Tag: New York City

JHISN Newsletter 07/23/2022

Posted on July 23, 2022 by - News, Newsletter

Dear friends,

Small victories, temporary defeats – the local landscape of immigration politics is complicated. We bring you our newsletter in hopes it can help you navigate the terrain. Let’s celebrate with DRUM (Desis Rising Up and Moving), the recent decision by Queens DA Melanie Katz to drop all charges against Prakash Churaman, a young Queens resident and immigrant from Guyana falsely charged and held for six years at Rikers. DRUM, together with several other grassroots groups and Prakash himself, worked tirelessly to defeat the injustice of an incarceration system that disproportionately imprisons black and brown youth, including those who are innocent. Welcome home, Prakash.

And let’s note the recent defeat, for now, of a progressive move by the City Council to grant municipal voting rights to hundreds of thousands of immigrants with legal residence in NYC. A Republican judge from Staten Island, one of 324 elected judges composing the New York Supreme Court, just ruled that the new law violates the state Constitution. Activists who have worked for decades to secure noncitizen voting in NYC have vowed to appeal the ruling.

This week’s newsletter surveys a dystopian landscape of immigration politics at the global level, focusing on the history of the international asylum system, and the struggles today of migrants trying to navigate what’s left of it.

1. Asylum: A Human Right Under Attack

Over the last few decades, the world’s wealthiest nations, led by the US, have moved to shred the established global system of asylum and protections for refugees. Catering instead to racist and xenophobic domestic politics, they blatantly violate international law. “This system, once held up as a universal and legally binding obligation, is now treated as effectively voluntary,” writes Max Fisher. The practical repercussions of this change for the world’s hundred million plus refugees are staggering.

In the aftermath of World War II, which created approximately 60 million refugees, world governments met to establish unified asylum policies rooted in international law. The result was the 1951 Refugee Convention, later folded into the “1967 Protocol .” During the Cold War, the US, eager to be seen as a defender of refugees, promoted the Protocol and cemented it into national law as the US Refugee Act of 1980.

The Convention and Protocol require nations to provide asylum to anyone fleeing their home country because of persecution, or reasonable fear of persecution, on the basis of race, religion, nationality, political views, or membership in a particular social group. In conjunction with other international law, the Convention and Protocol extend asylum to refugees fleeing extreme danger from armed groups or because of civil strife. Although the right to asylum does not apply directly to economic or climate refugees, it may apply indirectly if they are endangered by social conflict in the wake of economic or climate catastrophes.

The Convention and Protocol, signed by 148 countries, demand that refugees be treated with dignity and respect. Two key provisions include the principle of “non-refoulement,” which prohibits the return of refugees to a country where they face serious threats to life or freedom; and the fundamental principle that asylum is a human right.  Refugees hold specific rights as well: the right not to be expelled (except under strictly defined conditions), the right not to be punished for illegal entry, the right to work, housing, education, and public assistance, the right to freedom of movement, and the right to obtain identity and travel documents. Any refugee seeking asylum must have their claim considered on its merits.

But today, wealthy countries go to cruel and elaborate lengths to deter asylum seekers, many of whom are fleeing social disasters caused by imperialism. Turning back desperate refugees at sea has become one increasingly common practice. This abuse was pioneered by the US, which began intercepting fleeing Haitians and Cubans in the 1990s. Using “international waters” as an excuse for denying asylum, the US imprisoned refugees in camps at Guantanamo or sent them to other countries. In a 21st-century version of this policy, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas (who comes from a Cuban migrant family) made it clear to Haitians and Cubans that “if you take to the sea, you will not come to the United States.” The European Union directs similar harsh practices toward Arab and Central African refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean. It has negotiated agreements with Libya and Tunisia to intercept and detain migrants before they can reach land and request asylum.

International law is also ignored for refugees fleeing by land. Mexico has been enlisted to capture and deport migrants from Central America and other parts of the world before they get to the US border. At the border itself, many refugees are turned back by US Customs and Border Patrol on the grounds that they should have stayed in the first country they passed through, something generally not required by the Convention or Protocol. Central American, Haitian, and African migrants who apply for asylum are being illegally forced to wait in dangerous, unsanitary encampments in Mexico. The Trump administration created many new unlawful ways to deter asylum seekers, insisting that the government has the authority to “meter” the flow of refugees and to deny admittance because of Covid 19 using Title 42.

Britain recently announced that thousands of asylum applicants, mostly people of color, will be sent to Rwanda, a continent away. (This while immediately welcoming 100,000 refugees from Ukraine.) Other European governments send asylum seekers to Sudan and Libya, where they face uncertain futures. Greece is violently deporting asylum seekers to Turkey; Spain is confining refugees in Morocco. Israel is imprisoning and deporting African asylum seekers. Australia pays Pacific island nations to detain refugees who wish to make asylum claims, keeping them at arm’s length and isolated. As Laila Lalami summarizes: 

“Across the Global North, wealthy countries are outsourcing their border enforcement to poorer countries in exchange for economic, military or diplomatic support. Saddling poor countries with moral and legal responsibility, this collaboration strands refugees thousands of miles away from the safe havens they seek.”

