Incidents of anti-Asian harassment and violence are at a historic high, nationally and locally, and they occur at the individual, community, and institutional level in the United States. However, an over-reliance on a punitive policing and justice system, along with a pervasive lack of language access to community services to address violence and harm, have not created more safety for AAPIs in PA.

Overall, 69% of survey respondents to the AAPI PA Power Caucus’ statewide AAPI community survey stated they agree that the government should shift resources currently allocated for police departments to health and human services, including mental health responders, workforce development, and nonviolent alternatives. Community safety must include mental health and wellness.

All Pennsylvanians should be able to live in safe and connected communities across our state, with healing at the center.

We advocate:

• For meaningful re-allocation of state- and local-level budgetary resources towards life-affirming community safety services

• For responsive and language accessible mental health crisis response

• For expansion of community-centered processes for accountability in incidents of anti-Asian violence

• For meaningful expansion of language access and language navigation of victim services through public institutions including courts, hospitals, and doctors’ offices

• For the expansion of implicit bias training regarding AAPI communities to public safety agencies (fire, police, transit police) across the state

• For increased transparency on police misconduct at the state and local levels

Asian people are the fastest growing population of undocumented immigrants, with nearly 1.5 million Asian undocumented immigrants in the United States today. Since the country’s founding, many Asian Pacific Islander communities have endured the pain of either being excluded and invisible or actively targeted and discriminated against in national, state, and local immigration policies.

Far too many of our community members still cannot access the help they need from their local government. They experience exploitation at the workplace and live in constant fear of immigration enforcement, deportation, and family separation in an inhumane system, among other everyday indignities.

We are also witnessing a renewed rise in immigrant scapegoating with no end in sight. No matter where they were born, what language they speak, and whether they have papers or not, all AAPI Pennsylvanias should feel welcome in our state and live with freedom from fear.

We advocate:

• For an end to all state and local collaboration with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.), including shutting down detention centers by ending I.C.E. contracts at county levels

• For expanding relief for undocumented community members facing post conviction immigration consequences

• For expanding the fast-track pardons process to enable Governor pardons for undocumented community members facing additional immigration consequences

• For an expansion of in-state tuition and financial aid to include immigrant and refugee students, including undocumented students and students from families on H1B visas, and financial support for DACA application and renewal fees

• For an expansion of benefits and protections to undocumented community members that includes drivers’ licenses, unemployment compensation, and legal representation in immigration proceedings

• For an Office of New Pennsylvanians at the state level, to ensure that the Commonwealth is a welcoming state that is ready to provide resources and services to meet the needs of our immigrant and refugee communities

Overwhelming majorities of Asian Pacific Islanders in Pennsylvania agree that we need a fair funding formula for public schools. Regardless of where they came from, how they got here, or what their immigration status is, all students deserve an affordable college education. Student loan debt is a systemic problem that requires a systemic solution.

In contrast to national narratives about our communities’ values and priorities around education, AAPIs across the Commonwealth know that our experiences in the education system are far too often ones of violence and neglect. We have to contend with environmentally unsafe buildings, Islamophobic and anti-Asian bullying and hate, the chronic defunding of ESL classes and ethnic studies, and students feeling pressure to divest from their culture and heritage to stay safe and fit in, among other challenges.

Our students deserve to learn, grow, and thrive in the best possible conditions. We need a historic re-investment in our public schools across the Commonwealth in order to fully resource teachers, school administrators and other education workers, and our Asian Pennsylvanian students and families.

We advocate:

• To fund ethnic studies that authentically reflect our students, families, and teaching staff and that cultivate a genuine sense of inclusion and belonging by helping students explore their own and their peers’ cultural heritage; to include ethnic studies in teacher preparation and certification programs to ensure teachers are properly equipped to relate to their entire student population

• To fund healthy schools and provide a physically safe, environmentally sustainable building, and a well-resourced administration with adequate nurses, counselors, and teachers

• To re-allocate resources away from punitive, jailing approaches (i.e., cameras, metal detectors, etc.) that create a prison-like environment for young people and towards wellness approaches that provide students real opportunities to grow, including public tutoring, libraries, and restorative practices in school discipline

• To address the growing teacher shortage by increasing teacher compensation and building hiring and development pipelines into the communities schools are located in, with an emphasis on bilingual educators and educators who understand our diverse communities’ needs

• To fully fund English as a Second Language (ESL) and Bilingual Counseling Assistants to ensure our schools are meeting the needs of students and their families; to increase funding for language access and translated materials across educational institutions

Thanks to the work of AAPI community organizations across Pennsylvania, including those in the AAPI PA Power Caucus, the Asian American vote spiked to unprecedented levels in 2020, doubling the API vote share in our state . AAPIs in Pennsylvania had the highest vote-by-mail sign-up rate of any community in the Commonwealth and the second highest mail-in-ballot return rate. It is clear that our communities’ path to civic participation and making all our voices heard includes a robust, values-driven, language-accessible defense of the freedom to vote.

