This week, Representative Luis Gutierrez introduced a bill entitled “CIR A.S.A.P.” which lays out many real solutions that would get us closer to comprehensive immigration reform (CIR). As previously discussed, The Sikh Coalition fully supports comprehensive immigration reform. This issue is of great importance to Punjabi Sikh immigrants in the United States and is in line with the Sikhi principle of sarbat da bhala.

Click here to tell Congress you support comprehensive immigration reform, and see the Interfaith Immigration Coalition’s press release about the new bill below.

Interfaith Immigration Coalition Supports Principles of House Immigration Bill “CIR A.S.A.P.”

Paves the Way for Comprehensive Immigration Reform

WASHINGTON, DC – December 15, 2009 — The Interfaith Immigration Coalition (IIC), a partnership of faith-based organizations committed to enacting comprehensive immigration reform, welcomes new immigration legislation by Representative Luis Gutierrez. Today’s introduction of “Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security and Prosperity” (CIR A.S.A.P.) in the House of Representatives is a sign of progress and momentum for action on real, common sense immigration reform this Congress that reflects the best of our values.

We are pleased to see immigration reform legislation which reflects our priorities in the faith community. CIR A.S.A.P. seeks to provide a pathway to earned legal status that honors immigrants’ contributions to our society. It also protects workers, promotes family unity, ensures due process for all and offers educational opportunity to youth through an expansion of the DREAM Act.

We applaud the leadership of Rep. Gutierrez and look forward to working with him and other members of the House and Senate to pass fair and just comprehensive immigration reform. Our member organizations are deeply committed to the struggle for immigrants’ rights and are mobilizing in support of immigration reform at the grassroots level. The IIC distributed over 110,000 postcards across the country with a message to Congress in support of family unity in immigration reform. In the months to come, we will organize and support prayer vigils in hundreds of cities across the nation and call for people of faith to join us in Washington, DC on March 22, 2010 to support just and fair immigration reform.

For the past 8 years, Congress has been trying to pass the End Racial Profiling Act, a law that would bar certain law enforcement agencies from using racial profiling as a tool to search for suspects. The Sikh Coalition is supporting this bill because of the impact that racial profiling can and is having on a minority as visible as Sikhs. The Baltimore Sun yesterday published the following op-ed on the topic, which provides a few great stories as reference points for why racial profiling is an ineffective policing method. Take a look:

End Racial Profiling now

Baltimore Sun – December 7, 2009 – By Benjamin Todd Jealous and Margaret Huang.

The End Racial Profiling Act (ERPA) will soon be reintroduced by Rep. John Conyers, Democrat of Michigan, and Sen. Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin. Numerous incidents throughout American history have taught us that racial profiling not only fails as a law enforcement tool but ultimately makes us all less safe. Passage of ERPA would be an important step toward ending racial profiling.

Over a century ago, Leon Czolgosz walked up to President William McKinley with a concealed weapon and shot him. The Secret Service agent assigned to search the president’s visitors was focused on a “dark complexioned man” in line behind Czolgosz. Ironically, the same man whose appearance made the agent suspicious – Jim Parker, an African-American former constable – saved President McKinley from a third bullet.

In 1995, after the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, Timothy McVeigh, the white male assailant, fled while law enforcement officers looked for “Arab terrorists” whom they thought responsible.

Racial profiling does not always target minorities. In 2002, during the sniper attacks that terrorized Washington-area residents for months, police conducted surveillance searching for a disaffected white man with an accomplice, driving a white van. During that time, the actual culprits – an African-American man and boy who fit many of the characteristics of a serial killer, except that they were black – came into contact with police at least 10 times without being apprehended. How many lives would have been saved had race not been a part of the profile?

As airport security agents focused on people of Middle Eastern descent following the Sept. 11 attacks, Nathaniel Heatwole, a white college student, was able to smuggle knives, box cutters, bleach and other items onto at least six planes from February to September 2003. He then sent numerous e-mails to the Transportation Security Administration notifying them of his actions. It took the TSA more than a month to find the hidden items.

Just as history has shown that using race as a proxy for criminality is bad policy, history also shows that focusing on behavior over race is smart policy. When law enforcement officers eliminate race as a factor and instead rely on behavior, they catch more people who break the law. In the late 1990s, as a response to discrimination lawsuits, the U.S. Customs Service eliminated the use of race in deciding which individuals to stop and search for illegal contraband and instead began focusing on suspect behavior. Studies showed that this shift to “color-blind profiling techniques” increased the rate of productive searches (those leading to the discovery of illegal contraband or activity) by more than 300 percent.