It’s impossible to overstate the brutality and violence that accompanies this racist abandonment of international law and basic human rights. Desperate migrants are literally throwing themselves against the walls and fences put up by rich countries and their allies, and are being pushed back, beaten, gassed, and shot down in response. Refugees are drowning by the thousands, as the navies of rich countries refuse to rescue them. The camps where asylum-seekers are warehoused are often bleak, lacking basic services and even minimal safety. Millions of refugees languish in these camps for years or generations, with little or no prospect of asylum.

In recent days, the US Supreme Court has ruled that the Biden administration will finally be allowed to dismantle the “remain in Mexico” policy initiated by Trump–but only if they want to; it’s not illegal, they say. The administration also seems belatedly poised to end phony Title 42 Covid restrictions. These would be positive steps. And yet Biden has deported more than 25,000 Haitian asylum-seekers. In May alone, 36 deportation flights carried 4000 Haitians back to extreme danger. Only 12,000 refugees of all nationalities have been resettled this year in the US, despite an announced refugee ceiling of 125,000. The US, after its precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan, is rejecting 90% of Afghans seeking asylum. In other words, the carnage continues.

“If there were only one thing that could be expected from the Biden administration, it would be a more open, welcoming America after four years of his predecessor’s callous disregard for suffering abroad. We don’t have the hostile rhetoric from back then, but the numbers tell us we’re getting pretty much more of the same.”  —Marcela García, Boston Globe

WHAT CAN WE DO?
  • Take action with Human Rights First which provides free legal representation for asylum seekers and refugees in New York City.
  • Join Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project–with a membership of over 350,00 asylum seekers–to build legal, digital, and community support services.
  • Support Immigration Equality, a nationwide group promoting the rights of LGBTQ and HIV-positive immigrants and asylum-seekers.

In solidarity and with collective care,

Jackson Heights Immigrant Solidarity Network (JHISN)

Featured image: Photo by Sandor Csudai, borders added, licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0.

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 07/09/2022

Posted on July 9, 2022 by - News, Newsletter

Dear friends,

As we enter the thick of summer, we wish you all extra ease and an expanded sense of what’s possible. Our newsletter takes a look at the complicated situation of Dreamers and the tenth anniversary of DACA. And we offer a cautiously hopeful report on changing city policies around street vending in NYC. As we collectively re-dream what immigrant justice might feel like, we are grateful for your support of JHISN. Please put our newsletter to good use!

Newsletter highlights:
  1. Reflecting on DACA Ten Years In
  2. Street Vending Re-structured in NYC?

1. DACA – Still temporary after 10 years

In 2022, it is time to appreciate the good outcomes from ten years of DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, while recognizing the limitations that urgently need to be overcome. Congress failed to pass the DREAM ACT in 2010, refusing to legislate a path to citizenship for even a narrowly defined group of youth who came or were brought to the United States as children. As DACA recipient from Yonkers, Brian Aguilar Avila, commented, “They always say they have a plan, that congress has a plan, and that Trump had a plan, but it always dies.” 

Joana Toro created a photographic journey of DACA activism in Queens from 2012 to 2022, highlighting both Make the Road New York – which initiated a class action lawsuit to protect DACA-eligible immigrant youth – and the MinKwon Center in Flushing. One of MinKwon’s current Immigrant Justice Organizers, Woojung “Diana” Park, a DACA recipient, stated that being undocumented can make you more a bystander than an activist.  Even so, after the DREAM ACT failed to pass, it was undocumented youth that took action to influence Obama (who was deporting in greater numbers than any president before him) into signing the executive order creating DACA on June 15, 2012. Janet Napolitano, the former Homeland Security Secretary, said she did not expect the policy would still be in place 10 years later. 

Many DACA stories reveal that the eligibility to work without fear of deportation presented the opportunity to obtain a higher education. Although DACA youth were not eligible for state-provided financial aid and had to pay out-of-state tuition costs charged to international students, they could now work to obtain a degree. NY State, seven years after DACA began, passed the Jose Peralta Dream Act, giving undocumented students the ability to qualify for NY state aid for higher education.

Diana Pliego was living in South Carolina, where undocumented people were prohibited from attending public institutions to study. She had to apply to private institutions and, although she received a full-tuition scholarship to Columbia University, could not afford the additional housing expenses. But she and her DACA recipient siblings could now all work, and so could cover those costs. Pliego now works at the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) and was conflicted by the 10-year anniversary because, while DACA has changed lives for the better, the renewal process is problematic: “The past 10 years I’ve kind of had to live my life in two year increments, not knowing if one day someone is going to take this away from me and I won’t have any control over that decision.” 

DACA renewal, required every two years, is perhaps manageable for a college-age student, who can tackle life in short increments. But there are now more DACA recipients over the age of 36 than there are under the age of 20, and over 300,000 US children now have one parent who is a DACA recipient. Bruna Sollod notes, “Now that I’m a mom, now that I have a career that I really love, thinking in two year increments doesn’t work anymore.”

Family insecurity is an outcome of bipartisan political dysfunction and anti-immigrant sentiment in mainstream U.S. political discourse. The Trump administration failed, thanks to a court order, to end the DACA program – not because there were issues with the proposed termination but because the change was implemented by an improperly appointed acting secretary of Homeland Security. Ending DACA now would create another US government attack on immigrant families, just like separating families at the border, and would directly impact US citizen children. 

