Alliance of South Asians Taking Action (ASATA)

June 26, 2007

Dear Senator,

We, the undersigned organizations that serve the South Asian community in the San Francisco Bay Area, are writing to express our concerns about the direction that the Senate is taking in immigration reform through Senate Bill 1639. The Senate bill does not balance the civil rights of immigrants and will inevitably lead to separated families, isolation and fear, and distrust of law enforcement and government officials.

We at ASATA oppose the continuing domestic “war on terrorism” and “war on immigrants”: movements that we understand as intricately linked.

For us, opposition to and mobilization around the various versions of HR4437 means showing our solidarity with other immigrant communities, particularly our Latino brothers and sisters, as they fight what is also our fight.

Immigration to this country does not denote positions of privilege, but of plight. The majority of us did not make a decision to migrate from our homes, families, and communities: we were forced here by the violent effects of global economic inequity. The U.S. government is using a double-edged sword as it coerces countries in the Majority World into Free Trade Agreements and then simultaneously criminalizes the people displaced by them.

South Asian Advocates Strongly Urge Congress To Pass Immigration Reform That Respects Civil Rights Of Immigrants

As representatives of organizations that serve South Asians across the United States — from empowering women, workers and youth to protecting the civil rights and liberties of ethnic and religious minorities — we see firsthand the impact of the immigration system on our community. As Congress prepares to pass the broadest immigration reform law in decades, we urge lawmakers to adopt sensible and humane solutions to fix the broken immigration system in the United States.

Published as an op-ed in India-West

In the summer of 1920, Indian troops were used by the British to suppress a nationalist uprising in what we now call Iraq. In 2003 and 2004, the U.S. is using economic and other means of coercion to create its own international fighting force in Iraq to use as cannon fodder, just like it uses its recruits from poor communities of color domestically.