PIVOT’s Policy Platform

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

PIVOT––the Progressive Vietnamese American Organization––was formed to be a collective voice for progressive Vietnamese Americans who seek a just and diverse America. In 2017, PIVOT was established in direct response to a political landscape and physical environment that threatened the human rights and safety of millions of Americans, particularly disenfranchised populations. (These include communities composed of those who are low-income, immigrants, refugees, people of color, LGBTQ+, and women.) Across the U.S., Vietnamese Americans with progressive values united to empower and engage fellow Vietnamese Americans to work together towards a better future. 

What continues to be key to these efforts is our ability to advocate for policies that align with our values regarding: 1) promoting civil and human rights (including for immigrant, refugee, and LGBTQ+ communities), 2) increasing cultural, linguistic, and financial access to quality education, health care, and economic opportunities, 3) protecting the environment, 4) combating misinformation and disinformation, and 5) building inclusive coalitions and intergenerational community.

To that end, we are focusing on six key priorities: immigration, health, civil rights, environmental justice, economic justice, and LGBTQ+ rights. Our policy platform for these priorities are outlined below:

Immigration

• Protect immigrants’ and asylum seekers’ rights.

• Support a pathway to citizenship for non-citizens.

• End abusive enforcement and detention.

• Demand and advocate for due process and humane policies in deportation proceedings.

• Promote and advocate for immigration issues specific to Vietnamese American communities.

Health

• Preserve and expand affordable health coverage.

• Ensure that everyone has a right to quality health care, regardless of immigration status, sexual orientation, gender identity, and language or other cultural barriers.

• Promote awareness and protect the use of mental health services.

• Advance reproductive justice to promote health and well-being.

• Eliminate and address the root causes of health disparities (disproportionate burdens of health issues in select populations) for Vietnamese Americans.

Civil Rights

• Advocate for equal access to justice, health care, and other vital systems and services.

• Preserve and expand access to voting rights for Vietnamese Americans and other marginalized populations.

• Support all efforts to count Vietnamese Americans comprehensively and fully in key datasets, such as those administered by the U.S. Census Bureau.

• Stand in solidarity with other marginalized communities on pressing civil rights issues.

• Ensure equal access to economic prosperity by promoting fair protections for all workers.

Environmental Justice 

• Inform Vietnamese Americans of the urgency of climate change.

• Mobilize to take immediate action to combat climate change.

• Elevate key climate issues that impact Vietnamese American communities to a broader audience, including mainstream environmental justice organizations.

• Support research efforts to better understand the impact of climate change and environmental factors that impact the quality of life for Vietnamese Americans.

Economic Justice

• Protect social safety net programs and equitable access to them for all Americans, including immigrants and refugees.

• Advocate for people’s rights to living wages, housing, education, health care, a clean environment, food, and safety. 

• Fight for pay equality through an intersectional lens (i.e. by considering how different facets of our identities such as race, class, gender, disability, and immigration may affect our experiences and needs), especially for gender justice.

• Advocate for fair and equitable access to funding and resources for small businesses, including the availability of services in Vietnamese.

• Promote legislation that invests public resources into communities of color, breaks down barriers for marginalized communities to build wealth, passes progressive taxes to pay for reparations, and creates policies with an anti-racist lens.

LGBTQ+ Rights

• Raise public awareness of policies that affect the accessibility of health care, gender-affirming care, and mental health care for the LGBTQ+ community, their family members, and allies. 

• Support policies that foster LGBTQ+ communities’ health, well-being, and rights so that they may thrive in a just society.

• Advocate for educational efforts and research studies on the disproportionately higher rate of suicide and mental health crises in the Vietnamese American LGBTQ+ community.

• Stand in solidarity with other LGBTQ+ partner organizations and collaborators to provide a safe space to exchange ideas, build trust, support intergenerational resources for families, have representation, and advocate for policy changes.

PIVOT’S IMMIGRATION PLATFORM

We are immigrants in a nation founded by immigrants. The Statue of Liberty is one of America’s most significant landmarks, a reminder of our tradition and mission of welcoming those who come here to escape persecution, oppression, abject poverty, or violence. Simply put, immigration is at the core of who we are as a nation.  

