The organizations listed below provide services to LGBTQ asylum seekers in the San Francisco Bay Area. Note: This is not an exhaustive list. See also: Legal Resources.
Dolores Street Community Services
Dolores Street’s housing, immigration, employment, and community programs provide a network of resources to help local community thrive. These programs include Dolores Shelter Program, Immigrant Legal & Education Network, Deportation Defense and Legal Advocacy, and the African Advocacy Network. Offices are based at the Valencia Community Center.
East Bay Sanctuary Covenant
The East Bay Sanctuary Covenant (EBSC) provides sanctuary–support, protection, and advocacy–to low-income and indigent refugees and immigrants. With a small but hard-working staff and countless volunteers, EBSC annually handles over five hundred Affirmative Asylum cases as well as other services. This includes representation of LGBT clients. Typically, over 97% of EBSC clients are granted asylum.
First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco
Members of the Guardian Group provide advice, friendship, and limited financial support to sexual minority refugees, asylum seekers, and asylees who are being resettled in San Francisco and nearby cities. The Group’s work includes practical contacts such as navigating governmental agencies. More importantly, the Guardians are people refugees and asylum seekers can rely on to give independent advice and to provide unconditional friendship.
Jewish Family and Children’s Services of the East Bay: LGBT Refugee Services
JFCS/East Bay provides comprehensive resettlement services for LGBT refugees and asylees who have fled their home countries due to persecution based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. JFCS/East Bay’s LGBT Refugee Services include: support with the migration process; help enrolling in benefits programs; assistance navigating the health care system, including referrals to local services; counseling services and mental health referrals; support finding educational and vocational resources; outreach to LGBT social and cultural groups; volunteer support with English, life skills, and social integration; case management; and Farsi-, Dari-, and Arabic-speaking staff. Note: JFCS does not support asylum seekers.
QueeROC
QueeRoc is the AROC Arab queer immigrant-led committee. It aims at providing a space for Arab-identifying lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and questioning (LGBTQ) individuals in the Bay Area to meet for the purpose of community building and resource sharing through informal exchange of experiences and knowledge as well as social activities.