At the same time, we know that access to democracy remains fundamentally elusive to Asian Americans, and will continue to do so until we have full language access in our ballots, are free from intimidation and discrimination at the polls, and put an end to anti-democracy, anti-voting narratives about limiting access to the ballot and undermining our electoral process.To build Asian American democracy, it is thus crucial to both defend our historic expansions in voting rights and turnout, while expanding access to the ballot to all members of our communities.

Expanding democracy for AAPIs will meaningfully stitch us into the fabric of our society and secure justice and self-governance in the long term for all communities across the Commonwealth. Our diverse AAPI communities in Pennsylvania deserve to have full access and participation in the political processes that create the rules that govern our lives.

We advocate:

• For moving beyond the rights enshrined in Section 203 of the federal Voting Rights Act by dramatically expanding language access in voting to all languages spoken by voter populations in Pennsylvania

• For other efforts to make voting easier and more accessible for our diverse AAPI communities in the state

• Against any rolling back of Act 77, which expanded our access to democracy by establishing vote-by-mail and ballot drop boxes in Pennsylvania

• Against Voter ID: both the proposed Voter ID constitutional amendment and in any other form, as an anti-democracy scheme that would further limit our most marginalized, non-English-speaking voters from accessing their constitutional right to vote

Globally, Asian coastal nations and Pacific islands are being devastated by the impacts of climate change, while here in Pennsylvania our communities are directly suffering the effects of dirty air, lead in our water, and other forms of environmental racism. 84% of Asian Pacific Islander Pennsylvanians surveyed support a just transition away from fossil fuels that creates good jobs for our communities in the process.

Asian Pacific Islander Pennsylvanians from South Philadelphia to Pittsburgh and everywhere in between deserve a safe and clean environment that can sustain life for current and future generations and good, green jobs, rather than continuing to pad the profits of wealthy and powerful fossil fuel executives.

By joining together as a community, we can rewrite the rules so that every family has what we need to get and stay well, every working person has a safe, good job, and every community can protect our world for generations to come.

We advocate:

• For clean, accessible, and safe water and the right to breathe

• For a just, sustainable, democratic, and accessible energy system

• For safe, affordable, and sustainable shelter for all

• For protection of our land and communities through community stewardship

• For fair, safe, and living wage green jobs for our communities

• For investment in public systems that ensure healthy and connected communities

The COVID-19 pandemic clearly demonstrates what’s been true in this country for a long time: the need for a healthcare system that puts all people – and high-quality, judgment-free, easily accessible healthcare – over profit.

Every year, hospitals, drug companies, and insurance companies force over 750,000 Pennsylvania residents to delay or forgo essential medical care and send more than 1.8 million Pennsylvanians a surprise medical bill. More than 1.5 million of us are now in medical debt.

So many of our Asian Pacific Islander communities historically receive little to no public health outreach and education, especially reproductive wellness information vital to ensuring our young people and families are safe and healthy. Both state government programs and health institutions must ensure Asian Americans and bilingual or multilingual providers are entering the healthcare system, especially the mental healthcare field, in order to bridge long-standing gaps in language accessible and culturally competent care.

Now more than ever, our API communities and all those across the Commonwealth deserve an expanded, culturally-competent, language-accessible healthcare system that emphasizes meeting the needs of our most historically underserved.

We advocate:

• For the expansion of healthcare access to include all members of our community, regardless of immigration or work status, income, or zip code.

• For state-level funding for in-language, culturally competent mental healthcare, provider pipelines, and intentional public health community engagement

• For the continuation of the federal health emergency and the moratorium on Medicaid cutoffs until all our communities can recover from the impacts of the pandemic

• Against all bans on reproductive healthcare, and note that sex-selective abortion bans, like the one Pennsylvania has on the books, have a history of being pushed through racist and sexist fearmongering about Indian American and Chinese American birth rates that have no basis in fact