This week a Federal court in Louisiana heard testimony from New Jersey’s state solicitor urging 3 Republican-appointed judges to rule against a lawsuit brought by 9 Republican-led states claiming DACA was improperly created by the Obama administration. If the lawsuit is successful it would shut down the entire program based on administrative procedural rules not on the program’s value or purpose. Terminating DACA would ignore these economic benefits: 94 percent of the DACA-eligible population in the labor force are employed; 45,000 own their own business, and in 2015 working DACA recipients boosted local economies by over $655 million. It would set up the deportation of 542,000 DACA-eligible essential workers, 62,000 of whom work in health care, and almost half of which were employed on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic

As NILC stated, “DACA has served as a lifeline, but DACA recipients need lasting stability. Voters across the political spectrum overwhelmingly favor a permanent solution, and lawmakers have a mandate to deliver.” Surveys of the US public show consistently that three-quarters of the population are in favor of granting a path to citizenship for young people brought to the US illegally as children. Esder Chong, who received DACA at 15, and had experience at NILC as she worked towards her two Masters degrees, said, “If and when DACA is rescinded, we need a plan for the undocumented community at large. Congress has no plan. Immigrant rights organizations are not in agreement on what the plan should be.” Chong suggests giving up the idealistic “citizenship for all” solution and pushing instead for “a pathway to residency — a legal status for all” in order for people to stay in the country, to pursue education and a good life, and be able to work and contribute to local and national economies.

WHAT CAN WE DO?
  • Sign the NILC petition to Pass Permanent Protections for Immigrant Youth.
  • Attend the Off-Broadway show ¡Americano! about a DACA recipient who learned of his undocumented status when he tried to become a US Marine after the attacks of 9/11.
  • Retweet the four op-eds that United We Dream created with media company Popsugar to highlight personal stories of DACA.

2. Justice for Street Vendors in NYC

“Just let us work with dignity. We are immigrants, we’re not hurting anybody … We’re out working and trying to provide. All I want is a place to work safely.” –Maria Falcon, street vendor arrested April 2022 

Maria Falcon was born in Ecuador and now lives in Queens. For over ten years, she has worked selling goods from a street cart. On April 29, Maria was on an outdoor subway platform in Brooklyn selling mangoes and melons from a laundry cart when two NYPD officers handcuffed and arrested her. She spent two hours in a police station.  She was partially strip-searched for weapons and drugs, her cart and goods were confiscated, and she was ticketed and released for ‘unauthorized commercial activity.’ Her daughter’s video of the arrest went viral.

Maria’s story is a snapshot in the political panorama of NYC street vending. As an informal sector of the local economy, largely fueled by the work of immigrants and people of color, street vending is regulated through city permits for carts and trucks. NYC caps the total number of permits granted, creating a huge waitlist and an “underground black market” in permits. For years, immigrant justice groups like The Street Vendor Project, and elected officials like Jessica Ramos, have fought to decriminalize street vending and empower street vendors, establish a fair and equitable permit process, and end police harassment of vendors.

In a promising step forward, a report and set of recommendations developed by a new Street Vendor Advisory Board (SVAB) are being embraced by the City Council and Mayor Adams. The SVAB, created in 2021 by City Council mandate, aims to balance the interests of street vendors, small businesses, community organizations, and consumers. It also recognizes that the street vending ecosystem in New York is a vibrant part of neighborhood life and a vital support to the economy.  

In May, the Mayor publicly announced that the city will start implementing several SVAB recommendations including: repealing criminal liability for mobile food vendors; exploring the expansion of street vending opportunities in pedestrian plazas, city parking lots, and metered parking spots; and introducing business supports for street vendors through city agencies.

 Mohamed Atia, director of The Street Vendor Project and a member of the Street Vendor Advisory Board, sounded an optimistic note: 

“For centuries, street vendors have been an essential part of the fabric of New York City. From the Bronx to Queens, street vendors ensure under-resourced communities have access to fresh, affordable food, commercial corridors have diversity of business, and tourists get the iconic New York City experience. And now, for the first time ever, street vendors are stakeholders in deciding the future of the industry … We look forward to continuing to work with Mayor Adams and the City Council to modernize the vending system, ensuring all street vendors are permitted, and cutting the red tape so our city’s smallest business can truly thrive.”

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 06/11/2022

Posted on June 11, 2022 by - News, Newsletter

Dear friends,

As the first official day of summer approaches, with stunning urban sunsets and the roving jingle of the ice cream truck, we take a local look at two immigration stories. In Central Queens, the community power of Filipinos is celebrated with a new street name. And we explore the shifting grounds of immigrants’ electoral voice in the wake of redistricting in New York State, together with the legalization of immigrant voting in municipal elections and the impending redistricting in New York City.

For lively, engaging podcasts for your summer walk, check out the recent series produced by the Queens Memory Project. Season 3 of their award-winning series presents Queens’ diverse Asian American communities “in their own voice.” And language! Eight bilingual podcasts include Bangla, Hindi, Korean, Mandarin, Nepali, Tagalog, Tibetan, and Urdu. Even if your only language is English, take the opportunity to hear the music and rhythms of these many languages of our neighborhood.

