The goal of our advocacy department is to mobilize JACL, community members, and our program participants on issues highly pertinent to the API community and Little Tokyo, utilizing direct and grassroots advocacy. Major 2010 advocacy initiatives include:

Our Current Work in Public Policy

Immigration Reform: works with local coalitions such as the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council (A3PCON), and national groups such as Reform Immigration for America (RIFA) to address the broken US immigration system and allow for a path to citizenship and access for immigrant communities.

Access to Higher Education: works with student groups and nonprofit organizations to address the lack of socioeconomic and ethnic diversity within institutions of higher education.

Metro Regional Connector: works with the Little Tokyo Community Council (LTCC) to preserve the character and integrity of Little Tokyo both during and after the construction of the Metro Regional connector.

Click here for more information about JACL and the Metro Regional Connector

Click here to go to the Little Tokyo Regional Connector Website

2010 Census: a new initiative (which will begin in March/April 2010), JACL will help promote filling out the census to the API community.

Click here for more information about 2010 Census

Our Work in 2008-2009

For the last couple years, JACL PSW has started active campaigns in public policy, starting with the No on Prop 8 Campaign in conjunction with API-Equality. We now pursue a couple different directions in public policy and employ a variety of methods for this work. Our current focuses are in hate crimes awareness and general civil rights, Little Tokyo Preservation and comprehensive immigration reform.  We also continue to support other policy initiatives that our community partners work on as their main policy priorities.

This year, our greatest concentration has been on immigration issues.  Much time and effort has been devoted to work in
policy advocacy and building coalitions with other organizations. JACL, at both the national level and the district level, has signed onto the national campaign – Reform Immigration For America (RI4A). RI4A is a united national effort of over 600 organizations, working together on the mission to build support for and pass a workable, humane comprehensive immigration reform bill.

The JACL PSW district office has also joined other coalitions with local Asian and Pacific Islander (API) organizations, such as the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, the National Korean American Service and Education Consortium, the Korean Resource Center, the Tongan Community Service Center, the South Asian Network, the Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Alliance, the Orange County Asian Pacific Community Alliance, and many others. With these organizations, we work collectively to bring the API voice to the immigration issue, and to mobilize our own communities to engage with this pressing, current issue. Together, we have executed several legislative visits to district representatives, participated in the Asian American Week of Action as well as Immigrant Day of Service, and on immigration issues locally.

Our work we do to support immigration reform is not only important for the path to a comprehensive immigration reform bill, but is important for the Asian Pacific American voice we bring to the immigration issue. The United States and its media often believe and portray immigration problems to be a Latino/Latina issue, but the issue is much larger than that. For the API community the issue is particularly significant, as nearly two-thirds (63%) of the community is foreign-born, half of which immigrated as recently as in the last 16 years. Even the Japanese American community is a part of the phenomena, with nearly a third (30%) of the community foreign-born. APIs also make up a significant portion of the undocumented population, particularly undocumented students. Family reunification is a particularly considerable issue in immigration reform for the API community, as over half the immigration is through family visas, despite backlogs being especially long for immigrants from the Asian and Pacific region.

JACL-PSW focuses on immigration policy for a number of reasons. Immigration reform is clearly a civil rights issue, such as how its backlogs process forces some families to wait over two decades to reunite. But most of all, immigration reform is one of the biggest issues in the API community currently, and as an organization dedicated to securing the rights of all Asian and Pacific Islanders in America – a stand in solidarity we chose for ourselves – it only makes sense we too would work on immigration beside our API community partners.

The JACL-PSW District is a proud member of the Reform Immigration FOR American Campaign

Get Involved! Text JUSTICE to 69866