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Meeting Information



Full Commission

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Immigrant Rights Commission

Neighborhood Meeting inMission

The Women’s Building

3543 18th Street

San Francisco, CA 94110

November 12, 2008

 

SUMMARY REPORT

 

 

Commissioner Jamal Dajani (Chair) convened the meeting at 6:05 p.m.

 

I. Roll Call

 

Members Present:  Jamal Dajani (Chair), Gilberto Alexander, Greg Chew, Felix Fuentes, Jay Gonzalez, Vera Haile, Solomon Jones, Chris Punongbayan (Vice Chair), Angus McCarthy, Alan Mok, Toye Moses, and Sam Ng.

 

Members Absent: Elahe Enssani (excused)

 

II. Remarks

 

            1. Commissioner Jamal Dajani (Chair)

                Commissioner Dajani welcomed everyone to the Commission’s neighborhood meeting in Mission.  The purpose of the meeting is to touch upon the most important issues that affect our immigrant population in San Francisco such as: language access, municipal ID, public safety, day labor program, sanctuary city ordinance, transportation, public health, small business, social service programs and neighborhood services.  The Chair also informed the audience that simultaneous interpretation was available in Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin) and Spanish.

 

            2. Commissioner Felix Fuentes and Commissioner Alan Mok

                Commissioner Fuentes spoke in Spanish and Commissioner Mok spoke in Chinese to welcome the community members and city officials who attended the meeting.  They asked the participants to share with the Commission and the city departments of the concerns and issues.

 

            3. City Department Representatives

                        a. Mike Farrah of the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services

                            The Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services (MONS) has a neighborhood liaison for each of the supervisorial district.  MONS received a number of referrals from the 311 Call Center.  The majority of these referrals were from the immigrant community in San Francisco, and many of the concerns were related to the landlord and tenant issues.  Health access continues to be another important issue.  There are many questions regarding the green card (permanent resident card).  Neighborhood meeting is important to the community, and if they know that people are providing services or trying to help them, they will be fearless about trying to access services.

 

 

b. Sheila Chung-Hagen of the City Administrator’s Office

Ms. Chung-Hagen provided the most update on the developments of the municipal ID and the sanctuary city ordinance.  She indicated that the municipal ID program was approved by the Board of Supervisors and the Mayor in November 2007.  There were a few delays in the implementation of the program.  The Mayor expressed his concerns about making sure that the City was in compliance with the federal and state law as well as to ensure that the card was secure.  These are valid concerns.  Finally, the City will begin to issue the City ID cards some time in late January of 2009.

 

Ms. Chung-Hagen mentioned that there have not been any changes to the Sanctuary City Ordinance.  There are some exceptions related to cases of people that are charged or convicted of felonies.  In these cases, our law enforcement agents will be sharing that information with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  There have been some shifts happening and these shifts have been in the department policies or protocols.

 

The City has been working very closely with legal and social service providers around rapid response to the immigration raids.  At least three or four major raids took place on May 2, 2008, the day after International Workers’ Day.  The rapid response team assisted the family members that had been left behind, and many of them were US citizen children.

 

c. Newly Elected Supervisor John Avalos

                            Supervisor-Elect John  Avalos expressed his concerns about the San Francisco Sanctuary City Ordinance.  As a newly elected member of the Board of Supervisors, he will work hard to ensure that the sanctuary city ordinance remains intact and how we can strengthen the services and the safety net for immigrants in San Francisco.

 

                        d. Captain Tacchini of the San Francisco Police Department – Mission Station     

                            Captain Tacchini informed the Commission and the neighborhood that the Police Department is actively engaged in a number of different enforcement programs designed to guarantee public safety.  The primary goal is to reduce violent crime.  He reassured that the San Francisco Police department is very cognizant of the Sanctuary City Ordinance and will work with everyone, regardless of the immigration status.  25% of the police officers assigned to the Mission Police Station are bilingual.  They speak eight (8) different languages, so the Police Station has the ability to communicate will all members of the community.

 

                        e. Rosemarie Fan of the USCIS – San Francisco District Office

                            The United States Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), formerly known as the Immigration & Naturalization Services (INS) is part of the US Department of Homeland Security.  The Office has two main functions: naturalization and adjustment of status.  USCIS helps people reunite or unite with their family members and helps people become citizens, and therefore become participating members of the society and the community.  Currently, it takes about 6 months to file for naturalization.  There are two naturalization ceremonies per month at the Masonic Center in the Nob Hill area, and each time 1,300 people were naturalized to become US citizens.  The USCIS naturalized about 25,000 people each year. The breakdown as follow: 22% were from China, 18% were from Mexico, and then followed by the Philippines, India and Vietnam.  The number of 25,000 people naturalizing do not all come from San Francisco, they are from all over Northern California.