Newsletter highlights:
  1. Woodside recognizes Filipino community
  2. Redistricting, electoral politics, & immigrant voting power in NYC

1. “Little Manila Avenue” Coming to Queens

On June 12, 2020, a beautiful mural “Mabuhay!” ( “to life”) honoring Filipino health care workers was unveiled on 69th Street and Roosevelt Avenue, in the heart of the Woodside neighborhood called Little Manila. Tomorrow, June 12, 2022, at noon, a new street sign at the southwest corner of 70th Street and Roosevelt will co-name the street as “Little Manila Avenue.”

The co-naming represents the success of an online petition campaign, launched after the mural was unveiled, to officially recognize the Filipino community. The law authorizing the name change was sponsored by former council member Jimmy Van Bramer and passed by the city council on December 15, 2021. June 12 is significant as Philippine Independence Day, celebrating the end of Spanish colonialism in1898.

Filipinos are the fourth largest Asian group in New York City, with over half living here in Queens. Filipinos are renowned as health care workers and caregivers. Large numbers of Filipinos began to settle in Woodside in the 1970s when Filipino nurses arrived to fill a shortage of nurses in the US.

Little Manila—stretching across Roosevelt Avenue from 63rd Street to 71st Street—features many restaurants specializing in Filipino food as well as the Phil-Am Food Mart that attracts customers from many surrounding states. 

Currently, Little Manila is split among three State Assembly Districts and two State Senate districts. Residents would prefer to be in a single assembly district with one representative offering a strong, unified voice to counter real estate development that threatens to transform their neighborhood. Even though Queens has been redistricted, Little Manila will for now remain separated into different assembly and senate districts.

WHAT CAN WE DO?
  •  Listen (in English or Tagalog) to Queens Memory Project’s Podcast “Our Major Minor Voices” Season 3 Episode 6 to learn about another art project for the area, and one nurse’s recollection of her work during the Covid pandemic.
  • Take a walking tour of Little Manila and visit the Phil-Am Food Mart or Amazing Grace Restaurant and Bakery.

 

2. Immigrants central to electoral changes

Big changes are on the way for New York’s electoral system, and some will have important implications for immigrant voting power. The 2020 census has set off a cascade of redistricting, which will directly and indirectly affect the influence of various immigrant communities on national, state, and local elections. In addition, immigrants with legal status will be able to vote in NYC elections starting in 2023. The impact of both of these new developments depends substantially on how politicians and activists adjust to the rapidly-growing population of Asian Americans in the state and NYC.

The state legislature’s recent redistricting uproar, which resulted in district lines drawn at the last minute by a judge-appointed special master, is forcing candidates for 2022 and 2024 elections, including those in Queens, to scramble to figure out where they belong in the new geography and demographics of an altered electoral map. For instance, State Senator John Liu is moving his campaign from District 11 to the modified District 16, which will now include his home and much of his political base in Flushing. Rana Abdelhamid, an Astoria-based progressive from an Egyptian immigrant family who aimed to bring more immigrant and working-class voters into the electoral process, is withdrawing from the race for the 12th Congressional District because of the new map. “My community and I were cut out of our district,” she says.

The new map makes a significant change to Congressional district borders in our own community. Woodside and most of Jackson Heights will be subtracted from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s current Congressional District 14. The removed neighborhoods include many of the Asian American voters in her district—mostly immigrants from South Asia, the Philippines, and Tibet. Those areas will now be part of Congressional District 6, currently represented by Grace Meng. CD 6, which includes Chinatowns in both Flushing and Elmhurst, already has a large bloc of East Asian voters. How this consolidation of Asian American voters will affect future elections in Queens is difficult to predict.

Over the next year or so, the New York City Council will be redrawing its own 51 districts as well. The city’s population grew by nearly 600,000 people from 2010 to 2020; Asian American/Pacific Islanders made up the majority of that increase. Asian political representation is certain to be a major consideration in adjusting Council district lines. Significant Latino population increases in the Bronx and Brooklyn will also have to be taken into account. A Districting Commission (made up of seven mayoral appointees plus five commissioners chosen by the majority Democrats and three by the Republicans) will decide on district borders. The Commission has started holding hearings and drawing preliminary maps.

In terms of NYC elections, the biggest transformation is likely to be the impending rollout of non-citizen voting which, assuming it survives a court challenge, will begin in 2023. An estimated 800,000 immigrants with green cards or other legal status will become eligible to vote. Registration is scheduled to begin this December. If immigrant communities sign up to vote in big numbers, it could dramatically reshape city elections. Between the infusion of new immigrant votes and the reshuffling caused by redistricting, immigrants may soon play a much bigger role in New York electoral politics.

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 05/28/2022

Posted on May 28, 2022 by - News, Newsletter

Dear friends,

Sometimes the face of violence is stark and hypervisible … like the latest nightmare massacre in a US school where, this time, 19 children are gunned down in a Texas border town. Or the spectacle of mass murder the week before in Buffalo, with 10 people killed by an avowed white supremacist with a semiautomatic rifle.

But violence can also be slow, and unspectacular, even invisible – at least to those who are not its target. This week we look at two scenes of less visible violence. We highlight the story of immigrant women of color, denied abortion rights and reproductive health care. And we report on an NYC-based immigrant justice group fighting the state violence directed at queer and LGBT detainees in the US.

Newsletter highlights:
  1. Reproductive Justice for Immigrants
  2. Queer Detainee Empowerment Project (QDEP)

1. Migrant Women and Abortion Rights

The destruction of abortion rights in the US has the biggest impact on women of color, a fact that is often missing in mainstream media. Even less widely reported are the specific obstacles faced by immigrant women of color who seek an abortion.

