First-of-its kind trans immigrant support center opens permanent space after years without one
A grassroots organization supporting transgender people from South Asia (often known as Hijrah or Kinnar) has opened a physical location in San Francisco after operating for 6 years without one.
Parivar Bay Area opened its brick-and-mortar doors on October 20, during Diwali. The group’s founder, Indian immigrant Anjali Rimi, was brimming with emotion when she cut the ribbon.
“I’m feeling very grateful,” she told KQED. “We have tried many times to see if we can actually have a place where we can belong, we can be ourselves. And being in this physical space, it gives us that rooting.”
“It also looks at our existence as one that is formidable when we are being erased as human beings,” she added.
The center’s director of strategy, Phanny Lun, said it is a critical time to provide legal advice, leadership training, and other support to transgender immigrants, who are being attacked intersectionally by the current administration.
“It’s knowing that there’s community and support,” Lun said. “That’s a really big thing – and making sure that our community knows that there are services out there for us. Not just doom and gloom.”
Lun said the narratives in the media make it easy for trans people to believe there is no support for them. “That’s not true,” Lun emphasized, adding that immigrants and trans people “have a place and a group that will be of assistance to them.”
While the center focuses on trans immigrants from Southeast Asia, Rimi made it clear Parivar is open to immigrants from any country.
The website says the center is the country’s “first & only Kinnar Hijrah led and empowering organization centering Indian South Asian and Global South transgender, gender-diverse, and intersex (TGNCI) immigrants and asylees” with a goal to “advance social, economic, and legal equity through advocacy, arts, direct support, and leadership development.”
“We reclaim spaces beyond cisnormativity,” the site continues, “confront systemic barriers, and build bold, affirming pathways where our communities thrive locally and globally grounded in dignity, belonging, and pride.”