Building Solidarity with Asylum Seekers in Sacramento

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On this episode of the It’s Going Down podcast, we speak with someone involved in Nor Cal Resist, a group based out of Sacramento, California organizing around mutual aid, community solidarity, and building movement infrastructure. During our discussion, we talk about how the group has begun to organize and work with asylum seekers, mainly from Venezuela, Afghanistan, and the Ukraine, and the struggles that they have faced along way and the economic and imperial forces which pushed them to carry out such dangerous journeys. We talk about how Republican governors have shipped asylum seekers into “blue cities” including Sacramento, and how mutual aid groups like Nor Cal Resist has mobilized to provide support and direct aid in the face of increasing racist conspiracy theories and State repression.

As Truthout reported:

The recent rise in refugees attempting to enter the U.S. — reaching a high point of 2.5 million by 2023 — is a result of displacing factors in which U.S. government policy has played a role.

For instance, the largest percentage (53 percent) of migrants attempting to enter the U.S. since 2020 have come from Venezuela — where the U.S. government has maintained a suffocating regime of economic sanctions since 2014.

There has also been an increase in state repression and restrictive changes in policy that have reduced how many migrants attain refugee status after entering the country. For instance, while there is a recent increase in people seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border — a process rooted in long-standing U.S. policy — Trump largely dismantled the practice, instead automatically expelling migrants at the border. Biden continued Trump’s policy until May 2023, deporting even more than Trump.

While 2.3 million migrants and refugees have been temporarily “paroled” into the U.S. under Biden, nearly 4 million have been denied entry or deported. Most paroled individuals are in active removal proceedings, and only a small percentage are likely to attain refugee status as Biden has capped asylum cases at 125,000 per year. So no, migrants are not “the problem.” And the U.S. has sufficient resources to settle migrants and refugees — if that were a priority.

The real threat at the border is the far right, which has fueled a civil war-like showdown between the federal government and the Texas state government by weaponizing anti-immigration politics.

As both corporate political parties push to manufacture a crisis at the border over asylum seekers and refugees, social movements must work to show that the capitalist system which is attacking workers and the poor across the world is our common enemy, along with the racists and white supremacists attempting to divide us.

More Info: Nor Cal Resist on Instagram and Link Tree.