Black, Brown, and Asian immigrants often face reduced abortion access due to language barriers, a problem that only grows as the number of community-based clinics declines. Traveling to find an abortion provider is difficult, expensive, and risky, especially for undocumented people. Medical insurance may be hard or impossible to get without legal status. For women locked inside the public/private US immigrant detention system, regulations governing reproductive health are confusing, vary widely from facility to facility, and may change overnight when a detainee is relocated.

 Already struggling against a wave of racist violence, Asian American immigrant women are subjected to an extra layer of scrutiny as a result of anti-choice laws that target “sex-selective” abortions. Supreme Court reactionary Clarence Thomas has alleged that this sort of “feticide” is a common practice among “certain populations in the US,” even though this racial profiling myth has been thoroughly debunked. (Asian American women actually give birth to more female babies than white women do.) Legislation denying abortion if there is “suspicion” that it is being used for sex selection is popular on the Right as a stepping stone toward the complete elimination of abortion rights. This profiling is already enacted as law in several states and has been proposed in many others (including New York), as well as at the federal level.

The lack of abortion rights for migrants is particularly dire today along the US southern border. According to advocates, a large percentage of the Latina, Caribbean, African, and Indigenous women who risk the dangerous land route through Central America are sexually assaulted or raped while in transit, making abortion access even more urgent.

However, migrant women who reach the US needing abortion services find little urgency. The Trump regime was able to populate the immigration system with anti-abortion fanatics, pushing already conservative agencies even farther to the right. Right-wing anti-immigrant agents and administrators treat immigrant women’s reproductive health rights as one more reason to criminalize and punish them. Immigration bureaucrats often drag their feet on making medical appointments, finding excuses for denying or delaying even emergency reproductive care.

“The Trump administration’s efforts to undermine access to reproductive health care for women and girls in immigration custody is exemplified by former Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement Scott Lloyd. During his tenure, Lloyd did not approve a single request for a minor seeking abortion care; those who were able to obtain abortions did so only after court intervention.” –Center for American Progress

Lloyd is gone, but other anti-choice zealots remain, such as Roger Severino who, ironically, is head of Health and Human Services’ Office for Human Rights, which is supposed to oversee refugee resettlement programs for the Biden administration.

Immigrants incarcerated by federal agencies like ICE and the Border Patrol are subject to the abortion laws of the state where they are held. The drastic time limits imposed on abortion in Texas and other border states will result in the exclusion from reproductive care of even more migrant women who became pregnant during their journey north.

 Texas and other states are also trying to criminalize easy-to-use medications that would allow safe abortions at home, painting women into a corner. They are aware that immigrant women of color often lack the money, childcare, and employment flexibility needed to seek abortion care in another state. For undocumented people living in border regions, this kind of travel is especially risky because of a web of Border Patrol checkpoints deployed as far as 100 miles inland. Today more than ever, large numbers of immigrant women are forced to weigh the risk of deportation against their abortion and reproductive health needs.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

2. Queer Politics of Immigration

“I think ultimately this is what we’re fighting for … the ability to be human. The ability to just laugh, and just get up in the morning and not worry that you’re going to get killed if you step out your door. We’re fighting for the ability to not have to worry about food, or not have to worry about shelter, or not have to worry about making the hard choices of, stay in my homeland, experience violence, [or] go to places like the US, experience a different kind of violence …. And I think at the very basic level, it’s just the ability to be human, and be in community, and not be afraid.” – Ola Osaze (interview, Black LGBTQIA+ Migrant Project, 2019)

 Immigrants detained in the US face a host of dangers and vulnerabilities. But queer and LGBT and HIV+ detainees often face more specific challenges related to their gender identity or sexual orientation. Sometimes those challenges are, literally, life-threatening. In 2014, Jamila Hammami founded the Queer Detainee Empowerment Project (QDEP) here in NYC to address the state violence and structural barriers that target lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, or asexual (LGBTQIA+) migrants. Operating in the first months out of Hammami’s living room in Brooklyn, QDEP has grown into a vibrant organization providing direct services to queer detainees and fighting for systemic change through community organizing.

 “LGBTQIA+ migrant rights are invisible to the public,” notes Ian Zdanowicz, Co-Director of Direct Services at QDEP. “They often immigrate from their home country without family or support due to their identity not being accepted. When they are incarcerated in detention centers, there is an abundance of transphobia and homophobia.” With most advocacy and legal services for immigrants amplifying a ‘heteronormative’ narrative—one that presumes heterosexual marriage, family, or sexual practices—LGBTQIA+ immigrants lack a collective voice advocating for the specific resources that they need. QDEP is committed to building that voice.

 In March 2022, QDEP in solidarity with Families For Freedom joined a national “Communities Not Cages” Day of Action, calling for an end to all deportations, and the closure of immigrant detention centers–including Orange County Correctional Facility in NYS. In 2021, the group distributed $240,000 to over 370 queer and trans immigrants in NYC to pay for rent, groceries, utilities, medication, and mental health services during the pandemic. They also connected over 40 queer and trans detainees with free legal representation for asylum hearings, and parole and bond proceedings.

