Bay Area Launches New Center for LGBTQ+ Immigrants

The LGBT Asylum Project and Parivar Bay Area have joined together to create the Center for Immigrant Protection, a union that is focused on helping trans, gender nonconforming, and intersex immigrants. The Center for Immigrant Protection, or CiP, has unofficially been around since 2019, but has been officially launched on November 14.

The Parivar Bay Area and LGBT Asylum Project are calling the Center for Immigrant Protection an “enhanced partnership.” Where the Parivar Bay Area is a transgender South Asian-led organization with a focus on helping trans individuals, especially trans immigrants, get proper healthcare, economic and social justice, and general human rights and equity, the LGBT Asylum Project is the only LGBTQ+ legal nonprofit with a focus on helping those who are seeking asylum from oppression.

Okan Sengun, Esq., the co-founder and now executive director of CiP, says in a press statement, “In order to meet the needs of our clients and all LGBTQIA+ immigrants in our community while they start their new lives, we are proud to officially partner with ParivarBayArea. PBA has been providing services to Trans and Gender Non-Conforming Intersex immigrants from the Global South for the past five years, including three years under our fiscal sponsorship, and we’ve been working successfully together since then. Now is the time to strengthen our partnership between The LGBT Asylum Project and PBA, under the Center for Immigrant Protection, to ensure that all LGBTQIA+ immigrants in our community have access to life-saving services. These services should not be limited to legal assistance but should also address a wide range of needs, particularly those of TGNCI+ immigrants.”

Working beside Sengun is Anjali Rimi of Parivar Bay Area, who was elected president of the Center for Immigrant Protection. On the subject of the union between Parivar Bay Area and the LGBT Asylum Project, Rimi says, “We are proud to come together as the Center for Immigrant Protection. Our commitment to tackling the unique and unaddressed needs of LGBTQIA+ immigrants sets us apart, and we are dedicated to ensuring that TGNCI+ immigrants receive the holistic support they deserve so they are able to thrive in San Francisco and beyond.”