Yet, our current immigration system remains broken. There are over 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the shadows. Even when given lawful permanent resident status, immigrants are scapegoated as draining the nation’s resources and taking away jobs from citizens. Our detention and deportation policies and practices also give rise to serious due process concerns. Due to bureaucratic red tape and backlogs, for instance, U.S. citizens are forced to wait several years to be reunited with loved ones. PIVOT fights for immigration reform that is common sense, humane, and lawful for a vision of a better, more beautiful, and more diverse America.

Our Plan 

Protect immigrants’ and asylum seekers’ rights.

• Protect and enforce the legal rights of immigrant workers who are vulnerable to labor abuses.

• Ensure that all immigrants, regardless of immigration status, have access to quality and affordable health care.

• Promote, support, and increase access to language programs to encourage English proficiency, early learning programs for children, community organizations, job training opportunities, workers’ rights protections for immigrants, and fee waiver programs to reduce naturalization costs.

• Challenge discriminatory laws that invite racial profiling by  authorizing the police to  demand papers proving citizenship or immigration status (e.g. Arizona’s SB 1070).

• Continue our country’s tradition of welcoming refugees fleeing persecution and violence (e.g. increasing the U.S.’s refugee quota).

Support a pathway to citizenship for non-citizens.

• Create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and other non-citizens.

• Emphasize a reasonable wait for citizenship.

• Minimize fees for naturalization.

• Repeal the 3-year, 10-year, and permanent bars, which force people into the cruel dilemma of being forced to choose between living in the shadows, or leaving the country and being separated from their family for years.

• Allow eligible undocumented individuals to serve in the military and then receive expedited pathways to citizenship.

End abusive enforcement and detention.

• End local and state collaboration with immigration enforcement.

• Reject all discriminatory bans on immigrants and refugees.

Demand and advocate for due process and humane policies in deportation proceedings.

• Push for prosecutorial discretion and due process in comprehensive immigration reform legislation and in immigration policies.

• Provide bond hearings in deportation proceedings.

• Ensure access to government-funded counsel in deportation proceedings, particularly for unaccompanied children.

• Expand the use of humanitarian parole and the granting of Temporary Protected Status (TPS).

• Prevent the unfair mass deportation of immigrants with criminal convictions who have already served the time for their crime.

Promote and advocate for immigration issues specific to Vietnamese American communities.

• End the indefinite detention of Vietnamese immigrants who have outstanding removal orders, but who have also entered the U.S. prior to 1995 and so cannot be deported based on the U.S.-Vietnam Memorandum of Understanding on Deportation.

• Inform Vietnamese American communities about the direct, oftentimes drastic, effects of immigration laws and policies on fellow community members.

• Inform community members about resources for support with immigration issues.

• Help eradicate the stigma and shame associated with immigration issues.

PIVOT’S HEALTH PLATFORM

The right to health is a fundamental human right. At the core of this statement is the assertion that every individual has the right to the highest attainable standard of health, both physical and mental. To attain an adequate standard of health requires access to quality health care as well as access to food, livable conditions, healthy work environments, and a clean environment. 

Much of the current policy debate around health has focused primarily on health care coverage and cost. Health encompasses health care and many other factors that both directly and indirectly influence health. PIVOT is committed to advancing a health agenda that focuses on promoting health, reducing health disparities, and addressing the underlying causes of such disparities. To this end, PIVOT expands our health paradigm to consider issues around racial, income, and environmental inequalities, which are often root causes of health disparities.

Our Plan

Preserve and expand affordable health coverage.

• Protect the Affordable Care Act (ACA) from being repealed and, if repealed, promote a replacement that at least provides the same number of people covered and the same level of coverage without increasing cost to the consumer.

Ensure that everyone has a right to quality health care, regardless of immigration status, sexual orientation, gender identity, and language or other cultural barriers.

• Remove restrictions on access to health care based on discriminatory policies around English proficiency, sexual orientation, and immigration status 

• e.g. undocumented immigrants 

• e.g. the five-year bar that excludes older immigrants from federal benefits like SNAP and Medicaid for five years after they attain a qualified immigration status).

• Promote workforce development that ensures cultural and linguistic competency and diversity among health care providers.

Promote awareness and protect the use of mental health services.

• Raise awareness of mental health issues and the importance of mental health care given the stigma associated with mental health, the underdiagnosis and underreporting of mental health issues, and the underutilization of mental health services, particularly among Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) (including Vietnamese Americans).

• Increase behavioral health coverage, both for integrated behavioral health with primary care, and specialty mental health services.

• Support mental health workforce development, and ensure cultural and linguistic competency training and diversity among mental health care providers.