 Uchechukwa Onwa, the current co-director of QDEP, came to the US in 2017 after the passage of the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act in Nigeria, his home country, criminalized LGBTQ relationships. Upon arrival in the US, he learned a quick and brutal lesson in ‘American’ racism and xenophobia when he was shackled at the airport, then driven to an ICE detention center where he was incarcerated for three months. “I know that there are so many other people like me who want to be safe,” Onwa says. How to promote that safety?

“At the end, it is our stories, as migrants. Our stories matter. And at the end it is our stories that are going to change that narrative.” –U. Onwa (2020 Deep Dive Interviews)

 WHAT CAN WE DO?
  • Volunteer with QDEP, or Pen Pal with QDEP members in detention. Email eliza@qdep.org for information.
  • Join Immigration Equality to support the recent complaint filed with Homeland Security to investigate the Houston Asylum Office’s handling of Credible Fear Interviews for asylum seekers, including LGBT migrants. 

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 04/02/2022

Posted on April 2, 2022 by - News, Newsletter

Dear friends, 

With you, we are watching for spring to poke around the corner and bring us renewed warmth and urban bloom. This week we offer a review of the internationally-acclaimed documentary Flee (2021), which narrates one Afghan family’s story of escape, loss, and refuge. We then follow-up on a report in our last issue about the ‘March to Albany,’ as hundreds of immigrant activists arrived this past week in the capitol calling for budget justice, and a permanent fix to gaps in the safety net for tens of thousands of immigrant New Yorkers.   

Newsletter highlights:
  1. Review of 2021 film documentary on Afghan refugee family
  2. Immigrant activists march on Albany (Part 2)

1. Freedom Is Telling Your Story

“When you flee as a child, it takes time to learn to trust people. You’re constantly on your guard, all the time, all the time. Even when you’re in a safe place, you’re on your guard.”—Amin Nawabi in Flee (dir: Rasmussen, 2021)

The animated documentary Flee (directed by Jonas Poher Rasmussen and written by Rasmussen and Amin Nawabi) is the first film to be nominated in three different Academy Award categories: Best Animated Film, Best Documentary Feature, and Best International Feature Film. This captivating film, produced in Denmark, did not win any Oscars last Sunday. Award or not, the film is well worth viewing for its technical originality, and for how it starkly illuminates the decades of stress a refugee endures.

Flee recounts how Amin Nawabi (a pseudonym) fled as a gay teenager from Afghanistan to Denmark, and the consequences of his long and involved journey. Through an unusual combination of animated characters, television clips, historical film footage, photographs, and grey and white drawings, we learn how Nawabi’s family endured the trauma of life under the mujahideen, flight to a repressive and secretive life in Moscow, desperate failed attempts to get smuggled by boat to Sweden, and, finally, Nawabi’s successful illegal border crossing and asylum in Denmark.

What will stay with you from this film is the dramatic sacrifice of family members to save one another–a feature in so many refugee stories. The film also narrates the vile cruelty and greed of the traffickers, the corruption and brutality of law enforcement officers, and the fear and loneliness of being a refugee who yearns for “home” as a place of safety that is not temporary.

An essential part of Nawabi’s survival is the false story he had to tell to be assured of asylum in Denmark–that all of his family was dead. With the possible exception of his father, none of his family is actually dead. At the time Nawabi escaped, his eldest brother and two sisters were in Sweden and his mother and older brother were in Moscow. Now they are all in various places in Europe. Late in the film we learn how much of a toll his necessary lie has taken on him: he cannot share stories of his family without revealing that they are alive, and so he constantly fears exposure. “I couldn’t tell the truth. There were lots of consequences. I couldn’t be myself. It was really painful.”

In an interview on NPR between Nawabi, film director Rasmussen, and Ari Shapiro, Rasmussen tells how he and Nawabi became close friends in high school in Denmark. Nawabi recounts how Rasmussen is one of the few people he trusts, yet it took decades before he was comfortable enough to tell him his true story. He says the film has given him a sense of freedom.

Rasmussen and Nawabi want us to understand that “refugee” is a circumstance and not an identity. “Don’t define him as a refugee because he is so much more. He’s an academic, a homeowner, a husband, and a cat owner,”  Rasmussen explains.

Nawabi says it is amazing to see how Ukrainians today are being welcomed and helped, but how starkly differently other refugees were treated in 2015. The situation in Ukraine shows that displacement from your home and your country can happen to anyone. What is important is to help, and to be kind. 

To view Flee online: https://www.fleemovie.com/

2. March to Albany (Part 2)

“We came to Albany to tell the governor that we are awake, we are united, and we won’t stop fighting until our needs are met … This movement is an example to other states. Immigrants across the country are rising up. We are demanding that our rights be respected … ” —Miguel Angel Flores (Democracy Now, 3-24-2022)

One thousand excluded workers—together with elected officials, faith leaders, and political allies—marched to the steps of the Capitol on March 23, demanding the state budget include billions in additional support to fund excluded workers and establish a permanent unemployment insurance program for undocumented workers.

Crossing the Rensselaer-Albany Bridge and briefly shutting down traffic on a four-lane highway, activists called for an economic safety net that won’t leave behind New York state’s essential, and still excluded, immigrant workers.

