Happy Spring.

Maria Blacque-Belair, LCSW
Executive Director, RIF Asylum Help Center
maria@asylumhelp.org

RIF Client Bushra Pereira

Testimony from Bushra, an Iraqi Christian

In the beginning, the road to my asylum was difficult, foggy and rocky.  At times I felt like giving up.  My main concern was to find someone to help me start my asylum application and I was clueless of how. It is difficult to hold your life together when you live it with no hope.  I kept on looking for a way, and that is when I got the RIF Asylum Help Center’s contact information.  That was when I put my foot on the first step to my journey for asylum.

With RIF staff Mr. Zack Sanders, Esq, Ms. Anna Theofilopoulou, and Ms. Maria Blacque-Belair, I was able to open up; I felt safe and embraced by them because they believed in my humanity and my struggle through my life that led me to look for better life and future for me and my daughter.

With RIF’s help and counseling, I was able to keep my resilient spirit, preserve my sanity and most importantly find a probono lawyer to accept my case. Ms. Maria Blacque-Belair was a tremendous counselor– she embraced my situation and understood what I went through and I was going through, she walked me through my first part of my journey, which is to find a lawyer.

Once Prof. Dan Smulian from Brooklyn Law School and the Safe Harbor Clinic agreed to represent me, I started to gain hope. Prof. Smulian and his dedicated students (my team, Team Bushra), as well as my counselor Maria worked together with me.  We got down to the details of my story and my struggle.  I can’t begin to thank them. I shall forever be grateful to RIF and Brooklyn Law School for everything they helped me with; I could see the bright future in their eyes and their words and their tremendous work.

The first half of the journey done, it was time to file for my papers and prepare to appear for the interview.  It was a great pressure to meet an asylum officer without being afraid, anxious, and emotional and I was not sure what to expect.  Yet again, Maria stood by my side to encourage, walk me through, and prepare me for the process.  Mr. Smulian and my team were there to make this huge important part go smoothly.

After my asylum interview, I went to the immigration office to get the decision of whether I was granted asylum.  That day felt as if the entire struggle of my life rested on my shoulders, because I did not know how my life would turn.  My whole life was at a stake. I remember being called by a beautiful lady, who with a calm voice and radiant smile, congratulated me for being granted asylum.

My face changed from being tense, anxious, and afraid to happy with a huge smile; it was a moment of mixed emotions– happy and surprised, grateful and appreciative yet my whole struggle passed through my eyes like a movie and I cried out of happiness, I lost words but my heart was jumping for joy, what a jubilant moment, I reclaimed my life and freedom, it was worth millions, life and freedom is so precious.

Now that my Asylum has been approved, I can see the horizon is wide open for me and especially my daughter. We have a bright future that awaits us, a future that is wide open and for us to be able to live freely.  Now we can say we have a home, New York.  Now I can use my skills and education to look for a job and start my dream of establishing my own business. Now I can catch up on all the years I lost before.  Now my daughter can plan her own future, and be the woman she wants to be…  I am a happy free woman.☺

Ellen with two RIF clients she successfully represented

A “UNIQUELY TRANSFORMATIVE” EXPERIENCE

Testimony from Ellen Friedland, Safe Horizon Immigration Law Project

I am an accredited representative with the Safe Horizon Immigration Law Project since 2003. I represent people before the immigration service and in immigration court.  In our project, we handle a variety of types of cases, including applications for asylum.

While true about legal representation in general, working with asylum seekers is a collaborative effort in a very particular way.  A client comes to our office from a country I may know little about.  My education begins with the initial consultation and, if we end up working together on the case, the learning process for me continues. From the client’s account of what s/he has experienced and from my own research into the conditions of the particular country, I gain knowledge and a bit of understanding of what it is like to live in a place I have never been, a place from which the client has fled for his/her own safety. It is an opportunity to learn from the life experiences of another person and to try to see the world from a different standpoint.  It is an opportunity for which I am grateful, time and time again.

Representing asylum seekers is a lengthy process fraught with many challenges, but there are victories: the young man, persecuted by Maoists in his home country, who broke down in tears upon hearing the immigration judge grant his application for asylum; the man from Africa who was detained and tortured by authorities in his country, choked back tears and left the courtroom unable to speak after the immigration judge announced his decision to grant asylum; the woman from Afghanistan, forced to marry someone she did not love, so grateful that she  can remain in the United States to pursue her dreams.  A grant of asylum for someone who, out of fear, is compelled to leave her/his homeland, is uniquely transformative, and the sense of relief experienced by each and every one of the people I have worked with to secure asylum is palpable.  Their gratitude is profound as is mine.

Being a partner with seekers of asylum in their search for safety and protection from further persecution is a deeply moving and specially shared experience.  I have come to see ever more starkly the privilege of my life as compared with the lives of so many others. I have been awed by the astounding courage and resiliency of clients, and amazed at their patience with a system that can be cruel and unfair and a process that can seem endless.  I thank all who have trusted me enough to allow us to take this journey together.

Imagine a world where cruelty, inhumanity and injustice do not prevail.  In the meantime, we each do what we can to make a difference however we can.  For me, for now, this is one of my ways.