African Development Center

OVERVIEW

On 0ctober 30, 2009, the Twin Cities Immigrant Roundtable and the African Development Center co-convened a three- hour immigration forum at the International Institute in St. Paul. The event focused on issues and challenges affecting Minnesota’s and thus America’s immigrant communities.

Attending the dialogue were representatives from various non-profit and advocacy groups, as well as key government institutions with systemic authority over immigration matters:

• Center for Families
• Council on Black Minnesotans
• League of Women Voters
• State Demographic Center
• Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights
• Minnesota Department of Human Rights
• Social Security Administration
• Immigration and Customs Enforcement
• Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
• US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)
• African Development Center

Larry Walker and Hector Garcia moderated the forum.

As keynote speaker I showcased the ADC’s devotion to community economic development as an approach to solving a crucial community issue. The ADC has worked actively to reduce barriers related to language, culture, and religion in order to create a path for Minnesota’s African immigrants to attain financial success. Such an economic empowerment success story epitomizes a grand possibility for achieving immigration reform if immigrant community leaders can create a democratic forum that identifies, defines, and seeks remedies for our current immigration entanglements.

Amid numerous challenges and setbacks, the ADC has triumphed and emerged as a leader of micro-lending, out-performing CDCs and large banking institutions in the State of Minnesota. ADC has been recognized as the foremost small business lender by the City of Minneapolis, with the help of eight (8) dedicated full-time employees, Executive/Finance Committee and a Board of Trustees.

ADC understands that Minnesota, like the nation at-large, is struggling to deal with the economic pressures and opportunities of immigration. Our role a community advocate has been to create answers on the opportunity side: by working to increase the rates of self-employment and home ownership among Africa immigrants and refugees, and to link mainstream businesses with the state’s estimated $6 billion ethnic economy. The ADC has achieved spectacular early success both in providing services and building capacity.

The Twin Cities Immigrant Community Roundtable is another such opportunity. TCICR is a grassroots, issues-based, multiethnic network of Minnesota’s immigrants uniting in a common democratic discourse to generate an effective voice across communities and persistently advocating legal, humane, and just measures for their members. The TCICR extends interaction across lines of identity through a coalition of community organizers, activists, and scholars, who believe that change and power come from a collective voice – a voice that understands and has access to the laws, policies, and public institutions that define our rights and liberties as immigrants and refugees.

The dialogue emphasized that immigrants represent a wide variety of nations, cultures, languages, and religions, and have many great experiences that reveal their rich diversity. In spite of their varied origins, their emotional, political, spiritual, and financial investments extend their lives and identities across national boundaries. This is the power of the United States of America – the land of immigrants. In this vein, a basic appreciation of immigrants’ cultural richness only elevates American values, and increases contributions they make to the American economy.

As an African immigrant, I know that by adapting to American culture and society I extend my identity. I know that some Americans are unfamiliar with my African diversity, seeing me only as “Black.” By seeing me only in the parochial context of “Black”, they tend to blur their understanding of who I truly am. In essence, they see me only a person who has escaped a bestial environment and having no knowledge base or talents to uplift America. The fact is, like other immigrants, I am beyond needs; I have knowledge and capacities that can enhance “America’s power”.

In general, African peoples are unused to living in a society where race is a defining factor. Many Africans never thought of themselves as “Black” before arriving in America where their identity is entwined with all “Black People” strictly on the basis of “color”. Color tends to be the common factor that would now define our mutual struggle against racism and discrimination. And, as African immigrants, we also face the awful challenge to blend in racially in American society, and in some places we are profiled simply for “looking like” foreigners. Realistically, African immigrants and refugees notion of racism depends largely on our new experience; their new environment.

Now it is time we join forces with other immigrant and refugee communities to demand fair treatment from our new neighbors. We urge that they determine our immigration status through a fair system; not the ill-willed intent of sending us back to countries where we already fear persecution, or have escaped debilitating social, economic, and political conditions to survive. Let not the culture of collective guilt haunting some African populations, especially since September 11, 2001, hinder our positive perception of American laws, values and democracy. ADC’s stance is simple – change these beliefs on both sides of the aisle: build the economic capacity of our community, revile passivism, and organize (not agonize), build wealth, and thus promote community power.

The African Development Center is a living testimonial of community power and community success. Immigrant leaders can do the same. We can build power for ourselves by coming together and acting on common goals and convictions. We can achieve that by recognizing issues that keep us in abeyance and setting new goals for upward mobility.

A FEW SUGGESTIONS GOING FORWARD

First, we must recognize our ability to wield collective power and to transform public policy. If we maintain in-cohesive set of communities that seldom meet to address their issues, we stand the risk of compromising our collective self-interests and our ability to emerge as mutually respectful co-creators of public policy. With a sense of urgency it’s time we dialogued, identified common issues (those related to race, rights, and economic justice), and fuse ideas. By so doing, we will demystify the laws, policies, practices, and institutional frameworks that subjugate, limit, and sub-humanize us.

Second, we need a stratagem of self-initiative for solving common problems. We need an agenda that reflects our distinct historical or cultural experiences. We have one destiny that should not be surrendered as we endeavor for equal human rights, social justice, and economic development. We must base our agenda on our peculiar historical experiences, not ground it to the very suppressive systems that vilify our struggle and nullify our values. This self-initiative necessitates a pedagogic approach to community organizing. We must utilize our own expertise to provide community service as a new concept to community empowerment. We must fight our own cause for justice and fairness, counting minimally on the expertise of others.

Third, immigrant community leaders need each other. We need each other now than ever before. The gap between immigrant rights and racial justice is producing a huge and powerful wedge. Our mutual self-interests can change our situation. We need a well-developed racial justice consciousness agenda and set of community organizing and advocacy tools to guide our struggle. We need to avoid the specter of having our rights as immigrants devolve into racist and ultimately self-defeating propositions of assimilation. We need a strong global migration analysis to help our new society understanding how the so-called racial justice gospel is neglecting huge numbers of people of color, especially African immigrants. Our leaders must take a long hard look at the system as it painfully structures racial hierarchies and wages hostility toward undocumented immigrants. We must connect the dots; disallow immigrant rights and racial justice to stumble on our own internal contradictions, and keep intact the heart of our movement.