With new immigration legislation pending, how can Washington-area immigrants access free legal advice?
By hola | Published | No Comments
As doubts and concerns engulf the community over U.S. immigration bills and policy proposals that have emerged since Biden took office, Hola Cultura spoke with attorney Richard Kelley about the proposed changes and the pro bono legal services available to immigrants right now.
Kelley, a Harvard- and Georgetown-trained lawyer, works at the D.C. Volunteer Lawyers Project (DCVLP), where he is the managing attorney of the Child Advocacy and Immigration Practices. He specializes in representing vulnerable youth, domestic violence victims and the LGBTQ community.
DCVLP has provided pro bono legal services to District residents since 2008, focusing on vulnerable populations including victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and gender-based violence and at-risk youth. As a volunteer-based organization, DCVLP expands its impact by training other volunteer attorneys from law firms, government agencies, or other unaffiliated organizations to help with this work. Kelley regularly recruits and trains pro bono attorneys to do this work.
The Pew Research Center recently published the results of an opinion poll that found a majority of Latinos agree that the immigration system either “requires major changes” (53%) or “needs to be completely rebuilt” (29%). President Joe Biden has promised to push for immigration reform by including his proposed legislation in a budget-reconciliation bill that would have a better chance of passage than a stand-alone immigration bill.
People in the community are especially concerned with getting work authorization and preparing for any policy changes. While immigration ranked as a top priority for congressional leaders, the challenge lies in striking a compromise; and, as Kelley puts it, “holding [the administration] publicly accountable when they are not meeting their own standards.”
Hope and frustration, he says, have been growing since the Biden administration proposed the Farm Workforce Modernization Act and the American Dream and Promise Act, both of which passed the House of Representatives in March but have not yet garnered enough votes to pass the Senate.
These measures would provide a pathway to citizenship for millions of farmworkers and Dreamers—generally defined as young undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children, including DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipients.
According to Kelley, one of the challenges in the fight for immigration reform is the deluge of misinformation. “[C]ongress members and others are sometimes talking about these ideas as if they had already passed Congress and become law; that can be really damaging to the communities.”
For organizations like the D.C. Volunteer Lawyers Project, advocacy has not paused due to the pandemic. In fact, Kelley says their work has drastically increased with legal clinics via Zoom every Wednesday and Friday, where volunteer lawyers provide people with advice for understanding their options, and when possible, full legal representation.
In his interview with Hola Cultura, Kelley shares more about the services offered by his organization and discusses some of the pressing concerns and key policies in immigration today.
What is your role at the D.C volunteer lawyers project and what resources are available to the community during the pandemic?
The D.C. Volunteer Lawyers Project focuses largely on supporting survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and other gender-based violence, including violence due to someones sexual orientation or gender expression. We also represent vulnerable youth, which are any youth without any sort of permanent immigration status.
What that means for our immigration side, we are taking on a lot of cases that are focused on humanitarian relief. That might be asylum, which is basically an option for individuals that are fleeing persecution in their home country. Or it might be immigration based on special immigration juvenile status, for individuals who are abandoned, abused or neglected by one of their parents.
We often do a lot of humanitarian relief which can also involve DACA or TPS (Temporary Protected Status) for individuals where that just seems to be the best option available. But honestly because both of those are a little complicated and only provide at this point temporary relief, we are often also looking for permanent relief options so those individuals don’t have to worry about whether their status will eventually end.
We are a pretty small organization. We have effectively two attorneys and a paralegal that do the work. We are able to expand our effort by training other volunteer attorneys to help.
Throughout the pandemic we have been able to offer more services. Every Wednesday and Friday through our call-in Zoom clinic, individuals can show up either via Zoom or call into our clinic and get some limited advice to help understand their options. If we can’t assist them in full representation, we can at least refer them to someone who might. For individuals who have not been able to reach anyone, we can also at least look over their documents before they submit them on their own.
We tried to expand those during the COVID-19 pandemic because we know that, unfortunately, even though services offered by other organizations have effectively shrunk during the pandemic, the need for help has also expanded pretty drastically. A lot of individuals are now looking to figure out how they can get work authorization, or how they can navigate the various new rules that came out at the end of 2020. How they can get healthcare, given their current immigration status is also on people’s minds as they are worried about covid. People are also having to figure out how to navigate all of these hearing continuances that are happening because of covid or transportation issues or accessing benefits that they need because their kids are now at home learning. They don’t have the same access to other free resources that individuals with permanent residence status or U.S. citizenship might.
We tend to focus on those humanitarian pieces, in part because we want to make sure that people have someone to walk with them through the process. There has been a push by the government to exclude survivors of domestic violence from immigration relief. That is why a lot of general practitioners have decided not to take those cases because they are hard to win. But from our perspective, we are an organization that tries to really sojourn with survivors. It’s not the survivor’s fault that the government has decided to limit their options for relief. It doesn’t change that this person is still in immediate danger of being harmed.
