South Asian Americans
Leading Together

Yes­ter­day, white suprema­cy was on full dis­play at the US Capi­tol and at gov­ern­ment build­ings across the nation. These attacks rep­re­sent a bla­tant and ille­gal attempt to deter democ­ra­cy and pro­mote white suprema­cist beliefs ​— which harm every­one. All of us have a duty to respond, not only with con­dem­na­tion, but with sus­tained action against the insti­ga­tors and their sup­port­ers.

Though Con­gress has cer­ti­fied the results of the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, they must do more. They must call for the removal of Pres­i­dent Trump and begin impeach­ment pro­ceed­ings ​imme­di­ate­ly. Repub­li­can lead­er­ship must ensure there is a peace­ful tran­si­tion of pow­er on and past Inau­gu­ra­tion Day​, and all mem­bers of Con­gress who incit­ed, encour­aged, or par­tic­i­pat­ed in this attack must be expelled for break­ing their Oaths of Office. Those respon­si­ble for yesterday’s attacks must be held ​equal­ly account­able under the law.  

We must also be care­ful about how to char­ac­ter­ize yesterday’s events. SAALT’s work on nation­al secu­ri­ty and immi­gra­tion issues since 9/11 has made it clear that label­ing acts of extrem­ist vio­lence as ter­ror­ism is dan­ger­ous and paves the way for the tar­get­ing of Black and Brown communities​, as seen through the War on Ter­ror frame­work. We can ​and must stand vig­i­lant against yesterday’s attacks with­out resort­ing to such char­ac­ter­i­za­tions by demand­ing that what hap­pened yes­ter­day is ​char­ac­ter­ized as white suprema­cist vio­lence. SAALT stands with our Black allies, who are right­ful­ly point­ing out the dou­ble stan­dards in how the white suprema­cists behind yesterday’s events are being treat­ed, as com­pared to the peace­ful pro­test­ers dur­ing last summer’s upris­ings.

“For our own com­mu­ni­ties, who were retrau­ma­tized by yesterday’s events, we are with you. The past four years have been a relent­less surge of poli­cies and attacks against the bod­ies and rights of so many com­mu­ni­ties, ours includ­ed. SAALT will con­tin­ue to press for the rever­sal of these xeno­pho­bic and racist poli­cies from the Trump era and push for bold solu­tions that will improve the lives of every­one.”

Sim­ran Noor, SAALT Board Chair

​

As South Asians, we also have work to do with­in our com­mu­ni­ties. There are reports of Indi­an Amer­i­cans being present at ​and encour­ag­ing yesterday’s attempt­ed  coup. Giv­en what we wit­nessed from the ​2020 Howdy Modi event in Texas fea­tur­ing Trump and Modi, this is no sur­prise. We have work to do with­in our own com­mu­ni­ties to raise aware­ness about the links between Hin­du nation­al­ism and white suprema­cy, and the dan­gers of ally­ing with the ele­ments who orches­trat­ed yesterday’s events. Sim­ply put: We can­not con­demn one fas­cist and excuse anoth­er. SAALT calls on its entire com­mu­ni­ty to hold these truths and stand unit­ed against nation­al­ism, fas­cism, and impe­ri­al­ism on all its fronts.

SAALT will con­tin­ue to share news and cov­er­age of the vio­lence, as well as help con­nect those affect­ed by the chaos with local resources. Please reach out to sruti@saalt.org with any ques­tions or requests.

Novem­ber 17, 2020: Yes­ter­day, the FBI released its 2019 Hate Crime Sta­tis­tics Report, show­ing the dead­liest year on record and the high­est num­ber of hate crime mur­ders since 1991. A total of 7,314 hate crime inci­dents were report­ed by law enforce­ment agen­cies. The FBI data illus­trates a slight decrease from last year’s report, and yet we know that com­mu­ni­ties of col­or, LGBTQ folks, and peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties con­tin­ue to be tar­gets of hate vio­lence by white suprema­cist indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions.

