Michael Preston

Mr. Ashgar Choudri is the Executive Director of the Pakistani-American Federation of New York.  Originally from Lahore in the province of Punjab, Pakistan, he has lived in the U.S. for over 35 years.  He is married with four children.

New York City News Service: Can you explain to me briefly what the Pakistani-American Federation does?

Choudri: We try to help the people – new comers – get their children for the schooling, try to solve if they have any problems with the different parts of the agencies – government agencies we call them.  We try to help them and try to make their life easy in the new country they come in.

NYCNS: So, is the organization specifically for new immigrants?

Choudri: No. We are all immigrants here. This is not for new immigrants. Whatever the case is for these people coming here, settling here.

We do a festival every year in the month of August – 70 to 80,000 people come here and watch the festival – that’s the Pakistani independence day and we have a stage there, we have stalls, we have all kind of things so that we should promote this area for business people.

NYCNS: Are you referring to a specific area in Brooklyn?

Choudri: We call it Little Pakistan – this Coney Island Avenue and all the surrounding streets and wherever.

NYCNS: What is the immigration trend at the moment from Pakistan to New York?  Are people still coming here?

Choudri: Not too many.

NYCNS: Do you have any idea how many would be coming?

Choudri: No, I don’t know, I can’t tell you this but we are not having too many newcomers coming here.  In our information they are very strict now, giving them immigrant Visas.

NYCNS: The Pakistanis that are already here, are they mostly legal or are they undocumented?  Are they citizens or what is their legal status?

Choudri: There were a lot of undocumented people before 9/11, so after 9/11 a lot of people are deported; they left on their own will to different countries, back to Pakistan.  Now the majority of our people [that] are here are legal and a lot of them are citizens.

NYCNS: And do they find it hard or easy to become citizens?  Are there any issues with that?

Choudri: Yes, they had a hard time to get citizenship due to their Muslim name and they have to search and find out their background and this and that. They were waiting for two years, three years.  Now they say it’s easing up.  We talked to the immigration people – they said they were short of staff.  They said the FBI is not clearing their fingerprints and this and that.  Now we ask the FBI, the FBI said we were short of hands, now they said we are having more people, more technology, we are trying to – you know – clear them faster than usual.

NYCNS: Do you think there are cultural or other barriers for Pakistani people living here in New York that they need to overcome?

Choudri: There is a cultural barrier because we are from a different culture.  They came here and the Americans, when they came here they did not know.  So in the beginning, always, whenever you go anywhere – when the Americans go out to Europe they have a problem to mix up with the culture but slowly and steady…..

For our coming generation it will be okay but at present we have a cultural barrier, we have a language barrier.

NYCNS: A language barrier.  Is that the main barrier or are there….other issues?

Choudri: No, the main barrier is this.

NYCNS: What kinds of government or community organizations are available for the Pakistani community to help them?

Choudri: Help them in what?

NYCNS: In language barriers or health services….

Choudri: Our women are mostly having the problem.  Because our women stay in the house – they come from a different culture  – they can’t speak English very well.  And mostly they come from the country where they were not mixing up with men and here they have a different culture – men and women together but they are not used to it so this is one of the barriers – because women are not used to it.  Second, they can’t express themselves in English so they have a problem to mix up with other people.

NYCNS: In terms of the Pakistani community in Kensington, I understand that they live very close by the Jewish community.  Are there any problems between the two communities?

Choudri: No. We don’t have any problem with the Jewish community. We live together a long time – since we started living in this neighborhood. We are living together. There is no problem.

NYCNS: Why do you think there is no problem, because isn’t there traditionally some conflict between the two communities?

Choudri: Why should we have a problem? We don’t interfere in their affairs, they don’t interfere in our affairs.  And we don’t have any way to…you know…to….create any differences.  We don’t have any differences; we are very close.

NYCNS: Close in what respect?

Choudri: In every way. That’s what I’m saying. We are not intermixing with each other. Second thing, we are living one side, they are living on one side.  The Jewish people are very…you know… they are a peaceful people; we are a very peaceful people so they are living along very good.

NYCNS: Are there big differences between your faiths?

Choudri: We don’t have too much difference in our faith.  Maybe people don’t understand [that] we are a very close religion also.  They eat this…what’s it called…kosher meat, we eat halal meat.  Our people can eat kosher because they don’t want to eat meat from the supermarket.

