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Lakshmi Sriradan
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"I identify as a cis-female South Asian American woman. In terms of my identity in the United States, I am from Atlanta, Georgia, and I was fortunate to be able to go across the country for college to UC Berkeley. It was there that I became politicized and really came to own my identity as a person of color… But most of that work and realization of our positionality as Asian Americans in this country for me was done through my major, which was ethnic studies, and also helping organize campus workers and thinking about what labor rights on a college campus looks like – predominantly people of color working low-wage jobs on campus."
"I ultimately chose urban planning as a profession because I saw the real tangible impact in how communities are planned and how they’re re-planned after disasters and what that means for communities who have traditionally been there and are often displaced after a disaster to bring in residents that are wealthier, more affluent, often more white. And that really tipped the balance in New Orleans that used to be a majority black city. And it had a lot of implications for what the recovery looked like."
"The whole concept of borders needs to be rethought… the ways in which we see our borders with Canada is very different from how we see our border from Mexico… And I do think that it’s really important that we don’t see a “villainization” of immigrant communities. There’s so much discourse on how much immigrants take from this country, and yet there’s so little on the contributions immigrants have made to this country, which is incredibly significant and always forgotten… If we don’t think about race, and we don’t think about the policies we’re putting in place right now, it’s really hard to think about what immigration should look like."
"For undocumented workers in particular, so much of their struggle becomes “invisibilized” because they don’t get counted, and there’s a huge fear of deportation and reporting to law enforcement if they’re dealing with unfair wages and other forms of criminalization against them… They need protection by not being visible, but it also means that in a lot of ways they end up not being protected because they’re not visible. In the Asian American community in particular, especially with South Asians, so much of the focus has been on high-skilled workers… and not as much on the undocumented working folks in our community. What I mean about visibility is that it’s important that we address that part of our population, too."
"In the South Asian community in particular, we ourselves were shocked to see the high number of Indian undocumented immigrants after the President announced his Executive Action. Pew released a report that showed that Indians are the fourth highest population—after Guatemala, Mexico, and El Salvador—with 450,000 undocumented individuals. It also made us realize that we really need better data on South Asian communities."
"A second concern in the South Asian community is the issue of immigration enforcement that disproportionally impacts undocumented working class folks, layered on with racial profiling because they are perceived to be Muslim—Islamophobia, terrorism. The Priority Enforcement Program actually reprioritizes anyone suspected of terrorism, threats to national security."
"Even though I am the policy director of a national organization, I believe that the real change happens outside of DC, outside of legislation. It’s about a movement. It’s about an immigrant justice movement. And so I think regardless of what we think is politically feasible, it’s really important that we continue to fight for what we think dignity and human rights for immigrants actually looks like… It’s our job to bring demands of the movement to the [decision-making] table. And I also think it’s important to push decision-makers to think bigger and think harder, to be more progressive and bold about the kind of change they propose."
"I don’t see any merit in the status quo. I think it has disproportionately impacted our communities and all people of color in this country… It’s been very destructive and has really fragmented our communities, really hurt our communities in a lot of ways. And so I think it’s important that we don’t stop fighting."
"Over time I would hope that justice and rights aren’t such a separate concept and that justice can actually be a part of the legislation that we see… It’s beyond that; it’s about affirming people’s dignity. It goes beyond, “You’re allowed to stay here without getting deported as long as you join the military or do this, this, and this and pay taxes,” and do all these things that quantify your contributions to this country. Everyone is entitled to be here, because they’re a human being."
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