Other examples in our nation’s history demonstrate that we can be smart and safe in our efforts to find people who break the law, as opposed to focusing on people’s race, gender or national origin. In the 1970s, the Secret Service relied on a presidential assassin profile that excluded females. After Sara Jane Moore took a shot at President Gerald Ford, the gender limitation was removed from this profile, a move that potentially saved President George H.W. Bush in 1992 when a young woman was arrested for threatening to kill him after bringing a rifle to a rally at which he was scheduled to speak.

Some enlightened members of Congress analyzed the culmination of evidence proving the ineffectiveness of racial profiling and introduced a bill that would ban racial profiling by federal, state and local law enforcement. The ERPA was first introduced in 2001 and gained bipartisan support. Unfortunately, after Sept. 11, misplaced fear stemmed the momentum for ERPA, and the U.S. government embarked on an era of intense profiling, rounding up more than 1,200 Arab, South Asian and Muslim men and holding them without charges.

Such action did not make us safer. In fact, the mass roundup within the United States after Sept. 11 never apprehended anyone subsequently officially linked to the attacks. An inspector general’s report later revealed that many of the detainees had been blocked from contacting attorneys and that some of them had been beaten or otherwise physically abused by guards in federal prisons.

Unfortunately, the scope of racial profiling is expanding. As the responsibility for enforcing immigration laws and finding undocumented immigrants has been increasingly delegated to state and local police, evidence of increased racial profiling is emerging across the country.

President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric H. Holder have stated that ending racial profiling is a “priority.” The more than 40 members of Congress planning to reintroduce the ERPA agree.

It’s time to face the truth: Racial profiling is a violation of our constitutional and human rights, and it distracts the attention of law enforcement from real suspects, which puts all of us at risk. The ERPA should be passed this year, ensuring greater safety for all of our communities.

Benjamin Todd Jealous is president and CEO of the Baltimore-based NAACP. His e-mail is communications@naacpnet.org. Margaret Huang is executive director of the Rights Working Group. Her e-mail is mhuang@rightsworkinggroup.org.

In the aftermath of the Fort Hood tragedy last week, several Sikh organizations (including the Coalition) sent out a joint email warning Sikhs to be alert of possible backlash against our community. The name of the shooter who killed 13 people on the military base – Nadal Hassan – put Sikhs around the country in immediate danger, given the high risk that we would be mistaken for terrorists and become the targets of hatred and violence because of the way we look.

But one of the first reports of a hate-fuelled beating as a supposed result of the For Hood attacks did not involve a Muslim or a Sikh or an Arab or South Asian. In fact, it was of Rev. Alexios Marakis, a Greek Orthodox priest, in Tampa. When he got lost on his way back from a blessing, the priest stopped a young man to ask for directions. That man turned out to be Lance Cpl. Jasen D. Bruce, a Marine Reservist, who proceeded to beat the priest over the head with a tire iron and chased him for three blocks. The Marine believed the Reverend was “an Arab terrorist” because of his limited English proficiency.

After the Sikh Coalition sent out that email last week, some community members asked why we are seeking to join alliances with
other faith groups to denounce the attacks and stand together against backlash. The reason is simply this. In the atmosphere of fear and hatred, all of us who look or think differently from the mainstream are in danger of becoming targets. We need to work together to stand up in the face of ignorance and hate. The Reverend’s story reminds me of a famous poem about political action that some of you may have heard:

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.

This is why we must stand together against hatred and backlash wherever we see it occurring in our society, whether it is aimed at a Sikh or a Muslim, a man or a woman, a black or a white.

Last Thursday, I attended a rally and press conference at City Hall in NYC in support of the Student Safety Act. About 100 fired up students from Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM), Make the Road New York, and the Urban Youth Collaborative gathered to speak out about the harassment and abuse that youth of color and immigrant youth face at the hands of school safety agents (who are employed by the NYPD) in NYC public schools.

The message was clear: it is unacceptable for those who are supposed to be keeping students safe in schools to actually be creating repressive and abusive school climates.

Through surveying 1,100 NYC students last school year, we found that 17% of all students who experience bias harassment in schools have been harassed by an adult — a teacher, staff, or school safety agent. The Sikh Coalition and our allies have been urging the Department of Education to expand its Chancellor’s Regulations to protect students from staff-to-student harassment, but to date the regulations remain unchanged.

