Elk Grove’s ethnic studies push + Bill for immigrants with criminal pasts: Your AAPI newsletter
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It is Wednesday, Dec. 18, and this is The Sacramento Bee’s AAPI weekly newsletter, brought to you by yours truly.
Here’s a recap on the stories I recently covered and issues I’m following:
An Elk Grove chapter of a grassroots organization has been vital in pushing for ethnic studies in school districts, despite slow progress in state Legislature.
More than a quarter (27 percent) of the students in Elk Grove Unified are Hispanic or Latino, followed by 25 percent of Asian students and 19 percent white students, data from the state’s Department of Education this year shows. The percentage of Asian students is overwhelmingly higher than the statewide percentage of 9.3 percent, illustrating a need to address student diversity.
“I want to center on the most marginalized and vulnerable kids, for them to see themselves in the curriculum and to engage together in a more productive and tolerant space because they’d understand their shared histories, unique differences and when human conditions intersect and build around them,” an advocate said.
A new bill could help immigrants with criminal records remain in the United States. The New Way Forward Act was introduced Dec. 10 by U.S. Rep. Karen Bass, D-Culver City, and three other House Democrats. The bill restores due process protections for all immigrants, including those in deportation proceedings.
Earlier laws laid the groundwork for the Trump administration policies, according to the Center for Migration Studies, which resulted to a spiking number of deported individuals, especially those with criminal records. The laws passed in 1996, namely the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, restricted immigration judges from considering multiple factors for a person’s deportation, an Asian Americans Advancing Justice document shows.
For our AAPI Businesswomen series this week, I spoke with Puna Folau Makihele, who has been running her room-and-board business, Friendly Hale, for two months with her husband in south Sacramento. Makihele moved to the U.S. at age 8 with her family from the Kingdom of Tonga to Hawaii, and shortly to Sacramento, for better opportunities. She said her biggest drive in becoming an entrepreneur is to be free and creative in her work and not to be limited by any expectations.
In other news, nearly 100 students, parents and school officials gathered at Pleasant Grove High School in Elk Grove two days after a Muslim student was assaulted on campus, The Bee reports.
“We came to realize that this person, whoever they are, acted this way because of ignorance,” said Sabah Elias, 17. “The closure we were looking for was not just holding this person accountable for their actions. Instead, the greater closure we were looking for is how we can all be a part of the solution to the grander problem our community is facing, racial and social intolerance.”
A federal judge in Utah decided on Thursday that the country should recognize American Samoans as citizens, The Associated Press reports. People born in the cluster of Pacific islands southwest of Hawaii are labeled U.S. nationals, meaning they pay taxes but cannot vote, run for office or apply for certain government jobs. While they are currently able to pursue naturalized citizenship, they’d have to pay $725 for application fees as well as legal fees to hire an attorney to go through the process.
Meanwhile in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo vetoes a bill that would have required state agencies to collect demographic data on special Asian, Pacific Islander and Native Hawaiian ethnicities, NBC News reports. The governor cited budgetary concerns and insufficient time in his rationale behind his veto, but said he’d be calling his administration to better understand the challenges the group faces.
Read the L.A. Times’ story on Vietnamese immigrants rallying behind Hong Kong protesters to push for democracy in Asia. Many had settled in Hong Kong after fleeing South Vietnam during the communist takeover, before heading to the U.S. They were compelled to join the demonstration after seeing the mistreatment of students by the Hong Kong police, but more importantly, to show support to protesters in fear of China’s expanding reach across East Asia.
Actor George Takei spoke with Forbes about his family’s internment in California during World War II documented in his new book.
Mark your calendars for a rally at noon Jan. 11 at Yuba County Jail organized by Tsuru for Solidarity and other non-profits to push for the ending the indefinite contract with ICE and to stop the inhumane treatment of detainees.
What better than spending time on books in the Californian winter? I just finished reading “The Song Poet” by Kao Kalia Yang, a page-turner of a memoir of Yang’s father, Bee, a Hmong song poet who fled to the U.S. with his family as refugees to escape the war in Laos and build a better life. Beautifully written and arranged to resonate with the oral poems her father created, Yang captured the pain and love he has for his people, his homeland and for his family and children, letting readers vividly picture his past life in Laos and struggles in Minnesota as an immigrant in the late 1980s. My favorite chapter is Track 7. Make sure to prepare several boxes of tissues before reading.
Finally: What do you want to read about on Sacramento or California’s AAPI population or newsletter? Send your thoughts to me at tyu@sacbee.com.
That’s it for this week’s newsletter. Thank you for reading!
Theodora Yu covers Asian American and Pacific Islander communities in California for The Sacramento Bee. She is a member of Report for America’s 2019 corps of journalists.
This story was originally published December 18, 2019 at 3:37 PM.