As we reported in our last newsletter, tens of thousands of eligible New Yorkers were shut out of the historic $2.1 billion Excluded Workers Fund, established in April 2021 after a year-long mobilization by immigrant workers. Alongside the demand for re-opening the Fund with additional monies, immigrant justice groups are calling for ‘Coverage for All’: a health insurance plan for undocumented New Yorkers and documented workers who are paid ‘off the books’ by employers. To address structural inequalities in the social safety net dramatically revealed by the pandemic, immigrant groups are also fighting for a permanent unemployment insurance program to support undocumented workers.

New York’s immigrant-led Fund Excluded Workers coalition (FEW) has helped launch campaigns for similar programs in at least five states across the US. State-level victories to fund excluded workers, and create permanent programs for health coverage and unemployment benefits, can help generate national momentum for changes at the federal level.

For now, the struggle is targeting Albany, Governor Hochul, and next year’s state budget. “We all want the pandemic to be over,” said Emma Kreyche of the Worker Justice Center of NY. “But it’s callous and irresponsible of lawmakers to act as if we can move on while tens of thousands of excluded workers in our state are still in the midst of a profound crisis. No New Yorker should be without a safety net—not now and not in the future.”

WHAT CAN WE DO?
  • Call Gov. Hochul (518-474-8390), press 3 then 1, and tell her to #FundExcludedWorkers!
  • Consider donating to the ongoing work of #FundExcludedWorkers.

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 02/05/2022

Posted on February 5, 2022 by - News, Newsletter

Dear friends,

​​We welcome our readers to the Year of the Tiger, ushered in by over a billion people celebrating this past week’s Lunar New Year—including hundreds of thousands of Asian and Asian American residents here in Queens. JHISN marks the new year by a look back at the extraordinary work in 2021 of several local immigrant justice groups.

Many of us have seen the recent headlines about the fatal landslide in Quito, Ecuador’s capital city, after nearly 24 hours of continuous rain. Not all of us know that Ecuadorians compose the largest immigrant community here in central Queens. We offer a story about the history and recent increase in migration from Ecuador, which is also a story about Jackson Heights today.  

Newsletter highlights:
  1. Migrant Paths from Ecuador to Jackson Heights
  2. Local Immigrant Justice Groups @2021

1. Ecuadorian Immigrants at JH’s Heart

“If you have dreams, you can fulfill them, as long as you feel proud of who you are and where you are going. The rest just depends on work.”
José Juan Paredes, Afro-Ecuadorian musician

Ecuadorians make up the biggest immigrant group in our community: more than 100,000 in Queens and over 20,000 in the Jackson Heights area alone. In recent years, coronavirus and other factors have caused a new surge of migration that is bringing more Ecuadorians to our neighborhood.

Ecuador is highly diverse geographically, socially, and politically. Spanish, Quechua, Shuar, and other Indigenous languages are officially recognized. The northern Andean provinces were part of the Inca Empire and have much in common with Peru and Colombia, while there is a strong Afro-Ecuadorian culture in the Pacific coastal region. The eastern rainforest region is home to several Native peoples. And Ecuador is itself home to the largest refugee population in Latin America, mostly Columbians fleeing conflict in their own country. 

Ecuadorians’ reasons for migrating to the US are diverse as well, but often involve economic crises. The first wave of migrants followed the 1947 collapse in the market for Panama hats (made by Ecuadorian women). A second wave of migration in the early 1980s was caused by an oil bust and economic crash that bankrupted many poor farmers. In the late 1990s, the national poverty rate climbed to 56% due to low oil prices, flooding, and political instability. Up to a million Ecuadorians emigrated in those years, out of a total population of roughly 18 million. 

Now, Covid has set off another wave of migration. The pandemic devastated Ecuador’s already-struggling economy, causing the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs. The number of Ecuadorians arriving in the US reached its height this past summer: in July, US authorities stopped 17,314 Ecuadorians at the southern border, compared with 3,598 stops in January. 

Other factors contributed to recent Ecuadorian migration. Starting in 2018, Mexico allowed Ecuadorians to enter without a visa. This offered Ecuadorians easier access to the US border. (Mexico canceled this policy in August 2021, making migration more arduous and hazardous.) Also, Ecuadorian nationals, unlike migrants from Central America, were not targeted for automatic exclusion under draconian Title 42 “public health” regulations. Finally, many Ecuadorians hoped that Joe Biden would be more immigrant-friendly.

Ecuadorians play an important role in the economy and culture of New York. Representing all social classes, they work as everything from professionals and business owners to day laborers cleaning houses. As we know, there are many Ecuadorian-owned restaurants. But also, undocumented Ecuadorian workers are a mainstay of NYC’s entire restaurant industry. Many Ecuadorian immigrants also work in construction, often doing the most dangerous and difficult jobs.

The Alianza Ecuatoriana Internacional (International Ecuadorian Alliance), located in Corona Plaza, is a respected community center for Ecuadorian immigrants. Founded by Walter Sinche in 1994 to combat violence and racism against Latin American immigrants, it has become a multifaceted non-profit that advocates for immigrant justice while also providing public health education and supplies, job training, and cultural activities including music and dance. The Ecuadorian American Culture Center, located in Long Island City, is another important institution for immigrants. EACC provides extensive cultural programming as well as tutoring.

