Emotional Investments

While the last three days have been a lot of client interaction and outreach, today was primarily a paperwork day for most of us (Aman and Christine took yet another trip to Little Haiti to meet with their clients for follow up information). We spent a large chunk of time today in the clinic office working on typing up and actually preparing the applications that will be sent in. While a lot of the cases were fairly straight forward, several of them were complicated by criminal records. Olga and Melissa (and JoNel for a brief interlude) spent a lot of time with us looking into what exactly they did, what counts as a felony, and if there was any way around those convictions for TPS purposes. It was once again totally depressing to determine that a client was ineligible because of their criminal past; it seems like a major flaw in the TPS program.

I think that by the end of the day we were all a little surprised by how emotionally involved we are in our cases. After intake and spending that much time with our clients and learning so much about them, filling out the TPS application feels like a LOT more then just paperwork. Hopefully we can get in a lot of hours tomorrow (with yet another trip to Little Haiti!) and be able to send them off; I know that we will all feel gratified (and be able to sleep at night) to see our clients applications to the end.

Ed. note: Dana Isaac is a second-year law student at the University of San Francisco.

Light At the End of the Tunnel

It’s hard to believe that we only have one more day at the clinic to finalize our client’s files and send them off! This week has flown by!

Today was spent back in the Health and Elder Law Clinic at the University of Miami. We took the time to review and organize our cases, print out evidentiary support documents, affix certification labels to them, and meet with our supervising attorneys to get their approval on the completed files. Although it initially sounded tedious to have to ensure every crossed T and dotted I, it is really satisfying to know that we have taken extra measures to ensure there is nothing in our files that remains unaccounted for, and that our clients are getting thorough and accurate representation.

In addition to the office time, some of our team went back to Little Haiti to follow up with their clients and obtain additional documents. Though their GPS was a little faulty on the way there, they successfully navigated to and from homes, retrieving official forms, signatures, and ensuring that complete files will be sent to Immigration tomorrow.

Though we are nearing the end, we are looking forward to wrapping everything up tomorrow and sending a wave of applications off!

Ed. note - Anna Rudman-Santos is a first year law student at the University of Memphis.

The Nuts & Bolts of TPS

We had a nice quiet morning to ourselves today; since we didn’t have to be at the Law School until almost 1pm, we all spent the morning relaxing in different ways. Some of our team explored the shops around South Beach, some caught up on some sleep, and some of us caught up on some ever-present homework.

Once we arrived on campus, we met with the supervising attorneys for the Health and Elder Law Clinic and had a “firm meeting,” where we discussed all the applications we received at intake yesterday, and made game plans for following up with clients, completing paperwork, and researching questions that may have come up during interviews. Even when it seemed like we had complete case files yesterday during our time with the client photos, the attorneys came up with all kinds of things for us to follow up on today – verifying Alien Registration Numbers (or “A numbers”), doing criminal background checks, trying to put together timelines for each client, and translating all of those facts into a coherent, easy-to-understand story. It took us a couple of hours to go through all the applications we got yesterday, but by the end, we all had plenty of work to get through tomorrow.

After we finished up our meeting, we headed back out to the streets to do more recruiting for the legal clinics, and to do intake at a couple of restaurants in some predominately Haitian neighborhoods. Though the intake was slow, one of the restaurants had at least 5 people come through tonight, which is great for a Wednesday night!

Tomorrow, we are looking forward to more case review and office time to get our completed applications off to Immigration by Friday!

We had a nice quiet morning to ourselves today; since we didn’t have to be at the Law School until almost 1pm, we all spent the morning relaxing in different ways. Some of our team explored the shops around South Beach, some caught up on some sleep, and some of us caught up on some ever-present homework.

Once we arrived on campus, we met with the supervising attorneys for the Health and Elder Law Clinic and had a “firm meeting,” where we discussed all the applications we received at intake yesterday, and made game plans for following up with clients, completing paperwork, and researching questions that may have come up during interviews. Even when it seemed like we had complete case files yesterday during our time with the client photos, the attorneys came up with all kinds of things for us to follow up on today – verifying Alien Registration Numbers (or “A numbers”), doing criminal background checks, trying to put together timelines for each client, and translating all of those facts into a coherent, easy-to-understand story. It took us a couple of hours to go through all the applications we got yesterday, but by the end, we all had plenty of work to get through tomorrow.

After we finished up our meeting, we headed back out to the streets to do more recruiting for the legal clinics, and to do intake at a couple of restaurants in some predominately Haitian neighborhoods. Though the intake was slow, one of the restaurants had at least 5 people come through tonight, which is great for a Wednesday night!

Tomorrow, we are looking forward to more case review and office time to get our completed applications off to Immigration by Friday!

Ed. note - Anna Rudman-Santos is a first year law student at the University of Memphis.

In the Heart of Little Haiti - Take 3...

Today was a very, very, long day. We met at the school to debrief and go over our cases from the day before, started filling out the paperwork to file with USCIS and then went back to Little Haiti for the night clinic. While it feels like we have spent all of our time in Little Haiti the past three days, the night clinic was a good reminder of how important outreach is: it really paid off and at the end of the night we had 11 new TPS clients.

What was just as exciting was that clients from the day before returned with the paperwork we needed them to bring, recognized our faces, and even brought new friends and relatives to the clinic. At the end of the day we keep coming back to the importance of making those connections in the community and putting yourself out there to establish credibility. Zahra's client from the day before returned with a relative, and Aman's client went to get more of his family members to get more info.

We have also seen a lot of parents coming in to file applications for their kids, something that Melissa and JoNel had said that they were trying to get more of. Overall, tonight's clinic felt like the result of lots and lots of outreach. Those connections really matter!