The Student Safety Act, which was introduced by the City Council in 2008, would create accountability and transparency over police behavior in our schools if passed. The City Council will be holding a hearing on November 10th to vote on the bill. Contact your City Council member to urge him or her to support the Student Safety Act, and attend the press conference followed by the City Council hearing on November 10th at 12 noon at City Hall.

As many of you have already heard, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger last week vetoed a proposed law pertaining to Sikhs and Sikh articles of faith, including the kirpan. In the aftermath of the announcement, there has been some confusion about the purpose of the law and the meaning of the Governor’s veto. Below, we have tried to address a few of the main questions we are being asked by community members about the bill and the veto.

1. What was the purpose of the bill?

The bill was intended to educate law enforcement about how to recognize and interact with a Sikh, and how to behave in a sensitive manner with regards to Sikh articles of faith, including the kirpan. The bill focused solely on education for police officers. Contrary to media reports, the bill itself did not have any provision that would have made it legal or illegal to carry the kirpan.

Our hope in introducing the bill was that educating law enforcement would lead to fewer arrests of Sikhs for carrying kirpans because officers would know how to identify a kirpan and understand that it is an article of faith.

2. Why did the Governor veto the bill?
In his veto message, Governor Schwarzenegger cited only one reason for refusing to allow the bill to become law: That the training commission for police officers should be free to decide its own curriculum without a law telling them what to do. While this may be true as a general matter, there are 2 main reasons why Assembly Member Furutani, all of his fellow lawmakers and the Sikh Coalition thought this bill was necessary.

1. The commission has stood by for the last 8 years, watching the problems between Sikhs and law enforcement grow more acute, and has not taken any action to remedy this problem. That is precisely when the legislature feels compelled to act – when a government agency is not doing enough to protect the State’s citizens.
2. Last year, Governor Schwarzenegger signed a similar law that mandated training for police officers about how to identify and interact with an autistic person. The Sikh training law was modeled on that bill, and the Governor did not bring up this concern for last year’s law. Because he has supported bills like this in the past but refused to support this bill for Sikhs, that is why his move is interpreted as a lack of support for the Sikh community. This interpretation has been supported by several Sikh and non-Sikh religious and civil rights groups.

3. Does the Governor’s veto mean that it is illegal to wear a kirpan in California?
No. The veto of this bill in no way affects the legality of the kirpan in the State of California. Some media outlets have incorrectly reported that the veto has made it illegal to wear kirpans in California. This is not true.

California does not have a law that specifically allows or disallows the wearing of the kirpan. The Sikh Coalition maintains that wearing a kirpan is a legal activity. However, because an individual police officer may not know what a kirpan is, and may be unaware of its purpose, he/she may arrest a Sikh for wearing a kirpan under the “concealed weapons” law. In all the cases we know of, however, the Sikhs arrested for wearing a kirpan have either not been charged with any crime by the prosecutor or have had the case against them dismissed by a judge. The question of whether a Sikh is criminally liable in California for wearing a kirpan has never been litigated in a California court.

4. Was Cost an Issue?
No. Cost was not an issue for introducing the proposed training. Both the Assembly and Senate Finance Committees had passed the bill (in the midst of the budget crisis, no less), because the training commission had assured them that the cost was so minimal that it would be considered negligible.

The cost of creating training materials was minimal because these already exist for free. Trainings are available from the federal government, various state law enforcement agencies, the Sikh Coalition, SALDEF and many other Sikh organizations who have already been doing these trainings. In addition, because the training was built into existing curriculum for the peace officers, actually doing the training would have been rolled into existing training costs, which are already part of the training commission’s budget.

5. So what next? Should we protest?
At this point, staging a protest will not do much to sway the decision. The governor has vetoed the bill and it has effectively been killed for this year. However, in the coming months, we will be reaching out to the Training Commission to encourage them to develop the training materials on their own (without the passage of a law). At that stage, we would very much appreciate the community’s support in pressing the Commission to implement Sikh training for law enforcement officers.

Last Thursday, Sikh youth who have been taking a stand against bigotry in schools were honored by the Center for the Study of Asian American Health (CSAAH) at the NYU School of Medicine’s annual Asian American Health Conference. The Sikh Coalition youth activists were among many distinguished awardees including government officials, nonprofit leaders, and other youth and community activists who have been working for healthier, more empowered Asian American communities.

