Category: Immigration Blog

Disaster Relief Fund for Undocumented Workers  

A Petition,  requesting sufficient funds to help undocumented workers, is being circulated by New Haven Legal Action.  The UUCM’s Social Justice Council has signed this petition and now is asking members and friends of UU Church of Meriden and Mattatuck Unitarian Universalist Society to also sign it individually.   This petition requests actions from Governor Lamont and state senators and representativs to provide Undocumented Workers with Disaster Relief Funds.  Undocumented Workers are disproportionately likely to own small businesses and to work in the sectors that have been hardest hit by coronavirus-related closures.  However, workers without federal immigration status and their U.S. citizen families are largely excluded from the programs that are supposed to help workers who lose their jobs or have their work hours cut.  This includes the federal stimulus payments, state unemployment benefits and federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance and most temporary leave and disability payments.

Over 2,500 individuals have signed this petition.  Please help reach the goal of 5,000 signatures, by signing at http://chng.it/ZFsWGNhqLk 

“ICE Out of Our Courts” Rally

Monday, March 9, 2020 3:30pm,

In front of CT Supreme Court Building, 231 Capitol Ave, Hartford

Sponsored by CIRA, CT Immigration Rights Alliance

The afternoon of May 31 marked a celebration of Sujitno and Dahlia Sajuti’s freedom to return home to West Hartford after 599 days in sanctuary at our church. Sujitno’s legal team has secured assurance from ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement) that they no longer have jurisdiction over Sujitno and Dahlia’s case and will no longer pursue them. This victory is communal. The outcome speaks for the power of working together with perseverance. The march toward justice is a marathon, not a sprint. Sujitno and Dahlia are now able to observe the rest of Ramadan with their own faith community.

The exhibit is aimed at sharing the stories of families in sanctuary, while also creating and expanding educational conversations across the stat of CT regarding the struggles of immigrant families as they try to navigate through a broken and racist immigration systems.  Together we can create a more just world!  This Photo Show will be at UUCM on June 8 and 9, 2019.

A Bangladeshi woman facing deportation has been granted a last-minute stay following public outcry against her removal. Salma Sikandar’s deportation was halted less than 24 hours before she was supposed to board a one-way flight to Bangladesh, leaving behind her husband and 17-year-old son, who is a U.S. citizen. Sikandar has lived in the United States for nearly 20 years. But in June she was told by Immigration and Customs Enforcement that she had to leave the country by August. That’s when her community stepped in, staging protests in New Haven and a hunger strike outside the ICE office in Hartford, demanding Sikandar be allowed to stay in the United States. We speak with Salma Sikandar and her son Samir Mahmud, who will start his freshman year at Quinnipiac University next week. It has been Sikandar’s lifelong dream to send her son to college.

From Democracy Now posted on 8/24/18