Pro Bono
| Jurisdiction | Georgia,United States |
| Citation | Vol. 26 No. 6 Pg. 0054 |
| Pages | 0054 |
| Publication year | 2021 |
Compassionate Lawyering at a Time of Uncertainty
The need is great, and the work at times emotionally challenging, but by infusing compassion into the provision of legal services, we inch closer to our lawyer’s creed and the common humanity that binds us.
BY ALPA AMIN
As the daughter of Indian immigrants, I grew up in a home with a revolving door. From visitors dropping in for a cup of chai, to families staying for weeks (or months) until they found footing on foreign land, our home became the home of many.
Since 2005, the Georgia Asylum and Immigration Network (GAIN) has been doing much of the same. For survivors of human trafficking and domestic abuse, and for families fleeing war-torn countries and political oppression, our agency has been a place of refuge—a place where the trust of our clients is earned and their struggles are greeted with warmth, empathy and compassion in abundance.
If you have volunteered with us, you know the struggles of our clients well and understand that their fears and anxiety are often well-placed. To this day, Georgia remains the home to one of the toughest immigration courts in the country, and because there is no right to appointed counsel in immigration matters, the likelihood of succeeding on the merits of a case is inextricably intertwined with one's ability to secure affordable or pro bono legal representation.
The hard truth is that immigrant survivors are facing a broken immigration system—and battling layers of complex trauma, abuse, prejudice, violence and isolation in the United States—all while carrying the heavy burden of their tattered hopes for a better life.
In 2020, the challenges of securing immigration relief took a backseat to the day-to-day struggles families faced during the pandemic. From the loss of employment to the loss of loved ones, our clients faced sudden, and at times, devastating hardships. Non-citizen immigrants were already more likely to live in poverty than U.S. citizens,[1] but in the last 15 months, we saw a shocking escalation in the number of clients struggling to make ends meet.
During this time of uncertainty, GAIN made a conscious decision to address the holistic needs of our clients and to reimagine our work to address all the barriers that make safety and stability so difficult for our clients to attain. We responded by connecting our clients in crisis with more than $200,000 in...
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