The word is getting around New York that Sikh youth are fired up and making a difference. We’re extremely proud of these young Singhs and Kaurs who have been working to make New York City schools safer and more welcoming for all students. Thanks to CSAAH for recognizing and honoring their important work.

Today is the 92nd birthday of the late Fannie Lou Hamer, one of the great leaders of the African American civil rights and freedom movement in the United States. Many of the rights we benefit from today are a direct result of the tireless work of this inspiring activist and freedom fighter and others like her. Here is a short video for you to honor her work and her life. Happy Birthday Fannie Lou Hamer!

This past Saturday evening, the Sikh Coalition along with the Guru Gobind Singh Study Circle hosted a screening of teenage filmmaker Angad Singh’s documentary, Roots and Wings, at Gurdwara Baba Makhan Shah Lobana in Richmond Hill, Queens.

Angad Singh (right) with Jagmohan Singh Premi

Angad Singh, a high school sophomore from Atlanta, GA, was in town for the weekend to screen his work-in-progress film about the struggles of Sikh youth in the US at the Sikh Art & Film Foundation’s Children’s Film Festival at Hofstra University. We decided to show the film in Richmond Hill as well to make it more accessible to youth in the community.

With almost 100 children and parents in attendance, Angad showed clips of his film (despite some technical difficulties) and spoke passionately about his path to becoming a director of a film at such a young age. The dozens of youth in attendance seemed inspired by how someone their age was making a movie. They all left with DVD copies of the film, and were encouraged to try and show it in their schools as a diversity teaching tool. One young Kaur was so excited that she asked Angad to autograph her copy of the DVD.

Hopefully Angad’s great work on this film will inspire more and more Sikh youth to become more active and get more involved in working for social justice, through film-making and beyond.

See below for a clip of Roots and Wings.

Yesterday afternoon I joined several faith leaders from diverse communities for a meeting with Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY) in his district office in Kew Gardens, Queens to discuss immigration reform. The Sikh Coalition is a part of growing group of organizations around the country bringing a faith-based voice to the immigration debate, and in particular has been active in the New York Interfaith Network on Immigration Reform.

In the meeting with Congressman Weiner, we discussed what it’s going to take to realistically fix this broken immigration system that has deemed the lives of 12 million undocumented immigrants in this country worthless. 12 million people living in the shadows, at risk of being torn apart from their families and loved ones at any moment. This is a statistic we hear a lot, but as Sikhs, what does it really mean to us? How does it hit home? What is our responsibility as Guru-oriented people?

Yesterday it hit home for me.

Walking out of a productive meeting towards the bus stop, I felt somewhat hopeful about the progress we might be able to make on this issue in the next year. As I was figuring out which bus to take to get to Richmond Hill, an older desi man with a scruffy beard and short pony tail smiled warmly at me and struck up a conversation in Punjabi. He helped me figure out which bus to get on, and then got on the same bus.

I invited him to sit by me. We made small talk for awhile and transitioned to English once my tutti futti (broken) Punjabi wasn’t cutting it any more. Soon enough, he told me that he had just gotten out of jail. Surprised, I asked him what happened and if everything was okay. He responded matter of factly with a story that began with an NYPD officer asked him for ID one night on the subway several months ago and ended with him spending two and a half months incarcerated in an immigrant detention center in Texas. He just got back home last week. Sitting next to me, he was wearing the same thick blue shirt that was given to him in detention.

His name is Amarjit Singh, and he is a part of our community. He came to New York over 20 years ago and speaks perfect English. He was born and raised in Delhi and survived the anti-Sikh pograms of 1984 and beyond. He makes a living by selling perfume and handbags. He is a Sikh. He is undocumented.

He asked me what he should do. He said he can’t go back to India, that it’s not his home. We talked about the need for an immigration system that recognizes the humanity of all people and provides a path to citizenship. I told him about my work with the Sikh Coalition, which he was excited about. As I was getting off the bus I gave him my card, and he said in Punjabi, “One day, I will call you.” I wish I could have given him a good answer to his question about what he should do, but this immigration system doesn’t have a good answer.

As I walked down 95th Avenue towards the gurdwara, my eyes filled with tears, blurring my vision and my optimism. What is going to happen to Amarjit Singh, who has sadly turned to alcohol to drown out his pain and struggle? He was so glad to be “free again,” as he put it, but has no way to even apply to become a legal resident of the United States. He and millions of others will continue living in fear unless we fundamentally change the immigration system.

