Today’s blog
Lynn Murphy Mark
Back on track
Re-entry to Legal Services took place yesterday. I got to my cubby to find a stack of mail – always welcome because it usually means some kind of progress on my cases. My voicemail was filled with requests for call backs from people looking for help with an immigration situation. It took me three hours to get through all the calls. As a result, two new cases are now open.
My Immigration Law Program is partially funded by a grant from the Lutheran Church. The grant is meant to fund services to victims of domestic violence and other crimes. Yesterday I spoke with a young woman from China who is at a women’s shelter. Her partner, who committed the violence against her, is serving time in jail for his actions.
We will apply for a special visa for her known as a “U Visa”. It is a generous program but has a huge drawback: the wait time for approval is now around 6 years. Eventually, if approved, she will get a work card. Years later she can apply for a Green Card. In the meantime, the only benefit she gets is some protection from deportation.
The other case that took some time to figure out is from a man who married a woman in the Philippines. She is still there and they have just found out that she is pregnant. He naturally wants to bring her to the United States as soon as possible. Unfortunately, the process to get her approved for entry into the USA will take at least a year. There is no chance that their baby will be born here. He is worried because he says medical care in the Philippines is substandard in his opinion. I talked through the process and the cost of petitioning to bring her here. I also told him that when he is in the Philippines for the birth of his child, he should go to the US Embassy to register the child as a US citizen. This will save some time and money and assure that the child is recognized as a citizen.
On the docket today is the urgent need to renew one of my client’s work card. Her current one will expire in April. I have been trying, unsuccessfully, to contact her for the last 6 months to get on with the renewal process. She is young and naïve. Much to her surprise and shock I finally convinced her that we need to get right on this, and that there is a good chance that her current card will expire before the new one is issued. I think she finally gets the point about staying in touch while her domestic violence case unfolds with Immigration Services. Unfortunately she may pay a price for her inattention. US Citizenship and Immigration Services waits for no one.
Today I will Fedex two applications for a client’s mother and father. They fled Afghanistan and are now living in Pakistan. They are elderly and have health problems. The process of applying has been delayed because this client often falls out of sight for months. Some of the problem is that Immigration requires a payment of $535 for each parent and she is struggling financially on a good day. Somehow she has managed to finally get the fees together, so I can send off the paperwork and start the process. Immigration allows us to file Fee Waivers for a number of different cases, but not this one. The person petitioning an “alien relative”, as USCIS calls people, must come up with the money or no petition will be considered.
Thus will begin another day at Legal Services of Eastern Missouri’s Immigration Law Program. We are a small department – 5 people working on behalf of a wide variety of people and circumstances. On any given day there are over 200 souls looking to us for some sort of resolution. It is holy work.