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HANA Center – Citizenship, Immigration, Housing & Legal Services

Visit the HANA Center website for more information on all of their citizenship, immigration, housing & legal services: https://www.hanacenter.org/ihls

As a DOJ recognized organization, the HANA Center assist immigrants at varying stages of the immigration process, providing a wide array of application services: citizenship, adjustment of status, Consular processing, family petition, re-entry permit, and the smaller steps in between (passport, interpretation and “Green Card” renewal and replacement.

As a Housing and Urban Development-certified housing counseling agency, HANA Housing Services address barriers to affordable housing faced by Korean and other immigrants through one-on-one counseling, information, and referral services. We also host workshops in related areas. The goal of the program is to aid immigrants with limited English proficiency (LEP) to access affordable housing resources and understand tenant-landlord rights & fair housing law. HANA Housing Services help low to moderate income families remain in their homes via financial planning or even post-purchase education. Our housing program also assists LEP seniors in exploring housing options through public housing lists and aids in completing their senior housing applications.

HANA Center administers the IDHS’s Welcoming Center’s Housing and Utility Assistance Project, which was established to provide temporary emergency assistance to immigrants, refugees, and Limited English Proficient (LEP) individuals who have experienced a COVID-19 related financial hardship between March 1, 2020 and December 30, 2020.

FREE LEGAL CLINIC – Our free legal clinic volunteer attorneys provide initial direction and advice in Spanish, Korean, and English. Immigrants have great difficulty in accessing or understanding the United States legal system. In addition to the significant monetary barrier for low income families, immigrants also face difficulties in securing legal services that are linguistically and culturally competent. They are often left with no option but self-representation, despite having no legal training or support. This situation too often results in individuals unable to communicate with court officers, and being unable to read and interpret court documents/notices. To address this base language barrier, they often bring friends or their children to provide translation. Nevertheless, because these translators are also unfamiliar with legal terminology, interpretations are often fraught with errors. While low-income immigrants have a great need for legal services (particularly in the areas of immigration, housing, credit and finance, domestic violence, and employment law), they are unable to meet these challenges.

 

 

E Iho ana ‘o Luna E Pi’i ana ‘o Lalo

“Pacific Islanders to the front! The work in defense of our Black ‘ohana (family) is lifelong. For today’s action demand from the Movement 4 Black Lives being “We demand community control”, they suggested that folks hold a virtual conversation about self-governance: so that’s what’s happening tonight”

“We are super excited to have Jamaica Osorio join us today and we hope you can join us as we re-connect to not only our indigenous history of community control and self-governance, but also as we discuss how the history of Black liberation has intimately informed and impacted our fights for liberation in Oceania”

“The world we need will be led by how we have always taken care of our communities. If we’re moving away from depending on the state, law enforcement, and institutions: then it’s gonna be us. Taking care of each other and each other’s communities, health, and futures”

This event was recorded live on June 4, 2020. You can view the recorded video on Empowering Pacific Islander Communities’s Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/ElevateYourVoice/videos/2670264169885334

 

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Mobilizing Oceania

Empowering Pacific Islander Communities’s Mobilizing Oceania event is an in-depth look at how to best activate Pacific Islanders to get out the count and the vote in 2020 where issue areas are the entry point to sustained civic engagement. This event included a NHPI panel featuring some of their leaders who are all doing amazing work.

This event was recorded live on June 25, 2020. You can video a recording of the event on Empowering Pacific Islander Communities’s Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/ElevateYourVoice/videos/196675701675960.

You can also view more information about this event and the speakers here.

Building Power & Safety Through Solidarity Campaign

As our communities of working-class immigrant and undocumented workers and families grapple with the impacts of the escalating COVID-19 pandemic, which will continue to grow into a social, health, and economic crisis, DRUM in New York City has launched the “Building Power & Safety Through Solidarity” Campaign. This campaign provides a practical, accessible, and participatory program for building community power while also meeting the material needs of our frontline communities.