Major findings of the report:

• The FBI report cites the Sikh com­mu­ni­ty saw a slight decrease in the num­ber of report­ed anti-Sikh inci­dents in 2019, after a record 200 per­cent increase in 2018. And while crimes moti­vat­ed by anti-Mus­lim sen­ti­ment decreased, with 176 report­ed, over­all hate crime inci­dents tar­get­ing Mus­lims and those per­ceived as Mus­lims has been up since 2015. As of Novem­ber 1, 2020, SAALT and our part­ners have tracked 348 inci­dents of xeno­pho­bic or Islam­o­pho­bic rhetoric, and 733 inci­dents of hate vio­lence tar­get­ing Mus­lims and Asian Amer­i­cans, and those per­ceived as Mus­lim or Asian Amer­i­can, since Novem­ber 2015.
• Racial­ly moti­vat­ed hate crime inci­dents made up the major­i­ty of hate crimes report­ed in 2019, with near­ly half of the inci­dents moti­vat­ed by anti-Black racism. The num­ber of anti-Black hate crimes was the high­est it’s been since 2011.
• There were 51 hate crime mur­ders in 2019. 22 of those were the racial­ly moti­vat­ed mur­ders in the sin­gle El Paso shoot­ing last August. There was a nine per­cent increase in report­ed hate crime inci­dents against Lati­nos, and yet the dead­ly El Paso shoot­ing was cat­e­go­rized under “anti-oth­er race/ethnicity/ancestry” despite well doc­u­ment­ed anti-Mex­i­can sen­ti­ment. As report­ed in SAALT’s COVID report, the “oth­er” cat­e­go­riza­tion often obscures the true impact on com­mu­ni­ties. 
• Of the known offend­ers, over 50% iden­ti­fied as white.

The num­bers depict a far from accu­rate pic­ture of the real preva­lence of hate vio­lence inci­dents in the U.S. The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has yet to man­date hate crime report­ing at the state and local lev­els. Dur­ing an extra­or­di­nary year of upris­ings and state vio­lence against Black and brown com­mu­ni­ties, it is imper­a­tive for Con­gress to pass the Jabara-Hey­er NO HATE Act, (H.R. 3545; S. 2043), which helps close vast gaps in hate crime sta­tis­tics and improve data col­lec­tion on hate crimes by local, state, and fed­er­al law enforce­ment agen­cies. The bill also includes a restora­tive jus­tice com­po­nent which pro­vides an “alter­na­tive sen­tenc­ing” pro­vi­sion that would allow spe­cif­ic defen­dants super­vised release to under­take edu­ca­tion­al class­es or com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice direct­ly relat­ed to the harmed com­mu­ni­ty. 

Hate vio­lence tar­get­ing South Asian, Arabs, and Mus­lims is fueled by state sanc­tioned white suprema­cy. Poli­cies and prac­tices like the Mus­lim Ban, fam­i­ly sep­a­ra­tion, and ongo­ing police vio­lence endan­ger our com­mu­ni­ties because they embold­en white suprema­cists. From the con­stant van­dal­iz­ing of mosques, har­rass­ment of Mus­lim women, to the tar­get­ing of South Asians in their own neigh­bor­hoods, we have seen the very real and con­stant impact of this vio­lence. SAAT is com­mit­ted to advo­cat­ing for pol­i­cy and com­mu­ni­ty based solu­tions that address hate vio­lence from its root cause — by fight­ing all the man­i­fes­ta­tions of state sanc­tioned hate.

Yes­ter­day, in response to the Supreme Court uphold­ing the Deferred Action for Child­hood Arrivals (DACA) pro­gram last month, the Trump Admin­is­tra­tion took expect­ed steps to dis­man­tle the pro­gram, releas­ing a memo that said it would not be accept­ing new DACA appli­ca­tions, reject­ing most advance parole requests, and lim­it­ing those with pend­ing renewals  to only one year instead of two years. 

For the over 5,000 South Asian DACA recip­i­ents, and the over 20,000 Indi­ans alone who remain eli­gi­ble for DACA, this will have a direct impact on any exist­ing renew­al appli­ca­tions and for any undoc­u­ment­ed South Asian youth who were hop­ing to apply for DACA.

