $5,000 grant to launch ESL classes and to begin capturing better data about the migrants they were working with. Since the asylum process tracks people based on the last nation of residency rather than their nation of origin, many asylum seekers of African origin become statistically invisible after coming to the US via other nations. BAMSA’s research has shown that 40% of African migrants arrive by plane, 10% by train, 49% by bus, and only 1% arrive on the Texas buses.

Enobabor also learned that recent migrants who move outside of NYC, such as the Mauritanians who have found success in Ohio, as well as those who returned to Texas, actually found cheaper housing and better access to work opportunities elsewhere. She notes that NYC used to be the foundational start for most migrants but now, by not taking this opportunity to provide the best support to new migrants, NYC is missing an important chance for its own revitalization.

Enobabor and Okare also raised awareness of Adama Bah who founded a Harlem non-profit called Afrikana. The organization played a crucial role by serving as greeters to arriving migrants at Port Authority and then expanded support by helping provide IDNYC cards to people without established residency. Bah’s efforts to support new immigrants were recognized earlier this year when State Senator Jessica Ramos nominated her for the BPHA Community Awards from the New York State Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic, and Asian Legislative Caucus.

JHISN applauds the work of these incredible women. We encourage our readers to support DocumentedNY and to listen to the noteworthy online radio coverage the news team is now providing about migration issues.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

In solidarity and with collective care,

Jackson Heights Immigrant Solidarity Network (JHISN)

 

Follow @JHSolidarity on Facebook and Twitter and share this newsletter with friends, families, neighbors, networks, and colleagues so they can subscribe and receive news from JHISN. 

 

 

JHISN Newsletter 10/21/2023

Posted on October 21, 2023 by - News, Newsletter

Dear friends,

It’s not that easy to keep up with immigration politics in NYC. Corporate media often distorts or ignores current issues; grassroots immigrant-led justice groups are rarely highlighted in journalistic accounts; and local media—including Gothamist, Queens Post, City Limits, and Queens Daily Eagle—can be uneven in their reporting. So you might have missed the truly significant news that Mayor Adams, under the pretext of a “crisis” of new migrants in NYC, is trying to overturn the city’s decades-old Right to Shelter law. We offer that important story below.

We also give an update on the recent work of Adhikaar, a Queens-based immigrant justice organization—the first in the US to represent Nepali-speaking communities.

 Newsletter highlights:
  1. Mayor takes aim at Right to Shelter
  2. Adhikaar helps win TPS extension and more…

1. Adams Attacks NYC’s Right to Shelter

“You know, I think the mayor thought he was going to sneak this by, that he was going to repeal the right to shelter, he was going to throw new arrivals out on the street like they weren’t human beings and nobody was going to notice.”    —Christine Quinn, president and CEO of Win

JHISN has recently argued that Mayor Adams has used the busing of asylum seekers from Texas as a pretext for cutting social services and introducing a new wave of austerity politics to our city. True to form, Adams—with support from Governor Hochul—is now trying to use the arrival of these migrants as an excuse to gut New York City’s renowned Right to Shelter law.

Because of a 1981 consent decree, Callahan v Carey, NYC is legally obligated to offer access to a bed, lockers, showers, and necessary toiletries to those in need.

“There’s a reason why New York City doesn’t have tent encampments, and it’s not that we’re any cheaper than west coast cities,” said Kathryn Kliff, staff attorney for the Legal Aid Society. “Denver, Seattle, San Francisco, Portland, any of those places, you’re going to see a lot of people sleeping out. The reason you don’t see that here is because there is a right to shelter.”  —The Guardian (10/4/23)

Some previous New York mayors, including Giuliani and Bloomberg, have viewed Right to Shelter as an unwelcome obstacle to their budget-cutting efforts. Today Adams, deploying his trademark hyperbole, proclaims that providing this right to asylum seekers will “destroy” the city. Even as he tries to gut the Right to Shelter, he uses it to dishonestly justify major spending cuts to a broad swath of other city social services.

 To advance his austerity agenda, which progressive legislators have called “manufactured scarcity,” Adams makes the inflated claim that shelter and services for asylum seekers will cost 12 billion dollars over three years. City Comptroller Brad Lander estimates the real cost at around 5.3 billion—or about 1.6% of the budget. Adams has loudly complained that “more than 122,700 asylum seekers [have] come through our intake system since the spring of 2022.” What he fails to mention is that only about half that number are actually in the care of the city, spread out among 210 sites. Many asylum seekers have left for other parts of the country or found housing on their own. In addition, 40% of asylum seekers arriving in New York are from Venezuela; most have recently gained federal Temporary Protected Status, which will allow them to get work permits and move out of the shelter system more quickly.