NYCNS: What’s the one thing you’d like people to know about the Pakistani community – the one thing you think is most important?

Choudri: The Pakistani community is a peaceful community.  They are Muslims and they are Islam – it is their religion – and they are really peaceful because Islam teaches peace and harmony and we teach everybody and we want to live together.  The people who don’t understand, they should try to mix up with us and we try to mix ourselves with them and that way they should understand each other.

Click above to to see an audio slideshow from the event

Bangladeshi’s are one of New York City’s fastest growing immigrant communities, but they also have another, less fortunate, and dangerous, distinction: as a group, they are developing diabetes at an alarming rate.

Diabetes is spreading rapidly within the Asian American population in general and within the Bangladeshi community specifically. According to research conducted by the Asian American Diabetes Initiative at the Joslin Diabetes Center, Asian Americans are twice as likely to develop type 2 diabetes as are Caucasians.

As the number of Bangladeshis in the city exploded, so did their rates of being diagnosed with the disease. There are now over 25,000 Bangladeshi Americans in the New York City area, up from just a few thousand residents in the early part of this decade according to estimates from the 2007 American Community Survey. The majority of the Bangladeshi community is centered in Jackson Heights in Queens and in Kensington and Borough Park in Brooklyn. Many fled to America to pursue better economic opportunities and to escape from their home country’s political instability and extremely high levels of poverty and disease. So it is ironic that 25 percent of the city’s Bangladeshi residents are thought to have some form of diabetes.

To fight the spreading growth of the disease, an outreach program based at the Center for the Study of Asian American Health at New York University is focusing on using a series of public meetings to raise awareness about diabetes and promote preventative measures within the Bangladeshi community.

“We need to make assessments, we need to learn, and then we need to take action,” said Shamsul Haque, the Consul General of Bangladesh in New York, who spoke at a recent event, “Voices from the Community: Diabetes Among Bangladeshis in NYC”, hosted by the D.R.E.A.M. Project.

The year-old D.R.E.A.M. Project, which stands for Diabetes Research Education and Action for Minorities, is offering free six-month educational programs taught by community health workers that will show patients how to monitor their symptoms, modify their diets and use exercise to help stave off complications of the disease, such as blindness, limb amputations, and kidney failure. Through this outreach project, activists hope to spread the word to Bangladeshis who might otherwise have no warning of the danger lurking in their new lives.

The reasons for the accelerated spread of the diabetes within the Bangladeshi community are both genetic and environmental, though it’s the latter that most often accounts for the higher diabetes contraction rates seen in Asian Americans. While research continues on the subject, a preliminary finding seems to indicate that shifting from a diet that incorporated vegetables, rice and fish to a more Westernized, high fat-high calorie diet is a contributing factor.

Krittika Ghosh, a project coordinator at the D.R.E.A.M. Project, emphasized a related aspect of the dietary dimension; the relative availability of food that contributes to overeating.

“Food is more easily accessible here than in the home country,” she said. “Things that were very special occasion foods, like biryani and curries, those were not eaten every day back home.”

Nadia Islam, the Deputy Director of Research for the program, said that many of the newest arrivals become sedentary because they are forced to accept housing in poorer neighborhoods where crime might be an issue. Living in less safe neighborhoods leads many to stay indoors for longer periods of time, decreasing their level of physical activity.

She also cited the lack of health insurance and access to other resources as a reason for the lack of knowledge that many Bangladeshi Americans have about the disease.

“A large portion of the Bangladeshi community are working in low wage positions, non-standardized work like taxi driving, restaurant workers, domestic workers, so industries where there really are no access to benefit packages,” she said.

The situation with the taxi drivers displays just how much of an acute problem the insurance issue has become. Manmunul Huq, a community health worker for the D.R.E.A.M. Project and a founder of the New York City Taxi Workers Alliance, says that nearly 80 percent of the city’s cab drivers lack health care coverage and that over 20 percent of the city’s cab operators are Bangladeshi.

“Those guys are working 12 hours shifts, 7 days a week, keeping this city moving, but they don’t have any stable income, health benefits, time off benefits, nothing,” he said.

