Los Angeles county’s sizeable Asian immigrant communities have been bracing for disruption and heartache as rumours swirl of mass deportations to be carried out under sweeping new orders issued by the Trump administration.
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At religious centres and job sites, community leaders are hosting “Know Your Rights” training sessions in Bangla, Chinese, Hindi, Punjabi and other languages to educate immigrants about their constitutional rights should they be confronted by federal agents at home or in the workplace.
“Overwhelmingly, concern is what we hear,” said Shakeel Syed, executive director of the South Asian Network. Even Asians who were born in the US or have gained legal status through other routes are worried about what’s ahead.
“Brown-looking people are perceived as permanent foreigners,” Syed said. “As a consequence, they, too, may be wrapped up in a raid, only because they don’t look ‘American.’”
While an estimated 79 per cent of undocumented residents in Los Angeles county are natives of Mexico and Central America, Asian immigrants make up the second-largest group, constituting 16 per cent of people in the county without legal authorisation, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Across the US, Indians make up the third-largest group of undocumented residents, behind Mexicans and Salvadoreans.
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Asian organisers said the Trump administration’s policies deeming anyone in the country without authorisation a criminal, subject to expedited deportation, will have profound reverberations in Los Angeles county. According to the Pew Research Centre, the Los Angeles metropolitan area is home to the largest populations of Cambodians, Koreans, Indonesians, Filipinos, Thai and Vietnamese people in the US.