Today’s blog
Lynn Murphy Mark
They came from the East
There is a new family seeking help from Legal Services’ Immigration Law Program. It all started with a call from a gentleman who is an Arabic interpreter and has gotten to know this family because he translates for them when they seek help from the Barnes-Jewish medical complex. He called the intake line and I spoke with him at length on Thursday.
The family are refugees from Iraq who arrived here in 2016. Refugees are eligible for a green card after a year of residence in the United States. Being refugees means that they escaped some horrific circumstances in their home country and came here for relief. The parents brought their five children to a country completely foreign to them. Learning English was a top priority so they could feel more a part of us.
After hearing their story I called the house and spoke to the father. His English is fair, but he asked me to call his daughter, who is now proficient in English. He said she would be able to explain their circumstances better than he could. The daughter was willing to speak to me. She began explaining the family situation.
One of the daughters is severely mentally and physically disabled and is cared for at home by her mother. The mom has her own psychological issues and suffers from PTSD from their experiences in Iraq. (They are Sunni Muslims and were persecuted for their beliefs by the Shia Muslim majority.). The mom is tied to the side of the daughter who will not let anyone else do anything for her. Mom was not able to go to English languages classes.
Members of the family are eligible to apply for citizenship – a status that would give them freedoms and benefits that they do not get presently. The father, who works part time in construction, pays into Social Security but will not get the benefit unless he becomes a citizen. Services for the disabled daughter would be expanded if she were a citizen.
The most pressing need is to establish a guardianship for the daughter. The father is willing to do this for her. He went to an attorney who told him he would do it for $7,500. This family subsists on the father’s wages that are less than $2,000 per month, so that option was not viable for them. This is not something we do at my work, but my boss knows a guardianship attorney at one of the major universities, and this good soul has helped us in the past. I’m hoping she will do the same for this family.
My conversation with the daughter resulted in opening a case to apply for citizenship for her. She meets all of the requirements and I will get to work on it next week. I have also reached out to the guardianship attorney and hope to hear from her as well. Once guardianship is established for the one daughter, we can work with her father and get her citizenship as well. Her case will be more complicated because of her disability, but it can be done.
Unfortunately, the parents in this case are prevented from applying for citizenship because they would not be able to pass the English civics oral exam or the written portion of the citizenship interview. In order to become a citizen, you must study a list of 100 civics questions and be able to answer six of them correctly. The questions are chosen at random, so the candidate must have familiarity with all 100 questions. The mother in this case only went to school in Iraq for a few years as a child and she cannot read or write in her own language, let alone English. The dad’s English limitations would make it difficult for him to pass the exam.
Today is Christmas Eve. I think of the Middle Eastern family that traveled to Bethlehem over two thousand years ago, and what a revolutionary change resulted from their voyage. They too had to escape persecution, like the family I have just described. Immigrants are the bravest people I know. What a blessing it is to serve them.