Dear Friend,

At Adhikaar, we understand that for our immigrant worker membership, it’s not enough to just run campaigns. We also need to find ways to protect and provide for them through services like cases and health access. Last year brought some amazing victories in our case program, which is an important component of how we fight for immigrant and workers’ rights. Through our health program, we also ensured that our worker members could enroll in health insurance, especially in a year when it was essential to be covered.

As part of our casework in 2020, we:

• Resolved over 600 immigration related direct inquiries, and checked-in with over 100 members,
• Settled three domestic worker members’ cases during the pandemic and won over $37,000 back in stolen wages, 
• Worked on 152 cases virtually that includes worker rights, immigration, housing, domestic violence and others, and referred them to legal service partners,
• Supported two detention cases through legal, financial, emotional and social support.
• Began working closely with Takeroot Justice on fraud cases and took in new cases for five families and three other individuals. We also continued working on two cases from the previous year,
• Assisted eight individuals on virtual ICE check-ins to provide language access support for TPS members.

As part of our health access program, last year we:

• Enrolled 101 new individuals in the New York State Health Insurance plan and resolved over 450 health insurance related inquiries, including health insurance premium updates, payments and change of health insurance plans,
• Lobbied for the #CoverageForAll statewide campaign to ensure essential health coverage for all regardless of immigration status, and rallied as part of the People of Color Health Justice city and state demands to ensure an equitable COVID health response in our communities. 

• Testified on the importance of health access with the NYC City Council and spoke at CACF’s Asian Pacific Islander Heritage month event about our navigator program,
• Outreached in collaboration with the 2020 Census campaign to broaden our reach and distribute information on New York State Health insurance enrollment.

This year, we plan on expanding our health programs and increasing our case intake. Here's what we have in store for 2021:

• We have started virtual legal screenings from January of this year,
• Begun working to expand capacity to bring an in-house legal representative who’d be eligible to support cases,
• We will expand our networks in other states to connect our members to legal immigration services and build new service provider relationships where Nepali-speaking communities live beyond New York,
• We will continue our NY State health insurance enrollment to ensure that every individual and family in our community that qualifies is covered,
• Build a deeper relationship with NYC Health + Hospitals to better understand the programs that they offer, connect our members to their facilities and advocate for improved language access,
• Continue advocating for the #CoverageForAll campaign and push for universal access to affordable health insurance coverage for all low-income New Yorkers, regardless of immigration status,
• Actively advocate for the new #CoverageForAll Essential Plan COVID-19 Coverage Bill that would provide health coverage for undocumented individuals in NYC who had COVID-19,
• Continue to support individuals to register for the COVID-19 vaccine appointments and  advocate for language access and have staff volunteers at vaccination sites. 

As we continue to expand our health program, please call Adhikaar at (718) 937-1117 to receive FREE health insurance enrollment, renew or to update your monthly premiums with our health navigator.

Please consider donating to Adhikaar to directly support our work, especially during these challenging times. 

In Solidarity,     

Pabitra Khati Benjamin, 

Executive Director, Adhikaar