IN 2021, WE WORKED ON:

Aging With Dignity, Boys and Men of Color, Education Equity, Immigrant Justice, Healthcare Access, and Mental Health

THROUGH THE FOLLOWING STRATEGIES:

Building Community Leaders And Advocates, Community Engagement and Mobilization, National and State Policy Advocacy, Internal Infrastructure Building

Legislative Highlights | National

Nationally, we focused on advancing equity through COVID-19 relief and undoing the immediate harm from the previous presidential Administration. To this end, SEARAC joined the call to release as many detained immigrants as possible and advocated for inclusion of all immigrants for COVID-19 financial relief. Additionally, SEARAC uplifted the impact of the pandemic on our communities’ education, health, and wellbeing, pushing for inclusion of Southeast Asian Americans in the rollout of the American Rescue Plan. You can view SEARAC’s Presidential Transition Priorities and 117th Congressional Platform for a full list of what SEARAC prioritized in 2021.

Through different coalition partnerships, SEARAC submitted multiple sets of administrative policy recommendations to the Biden Administration pushing for reform and immediate changes to the unilateral executive policies from the previous administration. SEARAC met with various agencies, including the Department of Education, Justice, Homeland Security, and State to educate and move forward SEARAC’s administrative priorities, including the efforts to disaggregate student data and support the AAPI Data Disaggregation Initiative, end the removal of Southeast Asian refugees, and lift visa sanctions on African and Southeast Asian countries. Additionally, SEARAC also joined the efforts to pass the Build Back Better (BBB) Act in Congress, prioritizing funding support for education and caregiving for older adults and workforce training for family caregivers. As part of the Diverse Elders Coalition, SEARAC advocated for language specifically supporting elders and the entities that serve them in BBB. SEARAC also worked with our coalition partners to try and remove language criminalizing immigrants in the United States Citizenship Act and the American Dream and Promise Act.

KEY NATIONAL LEGISLATION THAT SEARAC SUPPORTED IN 2021:

• Black Maternal Momnibus Act: Directs federal agencies to improve maternal health, particularly among racial and ethnic minorities and other vulnerable populations.
• COVID-19 Language Access Act: Requires federal agencies to translate written English materials into multiple languages, including Cambodian, Hmong, Laotian, and Vietnamese.
• Debt-Free College Act: Covers the unmet financial needs of students through multiple funding pathways and allows certain undocumented students access to federal financial aid.
• Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act: Overhauls the immigration detention system by ending mandatory detention, phasing out private detention facilities, and increasing federal oversight of remaining detention facilities.
• New Way Forward Act: Restores due process protections back to the immigration system by ending mandatory detention, limiting crimes that make someone removable, creating a statute of limitation, and restoring judicial discretion back to immigration judges.
• Teaching Asian Pacific American History Act: Requires colleges, libraries, museums, and other institutions to teach Asian Pacific American history as part of civics and US history.

MAJOR WINS FOR THE NATIONAL TEAM INCLUDED:

• Meeting with President Biden and Vice President Harris together with the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans, with whom we discussed Southeast Asian American deportation and the need for the Administration to take executive action to prevent our community members’ removals.
• Securing over 150+ organizational signatures onto a letter urging the Biden Administration to end the detentions and deportations of Southeast Asian refugees and another 90+ signatures on a letter to Secretary Mayorkas.
• Supporting reintroduction of the New Way Forward Act in the House, with over 40 cosponsors.
• Highlighting Homeland Security deportation-related visa sanctions on African and Southeast Asian community members to the Administration, including a Change.org petition that garnered more than 2600 signatures and supporting Rep. Omar’s letter to the Administration urging the lifting of these sanctions.

Legislative Highlights | California

In California, we focused on advancing equity through supporting major campaigns in health and education. Through coalition partnerships, we provided community education and uplifted individual stories on the need for universal health care coverage regardless of immigration status, submitted multiple rounds of recommendations and pushed for the adoption of the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, shared best practices with the Office of Minority Health on COVID-19 response for AANHPIs, and met with Governor Newsom’s office to highlight the adverse impact of deportation on our communities and families.

KEY STATE LEGISLATION THAT SEARAC SUPPORTED IN 2021:

AB = Assembly Bill SB = Senate Bill.

• SB 56 (Durazo), to expand Medi-Cal to seniors ages 65 and older regardless of immigration status
• AB 4 (Arambula) to expand Medi-Cal to all those who are income-eligible but currently excluded due to their immigration status
• AB 101 (Medina), to make ethnic studies as a high school graduation requirement
• AB 937 (Carillo), the VISION Act, to protect community members who have already been deemed eligible for release from being transferred by jail/prison systems to immigration detention
• API Equity Budget, to make historic investments to address longstanding racial inequities among CA’s API communities

MAJOR WINS FOR THE STATE TEAM INCLUDED:

• Successful adoption of the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum by the State Board of Education, including incorporation of Cambodian, Hmong, Lao, Iu-Mien, and Vietnamese history, providing a historic resource for local education agencies to teach diverse histories and experiences more representative of the student population
• Meeting with Gov. Newsom’s office to uplift the stories of individuals at risk of deportation as well as the challenges of community members who have been deported and separated from their families
• Passage of the API Equity Budget and specific allocations toward data equity and disaggregation, culturally and linguistically appropriate media outreach, and youth peer-to-peer support networks

Storytelling is a critical component of SEARAC’s mission. We share stories that are untold in the media, that are unheard in congressional offices, that often go unsaid beyond our own circles.

#StopSEAADeportation

• On the 25th anniversary of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRAIRA), we launched a series of deportation-focused public service announcement (PSA) videos featuring the stories of five impacted Southeast Asian American community members and their families. This video series is designed not only to educate the broader Southeast Asian community on the impact of deportations on our families and communities but also to build public support for the need to end deportations.
• Through this new series of PSA videos, SEARAC honors the individuals and communities who have been devastated by the heightened deportations of Southeast Asian Americans, a practice that began with the passage of IIRAIRA and continues today.
• As part of the series launch, we invited community members to contact their members of Congress to co-sponsor the New Way Forward Act (H.R. 536), which provides a bold vision of what our immigration system should look like, one that does not rely on mass criminalization, detention, or deportation. New Way Forward repeals some of the worst provisions of the 1996 immigration laws that are directly responsible for expanding the incarceration of immigrants, creating a fast track for deportations without due process, setting the foundation for local police and ICE collaboration, and cementing the pipeline from arrest to deportation.

To learn more about the New Way Forward Act, click here.

STORYCORPS COLLABORATION

In partnership with StoryCorps, we released a series of animations that celebrated the richness and resilience that marks SEAA communities. Listen to SEAA community members here.

“I think the refugee camp, to the rest of the outside world, was a place of refuge. But for those of us who were living in the camp, what we experienced was starvation and persecution, camp guards’ brutalities and death. … Coming to America wasn’t something we thought of or had planned. We came here not because the grass feels greener. We came here because fire was burning on our feet.” – Jeff Thungc

“My grandma and my uncle, they really contributed to us being able to escape the genocide. My grandma left Thailand to come to Cambodia while we were in the labor camps, and just wanted to make sure that we were still alive, and ended up stepping on a landmine. Thank God she survived.” – Savong Lam