I spent this past summer working for Catholic Charities of Oregon in the Immigration Legal Services (ILS) department. ILS supports migrant communities by providing a multitude of immigration services at a substantially reduced cost. I spent the majority of my time assisting staff attorneys on adjustment of status applications, a process by which someone within the country becomes a lawful permanent resident and receives their “green card.”
In immigration law cases move very slowly, often painfully so, and as such the few months I spent with ILS were not enough for me to work on any cases from their very beginning to the end, but I was still able to derive an immense amount of satisfaction from the work. As immigration advocates will often say, the field of immigration law is a particularly strange place, where people are routinely subjected to severe consequences akin to those found in criminal law, but without most of the procedural due process safeguards that give people in that field a fighting chance. The need for affordable legal service is therefore substantial, so being able to contribute to this work to any degree felt incredible. Few people have it as hard as migrants, and I was honored to have the opportunity to help alleviate some of the burdens our immigration system forces upon those in this group.
For all of the incredible experiences I had over the past few months, I have PILP to thank. Without the financial support offered by PILP I very likely would not have been able to intern at ILS. Though the need for this work is so substantial, the resources to support it are always in short supply. Such is often the case with public interest work, and for this I am so grateful to have had the chance to work with PILP to make this all happen. I plan to continue working within PILP to ensure that others get to enjoy this same opportunity, to ensure that there are always passionate new legal minds with the resources needed to serve all of the causes that make up the public interest.