This lack of coverage prevents many drivers from receiving screening tests and treatment for the diabetes wreaking havoc on the Bangladeshi community

Huq and his fellow activist hope that through the D.R.E.A.M Project and other efforts that members of his community who moved to New York to start over will win their rights and achieve better outcomes for their lives.

Maureen Sullivan contributed reporting for this story. To find out more about the challenges facing other immigrant communities in Brooklyn, click here.

Mamnunul Huq is a co-founder of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance and currently works as a Community Health Worker at the NYU Center for the Study of Asian American Health. He was born and raised in Chittagong, Bangladesh’s main port and second largest city and moved to the United States in the early 1990s. He is an advocate for the growing Bangladeshi community in the Borough Park and Kensington neighborhoods of Brooklyn.

New York City News Service: How did you start your career as an advocate?

Mamnunul Huq: I was actually involved with student politics when I was back home, so I know how to organize people. Once I finished my study back home, I graduated, and started to work at a bank, a financial corporation. By the time I came here, it was the Gulf Crisis, ‘90-’91; the first Bush invaded Iraq. At the time the economy is, whatever we see now. It was almost like that, at that time; it was a recession. I came and became frustrated at the beginning, because for three and a half months, I didn’t work. Because I did not get a banking job, I started to work in a store for a year or something like that.

It was a department of a store, and I became a manager, but then I quit at that time because I got my hack license. So I started driving a yellow cab, and once I started driving a yellow cab, I could see the problems in the industry: the drivers are exploited by some groups of people, like the garage owners and the TLC (Taxi and Limousine Commission). So I started to organize those people there, the taxi drivers, which are not necessarily just Bangladeshi. So I was one of the co-founders of the union [the New York Taxi Workers Alliance].

NYCNS: A large number of the city’s cab drivers are Bangladeshi, correct?

Huq: At that time, Bangladeshis were not the majority of drivers. Now, they are … over 30% of drivers, so they are the leaders now. So I am involved with a Bangladeshi cab drivers association and also the bigger one, which I helped co-found. A big portion of the drivers who live in Kensington and Borough Park are Bangladeshi.

NYCNS: What do you think is the biggest issue facing the city’s Bangladeshi community right now?

Huq: We do have a big problem with immigration because a lot of people are undocumented and who are living over here for a long period of time. They couldn’t see their family, couldn’t see their wife, children. They came over here and ended up, you know, couldn’t go back again because they’re waiting for hope. That is their hope, “I’ll be documented, I’ll be documented.” Because if they’re living here six years, seven years, ten years, there is a chance, if they can be documented, they can bring their wife, they can bring their children, they can bring their family members. So that’s why a lot of people hope and a lot of people are living with deep frustration. I meet with the people, and I do a lot of surveys in the health area, and once a week I go to the community to do the health survey, so I know that people are frustrated.

NYCNS: What’s another concern?

Huq: Another issue is health insurance. People don’t have the insurance, and in the taxi industry, like 80% of the drivers don’t have health insurance. Those guys are working 12 hours shifts, 7 days a week, keeping this city moving, but they don’t have any stable income, health benefits, time off benefits, nothing.

NYCNS: You mention health care. How did you end up getting involved with the Center for the Study of Asian American Health?

Huq: I ended up working on a project called DREAM, which is the Diabetes Research, Education and Action for Minorities (DREAM) Project. We work to help educate Bangladeshis about these issues.

So I was looking for a job, and they were hiring people. I saw the opening and applied because the criteria they were asking for, I thought I was the person who could get the job and would be better for the project. I knew they were looking for someone with education and knowledge about the community, someone who had good access to the media, community leaders and community organizations. Those things are part of the basic requirement, and I do have that because I am an advocate for people’s rights. I am an activist and an organizer and when they found me I was like the person they were looking for. And because in some parts of the Bangladeshi community, if you tell my name, a lot of people know me because I’ve been involved. I can organize very quickly. So they knew those things and they hired me.

NYCNS: What keeps you giving so much time to these causes?

Huq: This is part of my life. I always want to talk to other people and try to organize them for their rights and dignity. I believe it. People do have rights. It doesn’t matter who you are. You have rights as a human. Stuff like working for health. I believe that’s a fundamental right. Having health care. Workers should have rights.

INTERVIEW CONDUCTED, CONDENSED AND EDITED BY MICHAEL PRESTON