Local Community Empowerment

• Yes to opportunities for citizenship!

• Yes to green card holders becoming citizens more quickly!

• Yes to reunification of families!

• Yes to protection of civil liberties

• Yes to workers' rights!

• Yes to a fair process for legalization!

SAPAC's work in the area of Local Community Empowerment embodies all these principles. To get involved in any of these activities, please contact us or come to our next meeting.

Immigrant Rights

SAPAC has been working with organizations around the Chicago area in the fight for immigrant rights in the U.S. With South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow (SAALT) and local organizations that serve the South Asian community, we have co-sponsored community forums on immigration issues and civics. On May 1st, 2006, we marched in Chicago with hundreds of thousands of other immigrant rights activists.

Two key components of our work in this area are citizenship assistance and voter registration.

Citizenship

SAPAC members volunteer at the Indo-American Center and other community-based organizations that serve the Chicago and suburban South Asian community to help their constituents apply for U.S. citizenship. The program is part of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights' (ICIRR) New Americans Initiative.

Want to help? Check out our citizenship workshop schedule and contact us with the dates you're available!

Voter Registration

During the 2004 election cycle, SAPAC partnered with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) and other organizations to register and mobilize voters in the South Asian community in Chicago's West Ridge neighborhood. The effort was part of ICIRR's New Americans Vote campaign, which eventually registered over 27,000 new and unlikely voters and turned out over 50,000 voters on Election Day 2004. These results were unprecedented among immigrants in Illinois and the entire United States.

SAPAC has once again teamed up with ICIRR and with 3 other organizations to register and mobilize voters in the West Ridge/50th Ward area:

• Indo-American Center
• Indo-American Democratic Organization
• Albany Park Neighborhood Council

Our collaborative's goal is to register 851 voters by mid-September and get 3,000 people to the polls on November 7.

To help us reach this goal, we hired an organizing fellow. Meet Chirayu Patel! Chirayu is coordinating our voter registration and GOTV work.

If you're interested in helping us build political power in the South Asian community, please contact Chirayu at cpatel17@gmail.com! You don't have to be a trained deputy registrar or even a citizen to register voters. All it takes is the desire to help.