As we are getting more and more familiar with the TPS application and during our time researching today, we have all been struck by the fundamental unfairness of the intersection between criminal law and immigration law. Christine got on the phone and started doing massive amounts of research to determine what exactly counted as a misdemeanor, and was shocked to see that driving without a licence could be a misdemeanor. It seems unbelievable to not allow someone to work legally in the United States because they drove a car without a license.

Some of the clients that we had today also had a criminal past. It seems ridiculous for crimes such as theft to disqualify someone from TPS; if you are unable to work, how are you going to support yourself? Even though that seems to be a threshold matter for TPS eligibility, we are hopefully gonna do some research tomorrow to see if there is ANY way around it.

All in all a very long but fulfilling day!

Ed. note: Dana Isaac is a second-year law student at the University of San Francisco.

Haitian TPS Intake - Into The Fire...

This morning, it was time to finally don our suits and hit the clinic! We navigated through morning traffic into downtown Miami, where we set up the intake clinic in Jackson Hospital. We split into groups, to continue promoting the clinics throughout the city, to ensure that everyone who qualifies for TPS has the opportunity to come.

Willem (a University of Memphis 3L) and I ended up leaving the intake for a bit to take the train to the Haitian Consulate where we spoke with folks waiting in lines, and handed out fliers about our clinics. We were able to let just about everyone know what we were doing, and met a number of people who were excited about sharing the opportunity with their friends and family.

Once we got back to the intake, we sat down with a young man who was applying for TPS, and his uncle who was there to help translate. His application process was fairly smooth, and Willem and I learned about organizing a massive number of documents, and ensuring consistency of information on all of the forms (remember that even fairly straightforward questions can have complicated answers!). Overall, it was wonderful to finally be face to face with Haitians, and so rewarding to know that we were able to aid in helping this young man gain the status he needs to start working in the United States.

Though the clinic slowed down this afternoon, we were able to make presentations in two different schools, and hand out a number of flyers in Little Haiti, where we will be tomorrow night doing intake. By the end of the day, we had 15 different applications filled out and ready for review.

Tonight, we are meeting up with the volunteer group from the University of San Francisco Law School. We’re headed to Coconut Grove, a district that everyone has been telling us about. A little dinner and down time will be just the ticket for a successful tomorrow!

Ed. note - Anna Rudman-Santos is a first year law student at the University of Memphis.

Out and About in Little Haiti

One of the things that we have come to realize throughout our work these past two days is how important outreach is. As Aman said "anyone can fill out forms, but it takes more to make a connection and gain someone's trust."

Our morning on Tuesday was largely spent wandering around little Haiti in community centers, churches and residential areas near Nicoles in order to talk to people about what TPS is, why we are there, and why we want to do this. One of the things that we think that people forget is that we are strangers showing up in someone's community and telling them to trust us. I think by the end of Tuesday we felt good about what we had done there because it felt like we had started to make some connections in the area. We had made enough of a connection that people were sending their friends over to the clinic, people were coming back to the clinic when they said that they would, and Aman even made a connection that could allow him to make an announcement on pirate radio. One thing that we felt might make it easier would be a deeper connection and liaison within the community.

In the morning Nicole, Christine and I went to Notre Dame Church, and we felt that having someone there who was already a presence in the area would have made it easier to talk to the people there, and might have made us a more credible presence. Overall I think that outreach will continue to be important, even if the clinic is flooded with people: making a connection in Little Haiti will continue to be important for future work in the area.

That being said, intake went really well. We had 8 clients who came in, and it seems that now that they have met us and trust us a bit, there may be more people who will come to the night clinics, or the clinics in the next week. One woman mentioned that she knew of a lot of people who had received deportation notices (but had never left the country) and were therefore extremely nervous to file any kind of paperwork at all. Hopefully now that we have established some credibility more people will come in!

Ed. note: Dana Isaac is a second-year law student at the University of San Francisco.

TPS and Community Outreach: A Crash Course

Today begins our weeklong adventure into the world of TPS clinics.

Information overload!

We met this morning at 8:15 in the lobby of our hotel, and headed over to the beautiful University of Miami campus. The law school is situated in a corner of campus and the common area is known as “The Bricks”. It's lovely – lots of trees and plants, and full of students studying and socializing.

Training began at 9am with the supervising attorneys and student mentors who have gone through this process a number of times already. Training consisted of an extensive overview of what TPS (Temporary Protected Status) means, who is currently eligible for it, and how we help Haitian nationals understand what the status means for them. We also went over the forms that we will be helping the applicants fill out, and learned about all the possible ways that what seems like a straightforward question can present a whole host of complicated answers. To wrap up the morning training sessions, the trainers did a skit of an interview that gave us an idea of questions that applicants might ask, and creative solutions we can use to help them overcome apprehension.

After the training wrapped up, our team headed to Little Haiti where we ate lunch at a Haitian restaurant – fried chicken, goat, pork, and spinach plates. Even the vegetarians in our group found delicious food to nosh on!

Our team split up into separate groups this afternoon and headed out to neighborhoods around the city where we distributed flyers at local schools and organizations, letting people know about the upcoming free clinics. Overall, the response from the community was extremely positive – people were glad to learn about the opportunities for Haitian nationals and their families. One of the high schools we stopped at even let us make a presentation to a class of students!

Tomorrow we begin our intake at the local community hospital. Though there is no doubt some apprehension about what our first experience helping this client group will be like, we are all excited to take everything we learned today and put it into action!

Ed. note - Anna Rudman-Santos is a first year law student at the University of Memphis.