This is a South Asian issue. This is a Punjabi issue. This is an American issue. This is a Sikh issue.

What are we going to do about it?

Click here to read the Interfaith Platform on Humane Immigration Reform, signed by hundreds of faith and religious organizations including the Sikh Coalition.

Click here to read the Sikh Coalition’s community advisory from 2006 about Sikhs and immigration reform.

Click Here to read the form for Census 2010.

Over the past few weeks, the Coalition has received varied requests for our involvement with Census 2010 efforts across the United States. Next year’s census count promises to be one of the largest mobilizing events of this administration. But the Sikh Coalition has decided not to play an active role in the Census next year for the reason described below.

Like most Sikhs, we would like for there to be an accurate count of Sikhs in the United States. If we had an accurate count of how many Sikhs live in the United States and where, we would gain many advantages – from being able to showcase voting blocks in certain areas to obtaining funding for our community’s needs. Every time we walk into a legislator’s office to ask them to do something for Sikhs, the first question is always “How many Sikhs are there in my district.” Therefore, having an accurate count of our community is key to our progress in the United States.

However, after months of research into this matter, we have discovered that Census 2010 will not be able to provide us with any Sikh headcount at all. This is the primary reason why the Coalition has chosen not to play an active role in the census effort next year.

We recently spoke with Karen Humes, Assistant Division Chief for Special Populations at the Census Bureau in Washington, DC. Karen’s job is to work alongside the Race and Ancestry branches to code the data that comes in on census forms from around the country. You can read a letter from Karen that confirms this information by clicking here.

There are 4 options for how a Sikh could possibly fill out the 2010 census form to try and be counted as a Sikh. Each of these options involves Question 9 – The Race Question – on the census form. Here’s what Karen told us about each one:

Option 1: Under the question “What is Person 1’s race?,” a Sikh could tick the box next to either “Other Asian” or “Some other race” and write in the word “Sikh” in the text space.

Karen was very clear that any attempt to write in the word “Sikh” in any text box on the census form will result in the person being counted as “Asian Indian.” As she explained it, the census’ computers are coded so that any write-in of the word “Sikh” results in the person automatically being dropped into the “Asian Indian” category. There is no “Sikh” category.

Option 2: Under the question “What is Person 1’s race?,” a Sikh could tick the box next to both “Asian Indian” and “Some other race” and write in the word “Sikh” in the text space.

If more than one type of race box is ticked, the person will be counted as someone of mixed-race heritage. If the person ticks both and writes in “Sikh” under “Some other race” then the person will be counted as mixed-race of Asian heritage.

Option 3: Under the question “What is Person 1’s race?,” a Sikh could simply tick the box next to “Some other race” or “Other Asian” and not write anything in the text space.

In this case, the Sikh would simply be counted as “Other Asian” or “Other race,” which are both reported categories in the Census data.

Option 4: A Sikh could leave the question “What is Person 1’s race?” unanswered on the census form.

If the race question is left unanswered, the Census Bureau will attempt to impute a race based on other information. For example, they will check back to match your return from Census 2000, if possible, or will check the race of others in your household. If all else fails, they could impute your neighbor’s race to you with the help of a stratification algorithm.

In sum, the message from Census Bureau officials is clear: There is no Sikh category that it counts and writing in the word “Sikh” under the race questions will have Sikhs counted as “Asian Indian.”

The Census Bureau has also stated that it will not reconsider the decision not to include Sikhs in its census count because it does not traditionally include any religious categories in the census.

The Coalition will always support efforts to get Sikhs counted in the United States. That is partly why we are doing further research into the American Community Survey (ACS) – a yearly data collection process by the Census Bureau that counts people by religious affiliation across the country. Our understanding is that the ACS provides more accurate data than the census and focuses on more socio-economic categories than the census. We have been told that some versions of the ACS, unlike the Census, also have a specific question about religion, which we believe would more accurately reflect the number of Sikhs in our community. We will be looking into this over the next few months and will let the community know the results of our research.

In sum, while the census is a grand effort being put forth by the government next year, the Coalition believes it would be best for us to spend the Sikh community’s money on an initiative that benefits the Sikh community specifically. Because the census does not provide us with a headcount of Sikhs, we currently believe that the best way to spend our resources to try and get a Sikh headcount is to work with the ACS and not the census.