What are some of the barriers that the current administration is facing for ending family separation and ensuring humane conditions for the children and other immigrants who are at the border?
A lot of the work right now is pushing the current administration to push beyond a reset and make sure that these policies are humane—that they are focused on children. That they are focused on providing safety and security to individuals.
There were some initial pieces that were done in that first week of the administration, DACA was reinstated, but DACA was only reinstated for people who would have been eligible under the Obama administration. So, it didn’t open up a new path to those who were not here before 2007. Of course, the most recent addition was TPS for Venezuelans, which is available for anyone who was here as of March 8, 2021.
Our increase in calls have been from individuals saying, “I heard that there is this new status now.” We actually have to explain: “Nope. That was covered in the news, [and I] totally get why you are asking that question, but that hasn’t even gone through one of the houses (of congress). You are going to have to wait probably six months to a year to see if it passes.”
(Above: a screenshot from the zoom interview)
What can the immigrant community expect if the American Dream and Promise Act passes the senate?
If the Dream and Promise Act passes the senate, this will be critical for two major groups. It will be critical for individuals who are on DACA or who are eligible for DACA and for individuals who are on TPS or its relative DED [Deferred Enforced Departure]. Why that is really important is because numerous individuals have been on TPS from various countries for decades. The effort to end TPS during the Trump administration for a number of countries was terrifying to a lot of people who consider the U.S. their home.
The biggest piece in this would be that effectively anyone with TPS or DED would be able to move towards a more permanent status. There would not be that need every couple years to reregister and pay the fees [and] to be worried about the cancellation of that status.
Similarly, one of the biggest promises is for individuals who are currently on DACA—what the Dream and Promise Act does—is it opens DACA. That is one of the most important pieces. To give an opportunity for the next generation of Dreamers who have been here and studied—who meet all the requirements—to have the opportunity to apply. It gives those with DACA the possibility to be eligible for permanent residence.
With all the information floating around, how can our community stay informed and not be misinformed?
For individuals who need immigration legal advice, the community can make sure that they are going to a well-known organization with attorneys. There are a lot of nonprofits in D.C. doing immigration work. It is actually a wonderful community.
It is part of why the D.C. Volunteer Lawyers Project tries to get people in to our clinic within a week or two so that they can, at the very least, talk to someone. People need to make sure that they are working with a licensed attorney or accredited representative with an organization with a reputation in the community. We need to make sure that people are not being taken advantage of.
We actually do a lot of what are called legal medical partnerships. We work with Children’s National Hospital, Unity Health Care, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, and Whitman Walker and other health organizations because we know that people are going to their doctor appointments and there is a lot of misinformation about access to health care. When individuals trust a space like their doctor’s office, if we are present there and partner with them, they are able to access legal information more quickly.
Assuming that the bill passes, how soon will these communities be able to adjust their status and how should they prepare?
Under the Dream and Promise Act of 2021 specifically, there would be a conditional permanent residence status for ten years if you meet a certain set of standards. You would be a full lawful permanent residence status receiver if you meet another set of standards. So, either way there would be a fairly immediate opportunity to have some sort of legal permanent residence status for a large number of individuals living without documentation in the United States.
Similar for individuals who have TPS, there would be a fairly immediate option for legal permanent residency. When we talk about immediate availability, the reality with a lot of immigration applications is that even if you can immediately apply, that does not mean that you are going to immediately receive status. That would mean that a lot of organizations like mine would likely be doing clinics set up specifically to help individuals navigate the application for the specific relief options that are opened up.
One is a new status called a Legal Perspective Immigration status (LPI). Any individual present in the United States before January 1st, 2021 would be able to apply for LPI status. You didn’t have to have some specific harm that happened. After five years with LPI status, you would be able to become a legal permanent resident. From there, you can move on to become a U.S citizen. What is important about that status and the goal of it, is that individuals who have been living without proper documentation in the United States, as long as they have been here since January 1st, 2021, will have the opportunity to apply for a status, wait the years, and then become a legal permanent resident. There is an actual path for everyone.
Another big thing that the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 does is it actually removes the one-year bar for asylum [for] individuals, who fled to the U.S. because of some sort of persecution or harm in their country. Unfortunately, as of 1996, you have to apply for asylum within one year of arriving into the U.S., but you don’t necessarily get told that. And frankly a lot of people are navigating so many other things when they first enter the United States, like trying to find housing and stability. We talk to a lot of people, who had they applied years ago, they would have extremely strong asylum cases because of the reason or the violence that they were fleeing. Only because they waited more than 365 days to apply, they are no longer eligible for asylum, which is a pathway to citizenship. So removing that one-year bar would be huge.
Please note: The proposed legislation/bills discussed above have not passed yet.
—by Delia Beristain Noriega, Dulce Mata and Jasmin Avila
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