 

f. Samara Causevic McCoy of the Newcomers Health Program – Department of Public Health

                            The Newcomers Health program is a program of the Department of Public Health.  Their main service is the health assessment.  They provided a very comprehensive health assessment for new arrivals.  New arrivals who are eligible for the services are refugees, asylees and victims of trafficking.  The program used to serve a lot more refugees before, and nowadays the program mainly serves asylees.

 

                        g. Belle La of the Public Defender’s Office

                            The Public Defender’s Office creates the Clean Slate Program to help individuals clear their criminal history records, so that is not an obstacle for them to apply for jobs, housing, and immigration petition.  There is an office in Mission area located at 1850 Mission (corner of Arriba Juntos), and the walk-in clinic run from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM every Monday.

 

                        h. Lt. Ernie Ferrando of the Gang Task Force of San Francisco Police Department

                            Again, the San Francisco Police Department is well aware of sanctuary issues within San Francisco.  The only time that the Police department does anything outside of the sanctuary ordinance is when it involves a felony person involved in gangs.  The San Francisco Police department assisted the Immigration, Custom and Enforcements (ICE) with some work involving the gang MS13.  This work is very important to protect the community.  Eight (8) homicide cases were clear in the past year.

 

i.    Tomas Lee of the Office of Language Services (OLS)

                            The most recent development was the domestic violence program.  The OLS had a grant in amount of $50,000 from the Zellerbach Foundation and the casey Foundation to train San Francisco Police Officers in Spanish and Cantonese to improve their language skills, specifically on legal terminology and the terminology utilized in domestic violence work.  The program will starts in May of 2009, and the San Francisco City College will work with Casa De Las Madres to develop a curriculum.

 

                            Another important task was the revision of the language access ordinance.  Currently, the second draft of the amendment is being reviewed by the City Attorney’s Office.

 

j.    Donna Levitt of the Office Labor Standards and Enforcement (OLSE)

                            The OLSE enforces the City’s Minimum Wage Ordinance, and the current minimum wage in San Francisco is $9.36 an hour.  On January 1, 2009, the minimum wage in San Francisco will be $9.79 per hour.  Recently, OLSE distributed about $150,000 worth of payback checks for 5 workers who were cheated out of the minimum wage at a sewing factory in San Francisco.  OLSE also enforces the Paid Sick Leave Ordinance.  It requires that businesses provide paid sick leave and employees accrue paid sick leave in the amount of one hour for every 30 hours worked.  The last ordinance is the Health Care Security Ordinance.  Any business with 20 or more employees must provide health care services in San Francisco.  The businesses either provide insurance or set up a reimbursement account or they pay into the City’s Healthy San Francisco program.  San Francisco is the very first city in the country to have paid sick leave or to require businesses provide healthcare services.

 

k.      Anamaria Loya of the La Raza Centro Legal

Ms. Loya stated that the community benefited from huge strides in the area of municipal ID card program.  In promoting the sanctuary city ordinance, and investing resources and increasing legal services for immigrants in the City.  San Francisco and the Bay area target for increased raids and enforcement related to the immigration.  Not only raids are on the rise, but the type of behavior in which the raids are happening in which immigrants are injured, hospitalized, inhumane behavior where doors are busted down, cause a lot of terror in the community.  Checkpoints in the San Francisco and the Bay area being set up.  This policy had impacted on the immigrant community because undocumented immigrants will not be allowed by the state to have the driver’s licenses.

 

In addition, the economic downturn in America and elsewhere also impacted on the immigrant families.  Below is the list of suggestions for the Immigrant rights Commission to consider:

· Aggressively vocal in supporting and promoting the Sanctuary City Ordinance

· Visible in the media to speak out against the raids and the terror that the immigrant community and families face

· Speaking to the federal, state and local governments about the priorities related to the immigrant rights

· Accountability among the city departments and agencies who have impact on the immigrant community.  These departments must inform the Commission of their activities in promoting the immigrant and labor rights

· Reviewing the Police Department’s checkpoint policy

· Promoting the DREAM Act and Pathway to Legalization

 

l.        Public Comments

· Liliana Ordonez: (through Spanish Interpreter)

                                Her husband was arrested 8 days ago in San Francisco and she has not been able to do anything to get him out of jail.  He has been incriminated by the police and because of his immigration status, she has not been able to do anything to help him and she does not know who she should approach to get help for this matter.  She understood that in San Francisco there is the Sanctuary City Ordinance, but she feels that her husband’s rights are being violated and she does not feel that the sanctuary city ordinance is effective anymore.

