At an ethnic media briefing, advocates confront the gap between federal action and lived reality.
Magazine, The Immigrant Experience
Legislation can open a door. But it cannot force a country to walk through it.
Five years after the United States passed the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, the promise of protection still feels uneven—fragile in places where fear travels faster than policy and where belonging is still quietly negotiated in everyday encounters.
At a recent ethnic media briefing convened by American Community Media, that tension came into sharp focus.
Moderated by veteran journalist Sunita Sohrabji, the conversation brought together a cross-section of civil rights leadership: John C. Yang, president and executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice AAJC; Stephanie Chan, director of data and research at Stop AAPI Hate; Sameer Hossain, managing director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council; and Mannirmal Kaur, senior federal policy manager at the Sikh Coalition.
Together, they mapped a reality that statistics alone cannot fully hold.
The numbers came first.
“Nearly three times pre-pandemic levels,” Sohrabji said, referring to anti-Asian hate crimes and incidents nationwide—before underscoring what many already knew: even those figures are an undercount.
It was the beginning of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. A time meant for celebration. Instead, the conversation turned toward what has—and hasn’t—changed since May 2021, when Joe Biden signed the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act into law.
The legislation aimed to make reporting more accessible, strengthen coordination, and respond to a surge of violence that had already left deep scars across communities.
But five years later, the crisis has not receded. It has changed shape.
“We are in a crisis moment in many, many ways,” Yang said.
For Yang, the present moment echoes a long American pattern—one where fear seeks a target, and immigrants often become it. What is different now, he warned, is the volume and reach of rhetoric shaping that fear.
“Anti-immigrant rhetoric is at an all-time high,” he said.
He pointed to recent remarks amplified by Donald Trump, warning that such rhetoric can fuel real-world harm—much like the language used during the early days of the pandemic.
“When the federal government… engages in conduct and speech that incentivizes [hate], all Americans suffer,” Yang said.
What that looks like, on the ground, is not always captured in crime reports.
Sometimes, it begins with a question.
“Where are you from?”
That was how it started for a gas station clerk in Texas just days after 9/11, as Hossain recounted. The question was not curiosity—it was accusation. Before the man could respond, he was shot in the face at point-blank range.
He survived. Others that day did not.
The shooter later said he was seeking revenge—not justice, not understanding—just someone to blame.
That story—more than two decades old—still shapes how communities understand the present.
Because the pattern repeats.
A global event.
A political narrative.
A local act of violence.
And in between, countless smaller moments that never make the news.
Stephanie Chan shared findings that help make those invisible moments visible. Half of Asian American and Pacific Islander adults reported experiencing a hate act in 2025.
Not all of those acts are criminal. But all of them matter.
They show up as harassment. As exclusion. As the steady drip of language that reminds people they are seen as outsiders.
Chan described how that language has shifted. Where early incidents referenced COVID-19, many now invoke immigration.
“I can’t wait until Trump deports you,” one victim was told before being physically shoved.
The message is unmistakable: you do not belong here.
And yet, most of these incidents remain invisible.
Only about 22% are reported to formal authorities.
“There is a trust deficit,” Hossain said, explaining why.
Communities hesitate—not just because of fear of retaliation, but because of experience. Reports are filed. Responses are delayed or absent. The system feels distant.
“If people report and never hear back,” he added, “they’re less likely to report in the future.”
That silence distorts everything.
It distorts data.
It distorts policy responses.
It distorts how the country understands itself.
Mannirmal Kaur placed that distortion within a longer history.
Anti-Sikh hate, she noted, did not begin with 9/11. It stretches back over a century—shaped by the same forces of misidentification, fear, and exclusion.
“Racism, bigotry, and xenophobia… have featured prominently in mainstream politics and culture in recent years in new and alarming ways,” she said.
For many Sikh Americans, visibility—through articles of faith like turbans—remains both identity and risk.
That risk often begins early.
In schools, children face bullying rooted in misunderstanding. But where Sikh identity is taught, Kaur noted, bullying decreases—proof that awareness can interrupt bias before it hardens.
Still, even when harm is recognized, justice is not guaranteed.
Prosecuting hate crimes requires proving intent—a threshold many cases never meet. Cultural gaps and inconsistent enforcement compound the problem.
In one example shared during the briefing, a victim told to “go back to your country” was informed by law enforcement that the statement did not qualify as racism.
The implication lingers.
Not everything counts.
Not everything is seen.
And so, people adjust.
Chan’s research shows that those who experience hate report higher levels of stress. Many begin to withdraw—from public spaces, from civic engagement, from the very visibility that democracy depends on.
They step back.
Not because they have less to say, but because it no longer feels safe to say it.
And yet, even in that retreat, there is resistance.
“We still have a voice,” Yang reminded the room.
Communities continue to organize, to speak, to demand accountability—often long before institutions respond.
Five years after the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, the question is no longer whether the law was necessary.
It was.
The question now is whether the country is willing to confront what the law alone cannot reach.
Because hate does not live only in statistics or statutes.
As several speakers emphasized, hate is shaped not only by individual acts but also by the broader rhetoric and narratives that surround them.
With language that reduces.
With narratives that divide.
With the quiet acceptance of who is seen as fully American—and who is still asked to prove it.
Until that changes, the numbers may shift.
But the feeling—of being watched, questioned, or erased—will remain.
#ImmigrantVoices #StopAsianHate #AAPIHeritageMonth #HateCrimes #CivilRightsNow #DiasporaLeadership #EquityMatters #CommunityPower