Read more about their community tools and resources at https://www.drumnyc.org/powerandsafety/

EMPLOYMENT

  1. If you are currently unemployed:

HOUSING

  1. Landlords don’t have to make mortgage payments for 3 months
    • If you are a landlord, call your bank to make arrangements for your mortgage
  2. There are no evictions for at least 3 months
  3. This means that if you don’t have a lot of money, you should save your money for essential things like food, and not for rent
    • Talk to the other tenants and make agreements to not pay rent
    • Many tenants are organizing rent strikes
  4. People are working on passing a law to cancel the rent
  5. If your landlord is also poor, and depends on the rental income for survival or has to pay for utilities, work out an agreement with them for partial payment or a payment plan
  6. Rent Strike Toolkit: https://t.co/ChKHyTvluO

FOOD

HEALTH

  1. Testing for coronavirus is hard to find, but it is free
  2. Right now, there is no coverage of the costs for treatment
  3. If you need to get tested, you can find testing locations here: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/coronavirus/resources/covid-testing.page
  4. If you need access to general healthcare and are undocumented: https://www.nychealthandhospitals.org/immigrant/

IMMIGRATION

  1. As of March 18th, USCIS has suspended routine in person services (Court dates, check-ins, biometric appointments etc.)
  2. If you have renewal biometrics appointments (ex. DACA) during this time, USCIS will use previous biometrics.
  3. ICE is continuing to do raids. We don’t know if they are more, or less, or same as before, but they are happening.

SCHOOLS

  1. NYC schools are closed for the rest of the school year.
  2. Remote Leaning is in effect until the rest of the school year
  3. Students in need electronic equipment to access remote learning can request an iPad device at coronavirus.schools.nyc/RemoteLearningDevices

GOVERNMENT STIMULUS

  1. The federal government passed a 2 trillion dollar package on March 27
  2. Most of the money went for large corporations

MENTAL HEALTH

  1. This is a time of great stress for many people, and it will likely get worse
  2. Make sure to make some time everyday to do things that relax you or calm you
  3. Find people you can talk to regularly to relieve the stress
  4. If you need more help coping contact NYC Well, a confidential 24/7 helpline http://NYC.gov/nycwell

FUNERALS

  1. A guide to funeral and burial option in New York: https://www.citybarjusticecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Guide-Funeral-Burial-Options-in-NY-ENGLISH.pdf
  2. HRA can provide up to $900 in funeral expenses: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/hra/help/burial-assistance.page

CASH ASSISTANCE

  1.  For Undocumented Youth & Families: NYSYLC will be providing $250 or $500 funds. you can requests funds at https://www.nysylc.org/undocufunds
  2. Jamaica Muslim Center providing COVID impacted muslim families with $100 cash assistance call 718-739-3182

 

Sexual Violence: Questions or Beliefs? | যৌন সহিংসতা: প্রশ্ন নাকি বিশ্বাস?

In response to the resistance of sexual violence led by young women around the country including many South Asian and Indo-Caribbean girls, the Western Queens Ekshate team from Desis Rising Up and Moving wrote an article about how our community, as a whole, can stand with these young women to end sexual violence that has existing in our communities and societies for generations. Note: the article is written in Bengali but the page can be translated using Google Translate.

Read the article here

 

Vietnamese Terms for Addressing Anti-Blackness

A PDF guide with Vietnamese terms for addressing anti-Blackness. Words and phrases that are translated into Vietnamese include ally, racial discrimination, anti-racism, POC, oppression, systemic racism, protester, racial conflict, racial equity, empathy, unity, justice, equality, and community.

View the entire PDF here

The Secret History of South Asian and African American Solidarity

South Asians and African Americans have been standing up for each other for over a century. These are the histories we were never taught. By Anirvan Chatterjee (@anirvan) of the Berkeley South Asian Radical History Walking Tour.

Read about these histories here: https://blackdesisecrethistory.org/

 

The Model Minority Myth Explained

The Model Minority (Myth) Explained – By Jocelyn Chung. This PDF provides information what the model minority myth is, why it is problematic, how it erases the racism, historical discrimination against and experiences of Asian Americans, and how it has been used to pit the Asian American community against the Black community all while maintaining the racial hierarchy in America which keeps whiteness at the top and blackness at the bottom.

View the PDF here