Advance reproductive justice to promote health and well-being.

• Increase access to reproductive and preventive health care.

• Protect a woman’s right to choose for her own body.

• Promote awareness of issues of human trafficking, including but not limited to sex trafficking (commercially sexually exploited children) and domestic violence, and support efforts to eliminate these abuses towards women and children.

Eliminate and address the root causes of health disparities (disproportionate burdens of health issues in select populations) for Vietnamese Americans.

• Promote the disaggregation of health-related data that can help identify hidden health disparities, particularly in the AAPI population.

• Ensure a strategic focus on communities at greatest risk.

• Identify and support effective strategies to eliminate health disparities.

• Promote efforts to understand the root causes of health disparities, including factors related to race, income, and environment.

• Support strategies that can address these root causes of health disparities, which can include—but are not limited to—language access and entitlement programs linked to income, food access programs, affordable housing, and employment opportunities.

PIVOT’S CIVIL RIGHTS PLATFORM

For decades, Vietnamese Americans have advocated for human rights for their countryfolk abroad in their quê hương, Vietnam. However, in the U.S., Vietnamese Americans also face threats to their civil and human rights that impair equal opportunity and access to key systems. Language, for instance, can be a major barrier for many Vietnamese Americans. The 2010 Census found that approximately 67% of Vietnamese American immigrants (5 years old or older) have limited English proficiency. Language proficiency can act as a barrier to voting, for example. Over 76% of naturalized Vietnamese Americans are eligible to vote. When Vietnamese Americans are not counted, we are left out of policy decisions, funding decisions, and other critical legislative efforts. Upon the following principles, PIVOT builds a civil and human rights platform that focuses on elevating the needs of Vietnamese Americans.

Advocate for equal access to justice, health care, and other vital systems and services. 

1. Fully enforce Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. Many Vietnamese Americans are discriminated against on the basis of language. By Supreme Court law, this qualifies as national origin discrimination. Recipients of federal funding should provide language assistance to those who do not read, write, and speak English well.

2. Fully enforce Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act so that Vietnamese Americans can access critical health information and services despite their potentially limited English proficiency (LEP). Health organizations must notify LEP Vietnamese Americans of language assistance.

Preserve and expand access to voting rights for Vietnamese Americans and other marginalized populations.

1. Fully implement Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act, which provisions for in-language voting information and ballots for certain districts, specifically in areas where there are high concentrations of Vietnamese Americans that meet legislative thresholds.

2. Oppose efforts to disenfranchise Vietnamese Americans and all marginalized voters, including efforts to request citizenship documentation.

3. Support efforts to expand registration, including same-day and online voter registration.

Support all efforts to count Vietnamese Americans comprehensively and fully in key datasets, such as those administered by the U.S. Census Bureau. 

1. Advocate for culturally and linguistically appropriate outreach campaign that includes Vietnamese Americans.

2. Maintain a mandatory American Community Survey and ensure that socioeconomic data points are disaggregated as much as possible.

3. Support local and state efforts to disaggregate race data so that Vietnamese Americans are counted.

Stand in solidarity with other marginalized communities on pressing civil rights issues.

1. Support legislation that opposes profiling such as the End Racial Profiling Act, which would prohibit profiling by federal, state, and local law enforcement on the basis of actual or perceived race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender identity, or sexual orientation.

2. Stand against hateful rhetoric and policies (e.g. Muslim Travel Ban) in solidarity with targeted communities.

Ensure equal access to economic prosperity by promoting fair protections for all workers.

1. Educate Vietnamese Americans on workers’ rights issues, including wage theft and organizing.

2. Support efforts that promote fair wages. 

PIVOT’S ENVIRONMENTAL RIGHTS PLATFORM

Environmental protection is a core founding value of PIVOT. Manmade greenhouse gas emissions have increased the global average surface temperature by almost 1°C from the pre-industrial period, and the last five years are among the hottest on record.

In the U.S., wildfires rage in California, hurricanes devastate the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, and floods, extreme heat waves, and arctic cold blasts occur nationwide. If no action is taken to address global warming, scientists predict that the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets will melt. Sea levels will rise by as much as 6 ft, submerging areas across the world larger than Alaska, and displace nearly 200 million people. Climate change overall will affect food availability, production, and access, which will lead to food insecurity.

Our frontline communities—communities composed of those who are low-income, people of color, women, children, and the elderly—bear a disproportionate burden of the climate crisis. 