 

                                Suggested Solution: Mr. Francisco Ugarte of the San Francisco Immigrant Legal and Education Network recommended Ms. Ordonez to talk to him more in details about her husband’s case after this meeting.

 

· Samme Shiheiber of the Quake City Shuttle Services:

  The San Francisco Airport Commission currently considering the proposal to establish a single service shuttle contract at the San Francisco International Airport (SFO).  This proposal will push out the small companies which many of the owners are immigrants.  If this proposal was approved by the Airport Commission, all of the small companies owned by immigrants will go out of business and bankrupt.  These immigrant owners would like to ask the Immigrant Rights Commission to support immigrant small business owners by working with the Airport Commission to address this issue.

 

Suggested Solution: The group should send more information to the Immigrant Rights Commission via the Executive Director.  Meanwhile, the Commission will learn more about the proposal from the Airport Commission, Small Business Commission, and the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services.

 

· Kezia Tang of Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA)

                                San Francisco MUNI’s top priority is to safely deliver its passengers and patrons to their destination and on time.  MUNI will have the bilingual signs on all new hybrid buses very shortly.

 

· Delene Wolf of the Rent Board

                                Most of the problems that immigrants bring to the Rent Board are issues related to the tenant-landlord.  Staff at the Rent Board includes Chinese, Tagalog, Spanish and Vietnamese speakers.  TheRent Board has a multilingual website.  The main responsibility of the Rent Board is to set the fair rent and investigate allegations of wrongful eviction. 

 

· Jeanne Zarka of the Human Services Agency (HSA)

                                The Human Services Agency (HSA) handles social welfare services and Department of Aging Adult Services.  The agency has many materials and program brochures in different languages.  HSA has various programs that serve immigrants.  One of them is to help people who do not speak English to learn English in a very rapid fashion so that they can find better jobs.  It’s called the vocational ESL immersion program.  HSA puts together a fact sheet about the eligibility requirements for the CalWORKS program.

 

· Lupe Arreola of the Human Rights Commission (HRC)

The Human Rights Commission has the Housing Public Accommodations Division to investigate and mediate the complaints that have to do with discrimination and housing and accommodations that fall within any of the protected classes under the City’s antidiscrimination ordinances, such as race, place of birth, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, height, weight, disability, and age.  They are very broad and basically different classes.

 

· Maria de Rodriguez of the San Francisco Organizing Project

        The San Francisco Organizing Project represents about 40,000 families across the City in 17 different neighborhoods.  Our community really afraid of immigration raids conducted by ICE and police checkpoints.  The police checkpoints recently were set up at different corners on Geneva Avenue.  The police officers stop immigrants, ten cars at a time. Many of the members are afraid even to take their children to school.  They are afraid when they see the police officers because they fear that they might be stopped without reasons.  The San Francisco Organizing Project suggested that the Commission needs to aggressively advocate for the municipal ID card program be implemented and the sanctuary city ordinance to be kept.  These actions will increase the public safety because people will feel less afraid of reporting crimes.  This includes the transgendered community into our community.

Response from Police Assistant Chief Lynch

The Police Department was not aware of any checkpoints set up in the Mission neighborhoods.  The Police Department fully complied with the Sanctuary City Ordinance, and the Department has not changed its policy regarding the sanctuary city.  However, in any issues related to the criminal activity, the Department collaborates with the federal agencies.

 

 

· Ana Perez of CARECEN:

        CARECEN noticed that the Chronicle has taken a very anti immigrant position and a very yellow journalistic approach to the issue of juvenile and crimes.  This is a complicated issue.  The community’s concern was that for a few bad cases, the whole immigrant community was being targeted.  The Mayor had shifted his policy in terms of how to deal with the immigrant youth.  CARECEN hopes that with the shift in the federal government, in Congress and the change in the local government, that the immigration issue will be addressed.  In San Francisco 40% of the city population are immigrants.  Many of them are Asian and Latino immigrants.  They deserve the City to protect them, and in these tough economic times, we need the Mayor continues to commit to sanctuary city ordinance.  In reality, the City just turned over immigrant youth who are accused of a crime over to ICE.  The undocumented immigrants do not have access to state and federal resources, so how our city backs up those families is going to be the key issue.  CARECEN understood that within the sanctuary ordinance, coordination between local law enforcement and ICE, and yet the recent raids, 11 immigrants were arrested and these people were not under any investigation and did not have any criminal records.  But at least out of 11, there were 2 or 3 who were children under the age of 13.  The federal agents threw in gas bombs, knocked down the door to terrorize the whole family, pulled people out of their bed by their hair and pointed guns at children.  CARECEN believed that it is not our police officers that were doing it, and yet that these activities terrorized the community.  Who will deal with the post traumatic stress disorders that happened when immigrant families are impacted?  CARECEN hopes that the Immigrant Rights Commission takes a greater role in hearing these stories.  Recently, the monthly coordination meetings between the community and the Mayor’s Office have been stopped.  The immigrant community has been asking the Mayor to reestablish the conversation, but the community has not receive the response from the mayor’s Office.

