NEW YORK—In a new effort to protect the rights of Pakistani-Americans and other Muslim immigrants, the Open Society Institute (OSI) is issuing $200,000 in grants to the Four Freedoms Fund and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to help defend immigrant communities against civil rights violations by U.S. authorities.
Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the U.S. government has imposed domestic security measures such as the USA Patriot Act that have eroded the human rights and civil liberties of immigrants while doing little to increase domestic security.
There have been numerous incidents in which Pakistani and other Muslim non-citizen immigrants were detained without charges, deprived of due process of law, denied access to legal counsel, and subjected to closed hearings.
Equally troubling is that these restrictions have set a precedent for the government to enact similar measures against U.S. citizens.
These developments have prompted the Open Society Institute to become increasingly concerned about the status of Central Asian and Middle Eastern immigrants in the United States.
OSI will administer the grants to the Four Freedoms Fund and the ACLU to help Pakistani and other Muslim immigrant groups advocate for their legal rights.
The Four Freedoms Fund will use its $125,000 grant to support community-based organizations working with immigrant communities to develop effective strategies for protecting their civil rights and increasing their political influence. The Fund will also work to strengthen ties between immigrants’ organizations and civil and human rights groups that oppose policies jeopardizing the rights of immigrants. The Fund aims to engage immigrants and minority communities in public policy discussions and promote alternative domestic security policies that are effective and fair.
The $75,000 ACLU grant will go toward a communications and documentation campaign highlighting the plight of Pakistanis detained or deported under new U.S. domestic security measures. The ACLU will also work with OSI to support the filing of complaints with the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.
By defending the rights of newly arrived Americans and immigrant communities now, the Four Freedoms Fund and the ACLU will do much to further establish the basic civil rights that protect us all.
About the Open Society Institute
The Open Society Institute (OSI), a private operating and grantmaking foundation based in New York City, implements a range of initiatives that aim to promote open society by shaping government policy and supporting education, media, public health and human and women’s rights, as well as social, legal and economic reform. To foster open society on a global level, OSI aims to bring together a larger Open Society Network of other nongovernmental organizations, governments and international institutions.
OSI was created in 1993 by investor and philanthropist George Soros to support his foundations in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Those foundations were established, starting in 1984, to help former communist countries in their transition to democracy. OSI has expanded the activities of the Soros foundations network to other areas of the world where the transition to democracy is of particular concern. The Network encompasses more than 50 countries with initiatives in Africa, Central Asia and the Caucasus, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, as well as in Haiti, Mongolia, and Turkey. OSI also supports programs in the United States and selected projects elsewhere in the world.