PIVOT devotes significant resources to mobilize Vietnamese American community members to help address the climate crisis. The policies and actions that we support will ensure economic justice, align with our platform, and serve the interests of the Vietnamese American community. Since the U.S. accounts for 15% of total global emissions, local actions in our communities will have a major global impact.

Our Plan

Inform Vietnamese Americans of the urgency of climate change.

1. Communicate the impact of climate change on human beings, such as through forced migration, harsh weather, the loss of livelihood on health and well-being, and the disproportionate impact on marginalized communities, including immigrants and refugees.

2. Share information and resources related to climate change to Vietnamese Americans through social media, and English and Vietnamese language presses.

3. Build partnerships with groups that actively raise awareness of climate change both inside and outside of the Vietnamese American community.

Mobilize to take immediate action to combat climate change.

1. Identify key issues affecting the climate and influence Vietnamese American communities to take positive action.

2. Offer accessible, actionable actions/solutions that can be taken to reduce emissions and waste.

3. Be a rallying point for Vietnamese-Americans interested in speaking out and participating in climate actions.

Elevate key climate issues that impact Vietnamese American communities to a broader audience, including mainstream environmental justice organizations. 

Support research efforts to better understand the impact of climate change and environmental factors that impact the quality of life for Vietnamese Americans.

PIVOT’S ECONOMIC JUSTICE PLATFORM

Social safety net programs and small businesses have been two key pieces to building a steady foundation for many Vietnamese American communities. However, inequitable access to resources and funding still exist as major roadblocks. PIVOT aims to achieve economic justice for Vietnamese Americans, a moral goal that envisions people enjoying dignified, productive lives with equitable access to economic resources and opportunities.  After all, health is not merely the absence of disease, but also the presence of well-being, which can certainly be supported and even improved by the stability and opportunities that economic justice can provide. 

Our Plan

1. Protect social safety net programs and equitable access to them for all Americans, including immigrants and refugees.

2. Advocate for people’s rights to living wages, housing, education, health care, a clean environment, food, and safety. 

3. Fight for pay equality through an intersectional lens (i.e. by considering how different facets of our identities such as race, class, gender, disability, and immigration may affect our experiences and needs), especially for gender justice.

4. Advocate for equitable access to funding and resources for small businesses, including the availability of services in Vietnamese.

5. Promote legislation that invests public resources into communities of color, breaks down barriers for marginalized communities to build wealth, passes progressive taxes to pay for reparations, and creates policies with an anti-racist lens.

PIVOT’S LGBTQ+ RIGHTS PLATFORM

LGBTQ+ folks have always been and continue to be a beloved cornerstone of Vietnamese communities. As Western ideas of gender and sexuality entered Vietnamese culture over time, however, so too did homophobia and transphobia. In the U.S. today, LGBTQ+ rights remain under fire all the way from the Supreme Court down to local neighborhoods. Unequal treatment can involve bias and discrimination against sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or sex characteristics. Discrimination and violence against LGBTQ+ folks of all backgrounds and ages have been waged in rhetoric and situations related to restrooms, gender identity markers on documentation, and schools. For LGBTQ+ Vietnamese Americans, discrimination and violence may, unfortunately,  continue within their own households and the Vietnamese community. Living with these environmental stressors, holding an intersectional identity as both an LGBTQ+ individual and person of color in the U.S., and potentially also being genetically predisposed to mental health conditions (such as depression) from parents or grandparents who were refugees and immigrants have led to disproportionately high rates of mental health crises within the LGBTQ+ Vietnamese American community. PIVOT is dedicated to protecting and fighting for our beloved LGBTQ+ Vietnamese Americans, their rights, their families, and their health and well-being. LGBTQ+ Vietnamese Americans deserve not only to survive, but also to thrive.

Our Plan

1. Raise public awareness of policies that affect the accessibility of health care, gender-affirming care, and mental health care for the LGBTQ+ community, their family members, and their allies. 

2. Support policies that foster LGBTQ+ communities’ health, well-being, and rights so that they may thrive in a just society.

3. Advocate for educational efforts and research studies on the disproportionately higher rate of suicide and mental health crises in the Vietnamese American LGBTQ+ community.

4. Stand in solidarity with other LGBTQ+ partner organizations and collaborators to provide a safe space to exchange ideas, build trust, support intergenerational resources for families, have representation, and advocate for policy changes.