About the Non-profit

Founded in 1974, AALDEF focuses on critical issues affecting Asian Americans, including immigrant rights, civic participation and voting rights, economic justice for workers, language access to services, Census policy, affirmative action, youth rights and educational equity, and the elimination of anti-Asian violence and police misconduct.

AALDEF engages in the following activities:

• litigates cases that have major impact on the Asian American community;
• provides legal resources for community-based organizations and facilitates grass-roots community organizing efforts;
• conducts free, multilingual legal advice clinics for low-income Asian Americans and new immigrants;
• educates Asian Americans about their legal rights;
• comments on proposed legislation and governmental policies; and
• trains students in public interest law and encourages them to use their legal skills to serve the community.

AALDEF has a 17-person staff, including eight attorneys. AALDEF receives financial support from foundations, corporations, individual contributions and special fundraising events. AALDEF receives no government funds.

We are also a founding member of the Public Interest Law Center in New York City, which consists of the nation’s leading civil rights groups, including the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund.

Most notable milestones

Since our founding, AALDEF has won millions of dollars in back wages and overtime for low-wage immigrant workers. In a series of federal court rulings, we have expanded the rights of Asian and Latino workers to hold manufacturers responsible for labor law violations in factories where their garments are sewn. By bringing suits against employers in the restaurant, hotel, construction, and domestic service industries, we send a clear message that Asian workers will no longer tolerate sweatshop conditions. In 1997, AALDEF won a $1.1 million settlement for immigrant Chinese restaurant workers in two suits for back wages and tips from Jing Fong, a Chinatown restaurant. In 2002, AALDEF filed and won a federal lawsuit on behalf of a Korean immigrant maintenance worker forced to work without pay in a midtown Manhattan hotel—the client was awarded $440,000 in back wages.

AALDEF protects the right to vote for Asian Americans and fights for election reforms that will benefit all voters. Our pioneering work to expand language assistance under the federal Voting Rights Act has opened up the electoral process to thousands of Asian Americans across the country. For the past 18 years, we have conducted the nation’s largest exit polls of Asian American voters—over 11,000 were polled in the 2004 elections—and our Election Day hotline and monitoring efforts are model for other advocacy groups.

What's the niche?

AALDEF is the first organization on the East Coast to protect and promote the civil rights of Asian Americans through litigation, legal advocacy and community education. We work on cases that have a national impact, but also work closely at the grassroots level with individuals and community groups as we stay true to our roots.

What's in store for the future?

Through the work of Staff Attorney and Open Society Institute Fellow Tushar Sheth, AALDEF has been challenging new local policies that deter immigrants from accessing city and states services, for fear of immigration consequences. This response work is especially critical over the long term, because such a lack of trust of government agencies lower safety in communities that are unable to become involved in civic life. AALDEF’s economic justice work has expanded over the past two years in response to emerging needs in Asian immigrant communities to include a Korean Workers Project and South Asian Workers Project. We also recently launched AALDEF’s Anti-Trafficking Initiative in the Fall of 2005, as Asians comprise the largest population of individuals trafficked into the U.S.

Who would you like to be contacted by?

AALDEF would like to be contacted by organizations or individuals who work with individuals whose voting rights have been violated, young people whose educational rights or rights as youths have been infringed, workers who have wage and hour claims, or immigrants who have had local entities that seek to enforce immigration laws against them inappropriately or with prejudice.

Specifically regarding the Anti-Trafficking Initiative at AALDEF, I would like to be contacted by organizations or individuals that work with trafficking survivors, immigrant domestic violence survivors with immigration issues, unaccompanied children or youth who have been victims of crime in the US.

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