NJ Sikh American community advised not to answer questions related to immigration status Carteret, New Jersey – The Carteret, NJ city Board of Education at a meeting on August 24, 2006, agreed to review the school re-registration form for the Carteret public school system after representatives of the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF) and local community raised concerns about questions related to immigration status listed in the re-registration form. The Board of Education stated that it will revise the form in consultation with SALDEF. In early August, the Board of Education mailed a letter and re-registration form stating that all children attending the Carteret public school system need to re-register. The stated purpose of the re-registration is to ensure proof of residency, but the means by which the Board has undertaken to ensure residency are troubling and potentially discriminatory against immigrant communities. Parents and guardians were asked to provide birthplace information to the school if their child was not born in the United States, and asked to provide four forms of documentary evidence to prove they lived in the area. SALDEF believes these requests to be improper, intrusive and extremely burdensome. The request for four pieces of documentation to prove residency is an undue burden on families. SALDEF advises both the Sikh American and to the greater immigrant community of Carteret to not to answer any questions relating to the birth place of you or your child or when your family immigrated to the United States. These are listed at the end of page 5 of the re-registration form. “The information being requested by the Carteret Board of Education is not only unnecessary but can be used to determine who is a naturalized citizen or legal immigrant and who is not,” said SALDEF President Mirin Kaur Phool. “The request by the school board is highly intrusive and forces us to ask if there is some further insidious reason for asking these specific questions of all registering students.” It is disconcerting to the immigrant community, which make’s up a considerable population of the Carteret community, given that the Board is not legally entitled to ask information regarding immigration status. During the Board of Education meeting last week, the Board conceded that the immigration and citizenship information was optional — though the forms themselves make no mention of this explicitly. It must be noted that the failure by the Board of Education to admit students whose parents refuse to answer questions on national origin would clearly violate both NJ state and federal laws. In New Jersey, discrimination in public schools on the basis of national origin is prohibited by the New Jersey Statutes Annotated 10:1-1, which is the New Jersey Constitution Article 1, par. 5 and by New Jersey Statutes Annotated 18A: 36-20.
Carteret Board of Education to Review Improper Immigration Questions on School Registration Forms
Before the end of the school year, SMART’s National Director Preetmohan Singh addressed the Sikh Studies class at Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA. Organizers of the class, which consists of Sikh and non-Sikh students and as well as community members, invited Mr. Singh to provide an overview of the Sikh faith and discuss current issues within the Sikh Diaspora. SMART also held workshops with college students at the East Coast Asian American Students Union (ECAASU) annual conference at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA. The workshops included information on critical issues facing the Asian American community, including hate crimes legislation, racial profiling, and immigration. If you would like to host a similar event on your college campus, please email SMART at info@sikhmediwatch.org.
Following racist graffiti at a Fresno, CA Gurdwara earlier this year, SMART National Director Preetmohan Singh recently accompanied local representatives from the Sikh American community at a meeting with the city’s police chief. Participants discussed building better relationships between law enforcement and the Sikh American community through increased awareness, protocol, and strategies for successful engagement between both groups. Following the meeting, which also included four of the five district commanders for the city, Fresno officials requested and received 1,000 of SMART’s Law Enforcement Reference Cards. This pocket-sized card provides police officers recommendations about protocol for effectively working with the Sikh American community. SMART and the Fresno Sikh American community are also working on implementing plans to reduce bullying and harassment faced by Sikh American students in public schools.
Established by a coalition of corporate and national community leaders, the Asian and Pacific Islander American Scholarship Fund (APIASF) is being launched as a counterpart to other large funds established for specific racial and ethnic groups such as the United Negro College Fund (UNCF). The APIASF will be devoted solely to the financial scholarship needs of Asian and Pacific Islander American students. To mark its establishment, APIASF is staging launches across the nation. For more information please visit APIASF’s website at www.apiasf.org.