Spring 2024 Immigration Law Clinic students have helped a variety of clients with a range of immigration matters including asylum, citizenship and green card applications.
For example, this semester they have represented an applicant seeking asylum from his native country due to his sexual orientation. Interns Kaela Orrell and Jose Mendez Valdez prepared their client’s application from the very onset to be filed with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). They met with their client on multiple occasions developing his legal arguments and application and, by the end of this semester, will have filed their client’s request for protection from returning to his homeland.
Interns Gabriella Phillips and Nicholas Vanarthos represented a 501(c)(3) non-profit religious organization in its request to bring religious sisters to the United States to fill vacancies within its organization. The applicants, currently in Uganda and Tanzania respectively, will soon be here to assist the non-profit’s current religious worker shortage. Meanwhile, Luke Antonczak and Emily Worline assisted their clients ranging in cases from a green card application for a mother of a U.S. service member to representing a victim of domestic abuse in her citizenship application. Both cases have a legal history that has gone on for more than a decade and the interns’ work will finally bring closure.
The students are also laying the groundwork for a slate of hearings next year’s students will handle. This current hardworking group is preparing pre-trial statements, legal research and client development right now to help our future clinical interns as we continue to represent clients in need.