 

Responded from Mr. Farrah of Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services:

Ms. Ana Perez pretty much summed up everything.  There was a change in ways that the City deals with the situation.  Definitely, the Mayor and his staff will reach out to the community for the best solutions.  Mr. Farrah will continue to advocate for more meetings and more dialogues between the Mayors’s Office and the immigrant community in the days ahead and will build the bridge again and try to meet more often with the community.

 

· Rosario Navarrette of 30th Street Senior Center

                                Unfortunately, she did not get the notice about this meeting until this afternoon.  If she got the notice earlier, she would bring her seniors here to attend this meeting.  The seniors have a lot to say to the Commission about issues that are going on in the immigrant community.  In the senior program at 30th Senior center, 66% of clients are Latinos, non-English speaking seniors.  One of the important issues of the seniors is safety.  They are concerned about their personal safety and public safety.  Lately, in the area, a series of assaults and robberies against seniors, and many of them go unreported.  The seniors are afraid because they are immigrants and the negative effect on them.

 

                                In terms of the public safety, MUNI has a J bus go by in front of the 30th Senior Center, and at the corner of Delores and 30th street, the bus has a stop there and cars go around the buses on the right side.  This is a really dangerous because the seniors have a hard times getting off the bus and as a result, they could get killed if not injured very seriously when cars just go ahead and pass the bus or trolley up.  No inspectors from the municipal railway came out to the area and check out the situation.

 

· Angela Chan of Asian Law Caucus:

                                The Asian Law Caucus serves about 1,200 immigrants a year, not just Asian immigrants but also Latino and African immigrants as well.  In the juvenile system, about 3,000 youth get in contact with the juvenile probation each year.  25% to 30% of those youth is Latino, and about 10% to 15% is Asian youth.  Ms. Chan suggested the following areas that the Commission needs to pay attention to:

· Language Access: make sure that all city departments actually have the language access protocol or compliance plan and they are complying with it.

· Juvenile Probation Department does not have the protocol in place.  The Commission should encourage Chief Siffermann to look into this matter.

· San Francisco Police Department’s General Order: The Police Commission adopted the General Order last year, but the department had not yet implemented it.

· Referring violent immigrant youth to ICE: a big impact and huge challenge to the current sanctuary city ordinance.

 

The immigrant community commended the Immigrant Rights Commission for passing a resolution to support the sanctuary city ordinance and against the proposed changes in policy regarding undocumented youth.  The Commission was the first Commission to talk about the issue and pass the resolution in support of the immigrant community and the undocumented youth.

 

· Reverend Israel Alvaran of Unite Here Local 2

Currently, there are two non-union hotels in San Francisco that are being organized.  Many workers at these two hotels are immigrants.  The Reverend strongly believed that the immigrant rights and the worker rights are tied up together.  He hoped that the Commission will allow them to speak at the upcoming Commission’s meeting.  These hotel workers really wanted to have a contract, or at least a process by which they could say they want to have a voice at the workplace.

 

· Bernadette of Irish Pastoral Center

  She commented that San Francisco is a city with heart.  She felt every culture, every ethnic background in this wonderful city should know how good the City is.  She also wanted to say thank you to the Irish Pastoral Center and Commissioner McCarthy for helping her and other Irish immigrants.

 

· Vilasun Fuxiang

  Ms. Fuxiang submitted the application for public housing for a long time but did not hear back from the Housing Authority.  She asked her social worker for the assistance but there is no result..  She wanted to know how she can find out about her application status?

 

Suggestions:

Brian Cheu of the Mayor’s Office of Community Investment (MOCI) presented a list of programs that MOCI provides to the immigrant community.  Many organizations such as CARECEN, Asian Law Caucus, the Immigration Legal Network, the Rent Response Network received grants from MOCI to support the immigrants.

 

Lupe Arreola of the Human Rights Commission suggested that Ms, Fuxiang come by the Human Rights Commission – Housing Rights Committee so staff can assist her in the process.

 

III. Adjournment

 

            Chair Dajani thanked the members of the community, community based organizations, community leaders, the representatives from the Mayor’s Office, and the city departments for their support and attending this neighborhood meeting.  The next neighborhood meeting will be posted on the Commission’s website at www.sfgov.org/immigrant.

 

The neighborhood meeting in Mission adjourned at 8:02 PM.