Like many immigrant communities, Ecuadorian Americans are underrepresented in electoral politics. When Francisco Moya became State Assembly member for the 39th District in 2017, he was the first Ecuadorian American elected to public office in the US. (Moya currently represents District 21 of the New York City Council.) It will be interesting to see how Ecuadorian American votes influence local politics once NYC noncitizen voting takes effect in 2023.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

​​2. A Year of Struggles and Victories // 2021

“In 2021 we came together in the face of compounding crises to take care of each other, and win what we needed to survive. We found ways to connect however we could, digitally over zoom, over the phone, and sometimes in person …. We built solutions even though everyone said it was impossible. We created the world we needed, one piece at a time.”  – DRUM ‘Unite & Organize!’ video

We can’t begin to truly represent all that local immigrant justice groups have faced, and accomplished, during this past year of pandemic and political crisis. But we offer here a selective story that gives some sense of their inspiring engagement with community organizing, advocacy, and direct action. 

DRUM (Desis Rising Up & Moving) is a member-led organization based in Jackson Heights that has been organizing South Asian and Indo-Caribbean working-class communities since 2000. Amidst ongoing commitments to gender justice work and their annual summer Youth Organizing Institute, DRUM in 2021 also built new solidarities and new organizational forms. Members participated in a solidarity hunger strike with taxi workers who finally won historic debt relief from the city. DRUM organized to bring South Asian and Latinx delivery workers together, building solidarity in the face of an exploitative, dangerous industry. And they launched a new sibling organization, DRUM Beats, to engage in electoral politics and creatively build ‘hyperlocal power.’

Adhikaar is a women-led immigrant justice group in Elmhurst serving the Nepali-speaking community since 2005. In July 2021, Adhikaar celebrated a historic victory: a bill dramatically expanding legal and economic protections for domestic workers passed the NYC Council. Adhikaar and coalition partners also introduced the NYC Care Campaign, aimed at gaining insurance and benefits for over 200,000 care and domestic workers—primarily immigrant women of color. Adhikaar helped lead the fight in 2021 for a New Jersey Domestic Workers Bill of Rights to secure legal rights for the state’s 50,000 domestic workers.

Adhikaar was invited to the White House in Summer 2021 to participate in a roundtable on immigrant rights with Vice President Kamala Harris. Closer to home, they continued to provide neighborhood relief during the ongoing Covid crisis, distributing Emergency Relief Funds to community members excluded from federal relief, and working with the NY Immigration Coalition to distribute food coupons to over 900 households.

The Street Vendor Project, representing about 2000 NYC street vendors, continued in 2021 to push for city legislation to decriminalize street vending and provide protections for an immigrant workforce that, literally, feeds New York. In May, the Street Vendor Project organized a well-publicized direct action at Hudson Yards where vendors had been displaced by the NYPD at the bidding of real estate developers.

In September 2021, when Hurricane Ida moved north and torrential rains slammed into the city, Queens Neighborhoods United (QNU) stepped up to provide mutual aid and financial support to immigrant households in central Queens devastated by basement flooding.  

Make the Road New York (MRNY) organizes and empowers immigrant Latinx communities. Founded in 2007, MRNY has over 23,000 members and a local office right here on Roosevelt Avenue. In 2021, MRNY provided Covid information and outreach to 40,000 people; served 1,100 weekly at MRNY food pantries; and vaccinated 1000 at community center events. As leaders in the coalition struggle to Fund Excluded Workers, MRNY celebrated a huge victory with the first-in-the-nation state fund that delivered $2.1 billion to immigrant workers excluded from federal emergency unemployment and pandemic stimulus relief.

MRNY also helped win $500 million to create a culturally responsive curriculum reflecting the diversity of NYC students, and $4.2 billion in funding for school districts with high needs. After a decade-long campaign, Make the Road celebrated the repeal in 2021 of the Walking While Trans ‘loitering’ law that profiled and criminalized low-income TGNCIQ people of color. Looking ahead, MRNY launched plans in 2021 to open a new three-story, 24,000 square foot community center in Queens in 2022.

Chhaya CDC is another Jackson Heights-based organization, focused on housing and economic justice for South Asian and Indo-Caribbean communities. In 2021, when Hurricane Ida hit, Chhaya was poised to take a lead role in aiding immigrant households devastated by flooding and property damage. They knocked on more than 200 doors to provide resources, and distributed over $53,000 in emergency relief funds. Chhaya also organized multilingual community outreach (in Bangla, Hindi, Nepali, Tibetan, and English) about the Emergency Rental Assistance Program to aid households threatened with evictions due to the pandemic.

NICE (New Immigrant Community Empowerment) is an immigrant justice organization and day laborer worker center in Jackson Heights that has, for over two decades, offered solidarity and job training to newly arrived immigrant workers. In 2021, NICE amplified its role as a community organization, helping thousands of immigrant households to weather the pandemic by providing groceries, hot meals, accurate Covid information, and reliable vaccination locations. At the same time, NICE organized multiple rallies, vigils, and trips to Washington, DC to advocate for immigration reform. Their major campaign, 11 DAYS FOR 11 MILLION, demanded that the Biden administration keep its promise of citizenship for 11 million immigrants. In mid-November, the 11 days of action culminated in an 11-mile march that started at 110th St. and ended in Brooklyn outside Senator Schumer’s home.

WHAT CAN WE DO?
  • If you are financially able, consider supporting the work of any of the above organizations! Just click on the organization’s name and go to their DONATE page. 

 

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.