We knew the Supreme Court vic­to­ry was tem­po­rary, allow­ing the Admin­is­tra­tion to retal­i­ate. We must con­tin­ue push­ing back, forg­ing ahead, and ensur­ing that we fight for poli­cies that sup­port all immi­grant com­mu­ni­ties with­out harm­ing oth­ers.

Here are things you can do right now:

• Join a com­mu­ni­ty call today at 8pmET to dis­cuss what this means 
• Con­tribute to the DACA Renew­al fund and to move­ment orga­ni­za­tions who are fight­ing this every step of the way.
• Email your Sen­a­tor by click­ing this link here and demand­ing they sup­port the Dream and Promise Act which would ensure per­ma­nent pro­tec­tions for undoc­u­ment­ed peo­ple and com­mit to STOP fund­ing this Administration’s  Depor­ta­tion Force
• Post on your socials using the TRUMP ENDS DACA TOOLKIT | #HomeIsHere
• Change your Face­book and Twit­ter pro­file pics to add the #Home­IsHere fil­ter

Wash­ing­ton, D.C.: As the Trump Admin­is­tra­tion inten­tion­al­ly fails to address a nation­al health cri­sis that has already claimed the lives of over 120,000 peo­ple in the U.S., they con­tin­ue to dou­ble down on crim­i­nal­iz­ing immi­grant com­mu­ni­ties while still exploit­ing their labor to car­ry us through the pan­dem­ic. This week’s exec­u­tive order extend­ed the 60 day ban on the issuance of green cards announced in April and fur­ther expands the ban to H‑1B, H‑2B, L, and cer­tain J non-immi­grant visas through the end of the year. This pri­mar­i­ly tar­gets high-skilled and guest work­ers, under­min­ing fam­i­ly reuni­fi­ca­tion and diver­si­ty visa pro­grams. 

SAALT’s Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Lak­sh­mi Sri­daran said,“Over 70 per­cent of H1B visa hold­ers in the U.S. are from South Asian coun­tries. Our com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers and their fam­i­lies con­tin­ue to be jeop­ar­dized because of these restric­tions. If the goal was to pro­tect U.S. work­ers, they would be giv­en PPE, sick days, and health­care in the midst of this dead­ly pan­dem­ic. From the Mus­lim Ban to tar­get­ing a range of immi­grant pop­u­la­tions from H‑1B visa­hold­ers to DACA recip­i­ents, this admin­is­tra­tion’s racist and anti-immi­grant agen­da under­scores their abysmal fail­ure in lead­er­ship.”

For more infor­ma­tion on who will be impact­ed by this lat­est exec­u­tive order, check out this fact sheet from the Cen­ter for Immi­grant Rights Clin­ic at Penn State Law.

Con­tact: sophia@saalt.org

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UPDATE, July 10th

Ear­li­er this week, we put out a call for vol­un­teers to assist with an out­reach effort to pro­vide food and restau­rant work­ers from the South Asian com­mu­ni­ty with “know your rights” resources. The alert was prompt­ed by com­mu­ni­ty reports about an immi­gra­tion enforce­ment action tar­get­ing work­ers in the restau­rant indus­try over the past week in DC. Out of respect for those direct­ly affect­ed, we are not pro­vid­ing any addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion at this time. We will con­tin­ue our work to pro­tect and defend our com­mu­ni­ties, espe­cial­ly at a time when immi­grants are being tar­get­ed, whether at work­places and homes or at the bor­der.

July 8, 2019

An Indi­an restau­rant in DC was raid­ed by ICE last week. Sev­er­al Hin­di speak­ing employ­ees were tak­en to the Mont­gomery Coun­ty jail in Mary­land. 

Giv­en the prospect of immi­gra­tion raids in the DC area, we are call­ing for vol­un­teers to join us for an out­reach effort on July 13th and 14th.

SAALT is seek­ing vol­un­teers to help with out­reach, trans­la­tion, and legal coun­sel. Click here for imme­di­ate steps you can take.