Adams’ Chief Advisor, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, has made the administration’s animus towards migrants obvious: “The right to shelter was intended for our indigenous homeless population, so we argue that we should not have to shelter all of these immigrants.” She didn’t mention the benefits migrants bring to the city. Nor did she acknowledge that there are 40,000 rent-stabilized apartments sitting vacant.

Initially, Adams tried to get the Manhattan State Supreme Court to approve a broad waiver of Right to Shelter. The waiver was to go into effect any time the city executive decided shelter services were too expensive. Since that blunt legal maneuver failed, the mayor has now asked the court to let him suspend the consent decree when shelter populations rise, as long as he or the governor declare a “state of emergency.” According to the latest news reports, the parties to the consent decree have been asked to enter mediation by Judge Gerald Lebovits.

Ignoring the pleas of religious leaders, Governor Hochul enthusiastically backs Adams’ play. She calls Right to Shelter “an open invitation to 8 billion people” to get a free bed in New York. This is the same right-wing narrative embraced by Curtis Sliwa and the New York Post, which urges outright defiance by the mayor of Right to Shelter law.

Rallying progressives to defend Right to Shelter, the Coalition for the Homeless and the Legal Aid Society have circulated open letters of protest to Adams and Hochul. The letters reaffirm the human rights of unhoused people, and rebut false arguments about asylum seekers. For instance, they point out that comparable numbers of migrants used to arrive year after year before the Right to Shelter consent decree even existed—debunking the incendiary claim that Right to Shelter is a magnet for opportunist freeloaders. 

So far, 50 organizations, including JHISN, have co-signed the letters. The version addressing Adams states:

We, the undersigned organizations, are vehemently opposed to your efforts to undermine the legal Right to Shelter for both new arrivals and longtime New Yorkers, as you propose doing in your October 3, 2023 letter to the court, and see such efforts as an abrogation of your moral and legal duties as the mayor of a sanctuary city, a city that has been a proud beacon of humane and progressive values for its entire history, and where we, as community, have long been dedicated to the ideal that no one should be left to live, or die, on our streets. –Open Letter (10/11/23)

WHAT CAN WE DO?

2. Adhikaar at 18 Years Old

Founded in 2005 by four women with $500 and a vision, Adhikaar today is the only women-led community organization in the US building the power of Nepali-speaking workers and immigrants. Located in Woodside, Adhikaar has become a transformative force at the national, state, and local level. The group continues to struggle for adequate protective legal status for Nepali immigrants nationwide. After winning the fight to extend temporary protective status (TPS) for Nepal until mid-2025, Adhikaar members traveled to the White House last June to meet with administration officials and press the need for more action beyond the automatic extension for existing TPS holders.

 At the state level, Adhikaar is a leader in the #AllHandsIn campaign to pass the Nail Salon Minimum Standards Council Act, which is currently stuck in committee in the NYS legislature. With close to 40,000 workers in New York State, 73% of whom are Asians or Pacific Islanders, the nail salon industry is a notorious site of wage theft and employee exploitation, as well as health risks from hazardous chemicals. “During my career, I had seven miscarriages in the industry. That’s the reason I want to protect my sisters who work in the industry,” explains Pabitra Dash, Adhikaar’s senior organizer. The legislation would create a Council that includes industry workers to establish statewide standards and protections for nail technicians. Adhikaar has mobilized hundreds of workers in Albany, media coverage, and support from electeds to try to keep the legislation alive and moving forward.

And here at the community level, Adhikaar launched an organization-wide initiative on community safety—what it means for members and how to achieve it. After conducting a member survey last April, Adhikaar held a series of self-defense trainings and member discussions in response to the rise in attacks and threats against Asian Americans in New York. “The training helped members who feel marginalized or vulnerable, gain a sense of empowerment and control over their own safety,” (Adhikaar May-June 2023 newsletter).

 WHAT CAN WE DO?

 

In solidarity and with collective care,

Jackson Heights Immigrant Solidarity Network (JHISN)

 

Follow @JHSolidarity on Facebook and Twitter and share this newsletter with friends, families, neighbors, networks, and colleagues so they can subscribe and receive news from JHISN.