Immigrant Justice
Community organizing is a core principle of Woori Center and a critical component of our theory of change. We believe the key to building a society wherein everyone lives and thrives together is building the progressive power of our most vulnerable community members through organizing.
Woori Center thus organizes the Korean and Asian American community in the Greater Philadelphia and beyond to collectively address immigrant justice issues. There are nearly 2 million undocumented Asian Americans living in the United States and roughly one out of every seven Korean Americans is undocumented. Pennsylvania is home to more than 42,000 Korean Americans. Given the sizable impacted population in Pennsylvania, Woori Center believes it is essential to organize our community here to make our city, state, and country a better place to live for all. We believe everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and to live together with their loved ones without the fear of separation, and we believe this can be achieved by building our collective power to make change.
On a national level, Woori Center has joined NAKASEC and its affiliates in Illinois (HANA Center), New York (MinKwon Center), Texas (Woori Juntos), and Virginia (Hamkae Center) for the #Citizenship4All campaign to win a pathway to citizenship for all 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. At a statewide level in Pennsylvania, Woori Center works alongside local immigrant justice organizations to advocate for legislative policy solutions for the immigrant community, including driver’s licenses for all and tuition equity. We have focused our community organizing work on three specific immigrant justice campaigns.
Driver’s Licenses for All
Driving PA Forward (DPF) Coalition
Lacking a driver’s license restricts people’s ability to accomplish basic daily tasks like going to work, going to the grocery store, dropping their kids off at school, or fully participating in civic and community life. To protect our community’s basic human right to movement, Woori Center joined the Driving Pennsylvania Forward Coalition (DPF) in 2020 to expand access to driver’s licenses for all Pennsylvanians, regardless of immigration status. With the proposed legislation, all Pennsylvanians would receive safety and accountability, insurance savings, economic participation, and basic human rights.
DPF is a statewide coalition composed of advocacy, faith, businesses, farmers, labor, and community organizations that work together to pass legislation that will make a standard driver’s license accessible with strict privacy and data protections for all Pennsylvanians, regardless of immigration status. Both Woori Center and the DPF Coalition prioritize the leadership of the immigrant community and welcome everyone who believes in the importance of changing what is politically possible for the immigrant community through grassroots and legislative efforts.
Language Access
Since 2023, Woori Center has dedicated efforts to enhance language access for voters in Montgomery County. Our initiative aims to incorporate various languages, including Korean, into the ballot, making voting more accessible and fostering increased participation among our community members.
UndocuLove: Spread Love with Self-Care
The UndocuLove: Spread Love With Self-Care zine features advice from our undocumented community, FOR our undocumented community, so that we learn from each other and practice self-care! It aims to answer the following questions and share this knowledge within and beyond the community:
