Class Note 2011
Issue
March-April 2020
Please welcome a guest column by Jennifer Robinson.
Hello fellow ‘11s! I currently live in North Carolina, where I’ve been working for the past 4 years as an attorney with Legal Aid of North Carolina (LANC) Battered Immigrant Project. (This is written in my personal capacity and does not reflect the opinion of LANC.) I represent survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking in applying for legal immigration status so they can remain in the United States—where their support network is, where they are protected by our law enforcement, and where they are receiving social services and therapy related to their victimization.
I can’t imagine doing anything else, but it is emotionally challenging work. Handing someone their first-ever work permit or green card is a meaningful and humbling experience. However, we are constantly facing new challenges. You can imagine for yourself the traumas my clients experience before meeting me, so I want to share with you the policy change that has impacted my daily work the most. At my organization, we provide free legal services to low-income people, who often cannot afford to pay immigration application fees, which range from $400 to more than $2,000 for a single case. For a family of five, you do the math. It’s possible to request a fee waiver if the applicant demonstrates an inability to pay. For survivors of violence, this used to be a simple process of explaining their income or lack thereof.
In the summer of 2018, humanitarian fee waiver requests were being denied with no warning of a policy change. Now, the government is drastically stricter on the evidence required to obtain a fee waiver. Many of my clients win a fee waiver by submitting their tax returns, but sometimes even these are denied in a manner that can only be described as random. Unfortunately, I just received a second denial for one client. For our second attempt, we again submitted her taxes and added more proof of her struggling business. It still wasn’t enough. She is a single mother recovering from her abusive ex-husband both emotionally and financially, and she doesn’t have an extra $2,000 for her application, so we’ll try a third time.
Undocumented people can file taxes, and millions of them do every year. However, many people experiencing domestic violence or human trafficking are not permitted by their abusers to file taxes or are too afraid to do so. What if someone is a stay-at-home mother, recently escaped from her abusive husband and staying with a friend? She has no income, no rent payment, and no evidence to show that she cannot afford the immigration fee. I have seen families go into debt to come up with $4,000 that could have been spent on food and clothes for their children. For the survivors of violence I work with, these fee waiver denials stand in the way of applying for legal status, preventing deportation, staying here with their U.S. citizen children, and continuing their healing journeys in the United States.
We persevere, and we often win. I just received an email with Christmas greetings from a former client whom I helped win her green card: “We remember you with immense gratitude for all the good you did for us.” It’s the best feeling in the world to read that. Please feel free to reach out to me if you have questions about immigration. My husband, Dan Mott ’12, and I live in the Raleigh, North Carolina, area with our dog Maya. Let us know if you are ever in North Carolina!
—Hillary S. Cheng, 16013 Legacy Road, Unit 304, Tustin CA 92782; (603) 546-8452; hillary.s.cheng@dartmouth.edu
Hello fellow ‘11s! I currently live in North Carolina, where I’ve been working for the past 4 years as an attorney with Legal Aid of North Carolina (LANC) Battered Immigrant Project. (This is written in my personal capacity and does not reflect the opinion of LANC.) I represent survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking in applying for legal immigration status so they can remain in the United States—where their support network is, where they are protected by our law enforcement, and where they are receiving social services and therapy related to their victimization.
I can’t imagine doing anything else, but it is emotionally challenging work. Handing someone their first-ever work permit or green card is a meaningful and humbling experience. However, we are constantly facing new challenges. You can imagine for yourself the traumas my clients experience before meeting me, so I want to share with you the policy change that has impacted my daily work the most. At my organization, we provide free legal services to low-income people, who often cannot afford to pay immigration application fees, which range from $400 to more than $2,000 for a single case. For a family of five, you do the math. It’s possible to request a fee waiver if the applicant demonstrates an inability to pay. For survivors of violence, this used to be a simple process of explaining their income or lack thereof.
In the summer of 2018, humanitarian fee waiver requests were being denied with no warning of a policy change. Now, the government is drastically stricter on the evidence required to obtain a fee waiver. Many of my clients win a fee waiver by submitting their tax returns, but sometimes even these are denied in a manner that can only be described as random. Unfortunately, I just received a second denial for one client. For our second attempt, we again submitted her taxes and added more proof of her struggling business. It still wasn’t enough. She is a single mother recovering from her abusive ex-husband both emotionally and financially, and she doesn’t have an extra $2,000 for her application, so we’ll try a third time.
Undocumented people can file taxes, and millions of them do every year. However, many people experiencing domestic violence or human trafficking are not permitted by their abusers to file taxes or are too afraid to do so. What if someone is a stay-at-home mother, recently escaped from her abusive husband and staying with a friend? She has no income, no rent payment, and no evidence to show that she cannot afford the immigration fee. I have seen families go into debt to come up with $4,000 that could have been spent on food and clothes for their children. For the survivors of violence I work with, these fee waiver denials stand in the way of applying for legal status, preventing deportation, staying here with their U.S. citizen children, and continuing their healing journeys in the United States.
We persevere, and we often win. I just received an email with Christmas greetings from a former client whom I helped win her green card: “We remember you with immense gratitude for all the good you did for us.” It’s the best feeling in the world to read that. Please feel free to reach out to me if you have questions about immigration. My husband, Dan Mott ’12, and I live in the Raleigh, North Carolina, area with our dog Maya. Let us know if you are ever in North Carolina!
—Hillary S. Cheng, 16013 Legacy Road, Unit 304, Tustin CA 92782; (603) 546-8452; hillary.s.cheng@dartmouth.edu