Are South Asians Missing in the Immigration Fight?

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Though an estimated 2 million of the 12 million undocumented workers in this country are from Asia, there have been few from our communities protesting alongside our Latino/a brothers and sisters. Those who have participated notice self-consciously that they have been late to arrive on the scene. In the numerous San Francisco protests throughout April and May, the Desi contingent with whom I marched remained limited to the familiar activists. While I understood the hesitancy of undocumented South Asian workers to participate in these rallies, I couldn't help but wonder why an art exhibit would gather such a much larger crowd than a direct action. Can South Asian immigrant elites only relate to issues of deportation, detention, and harassment in the abstract?

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A few days after the art exhibit opening was the April 10th National Day of Mobilization against HR4437. The South Asian and Asian communities had had time to think about our role in this massive protest and some of us actively participated in our local demonstrations. After letting my class out early the morning of the mobilization and encouraging my students, many of whom are Asian Americans and who were not even aware of the existence of this draconian bill much less the protests, to attend the demonstrations, I walked over to historic Sproul at the University of California at Berkeley wondering what kind of resistance I was about to become a part of.

The numbers were limited (unlike elsewhere in the nation). There were about four hundred protestors on the steps of Sproul Hall. But these few were making the noise of thousands. And an amazing thing was happening: the message was being broadened. Students for Justice in Palestine and the organizers of the anti-HR4437 rally had coordinated efforts and "Si, Se Puede!" and "Rain or Shine, Free Palestine!" were being chanted simultaneously as protestors withstood the cold and drizzle to be heard. Speakers talked alternatively about the plight of immigrants in this country and the plight of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Territories. Among the list of demands students had for the Chancellor were to give campus workers a living wage and to divest from Israel. Tears of relief came to my eyes as I saw the connections being made between the tactics of global imperialism and domestic criminalization of immigrants.

Perhaps most moving for me were the 3–4 young South Asian men and women who were handing out Free Palestine and Anti-HR4437 fliers. It was monumental, I thought, for my generation of South Asians in America to invoke our anti-colonial histories and form alliances and connections between people who suffer the same plight all over the globe. As post-colonial subjects, these few were helping to fulfill our collective duty to stand up and protest the criminalization of immigrants, the colonization of Palestine, and the red-baiting of our communities at home and abroad. Heartening though this messaging was, I still bemoaned the lack of angry bodies at the rally.

In the midst of speeches and chants and the spirit of protest, one young Sikh student, the first at the gates of University Hall, challenging Chancellor Birgeneau to heed the demands of University staff and students, turned to me and asked "Where all the Desis at?" I stared vacantly at him while chanting, "Si, se puede!" (yes, we can!) and wanted cynically to retort that we were so busy imagining oppression that we had forgotten to put down our wine and cheese and embody Resistance. But instead I just shrugged my shoulders and allowed his question to resonate within me. Where are all the Desis? What will we make of our vital role in this expanding movement? Though I could confidently yell "Si, Se Puede!" alongside the Latino community that day, the only rallying call that comes to mind when I imagine waking up my own community emerges in the form of a skeptical question, "Hum Kar Sakte Hain?"

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