The Nitty Gritty of Immigration Law :)

Pic1 is my housemate Sarah and I at the Chili Festival, look at all those Chilis!!!!
These are my housemates. This is overlooking ElPaso. Pic 3 is the whole Border Servant Corps group with solar heaters at this local guy's house.

This is El Paso and Juarez the Mexico city we Border with. And some of us playing in the Border Patrol jeep at the Border Patrol Museum.











Hola Amigos!

I figure it is about time to update you again on my adventures.
I have now been here 3 weeks and am enjoying my time. My housemates are awesome. This morning there was a knock on my door (at... a very late morning hour) because they are used to me being up well before 8am and since I was still asleep they wanted to make sure I was OK. :) Talk about good community.
We went up to a place called Silver City in New Mexico for retreat last week. It was GORGEOUS and COOL! This weekend we went to the Hatch Chili Festival (I saw more chilis than I had ever seen in my whole life I think). There is a picture below. Yesterday we went to a Lutheran Church service, because the church wanted to welcome us, it was very similar to a Catholic Mass. We also had a BBQ with some people who support our group and are from another Lutheran Church near by.

At work I am learning TONS! And my co-workers are hilarious. Or I find them hilarious. My favorite story so far is the other day my supervisor left me to work with this client to fill out her work authorization and change of status form. He then disappeared but I needed him to look stuff over. I figured out he was in the bathroom talking on his phone, because that is where he takes personal calls. I waited for a little while and then after probably 5 minutes thought is was unfair for our poor client who had already been there for at least an hour bearing with my learning so I called him on his cell phone. It was pretty hilarious. He came out with a very sheepish grin on his face. Last time he leaves me to do his work :-P I am such a jerk employee :-P

But on to immigration stuff. At our office we deal primarily with U Visas, T Visas, VAWA cases, Asylum, work permits, and family based petitions. We also do changes of venue for minors. So what does that all mean. To qualify for a U Visa basically you have to have been victim of a crime, be able to provide information that leads to the prosecution of a criminal, etc persecuted by a US citizen. In very general terms, it is a crime victim. So if for example I was here without papers and witnessed my child murdered by someone, extreme example, I would be eligible for a U Visa. There are only certain crimes that qualify. The applicant also cannot have commited an aggravated felony, so we are not permiting hardened criminals to qualify. T Visas are for victims who have been trafficked. Human trafficking is amazingly a very real and significant problem in the US and actually in OR. So these individuals were brought here against their will to be used in any number of professions. Some are used as sex-slaves (which is what most people think of when they hear trafficking). Some are also forced to work as domestics, cleaning, caring for kids, etc, or to do field work. Human trafficking is something I actually did a big research project on in college and it is fascinating. Many of the traffickers will go to particularly impoverished towns and offer 'job opportunities' then when the individuals get to the United States they end up trapped either literally locked up in a house or the traffickers threaten to kill their families if they leave. Also many of these individuals don't speak any English, which further ties them to their abusers. This is really just one, example of human trafficking. For more info http://www.humantrafficking.org/ is a good resource. I am off track though :)
VAWA is the Violence Against Women Act which originally passed in 1994 allows individuals who are victims of abuse to file for Lawful Permanent Residency without the knowledge of their partner. For example, if I am married to a Colombian (This is the example my boss always uses) and I abuse this Colombian but I tell him, you can't leave me or you will get deported. He could self petition for his Lawful Permanent Residency without my support. Under VAWA, he could be granted a green card.
Asylum, I gave you the basics on last time. A work permit is exactly what it sounds like, it gives the person a legal right to work in the country. One that I filled out 2 weeks ago was for a gentleman from Somalia. He traveled from Somalia, to South Africa, to Bolivia, to Brazil, to Guatemala, and then up through Mexico to arrive at the US and declare asylum. His case was denied, he did not apparently prove that he would be persecuted if returned to his home country. However, as you may know Somalia is in an absolute state of chaos currently so the US government will not deport this gentleman at the present time, thus he is applying for a work permit so he is not just forced to beg on the streets or live off the generosity of others. He was very insistant that he look after himself.
Family Based petitions are the most common way for people to legally immigrate to the United States. This would be if my Columbian Spouse became a citizen (which is a long process) and wanted to petition for his parents to come to the US. Or if he had a child from a previous relation and we wanted to petition for him/her to come to the United States. There is a whole preference system for this which I will explain in a future post.
Then lastly the change of venue is largely what we do with children because the government tries to get them out of the youth detention facilities and placed with family members in the states or in foster care while their case goes through the system. El Paso doesn't have foster care for such cases nor do most of these kids have family in the area so their cases get transfered out to other districts.
Sooo hopefully some of you find this stuff interesting. I tried to include links so if you have a specific interest you can read more but those of you who don't really care are not subjected to it :) If you have any specific questions about any of this stuff let me know! I love going into teacher mode :)

My one last plug... My non-profit I worked at in DC is set up with goodsearch.com which is a search engine like google or yahoo. However, if you designate your searching to them (A Wider Circle) it will donate a penny to their organization for every search you do. I highly encourage you to set it as your homepage and use it to search. There is no cost to you but you are contributing to furnishing the homes of many in need.
Happy Labor Day! Have a great week!