Holiday Challenge

By Lorena Rivas, Esq.

For most people, holidays remind them to show their appreciation towards others by buying gifts, preparing delicious dinners, and spending time with family and friends. Refugees are not most people. The United States began the refugee program in 1948 when Congress enacted legislation for displaced European refugees.1 It expanded to help displaced individuals fleeing Communist regimes in Yugoslavia, China, Vietnam, Korea, and Cuba, and then help individuals fleeing environmental disaster and war-torn countries. Currently, it is managed through the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). For the past few years, the focus had been toward helping Central American familiesandchildrenfindrefugeintheU.S.,butrecently, with the announcement of the end of the 20-year war in Afghanistan, the U.S. has begun to welcome Afghan people escaping the Taliban controlled country.

My firm’s involvement in assisting Afghan refugees surged from a desperate Facebook post from Professor Miriam Marton, the Director of the Tulsa Immigrant Resource Network (TIRN) at the University of Tulsa. Always willing to help people escaping violence and disasters, Professor Marton took the initiative to quickly establish a plan to help the large extended family of one of TIRN’s past client. Without knowing anything about the procedure and what it all entailed, I volunteered the services of our firm because “dirty immigration attorneys”2 aren’t afraid to roll up their sleeves and get to work in a time of need. With the deadline of the U.S. evacuation fast

1 Office of Refugee Resettlement: An Office of the Administration for Families & Children, History, https://www.acf.hhs.gov/orr/ about/history.

2 See generally Diego Aranda Teixeria, What a ‘dirty immigration attorney’ does for clients¸ Dec. 19, 2017, AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION, Student Lawyer, https://abaforlawstudents. com/2017/12/19/what-it-means-to-be-a-dirty-immigration-lawyer/. approaching, my firm, especially my associate attorney Elissa Stiles, got to work. With less than a week left, we were assigned to help an individual and his family complete the necessary paperwork to be able to request humanitarian parole to be allowed to enter the United States. Even though this man had helped the U.S. armed forces in the past, there was no immediate way to guarantee his escape. Further, the Taliban made communicating with our clients difficult by shutting down the electrical network, creating great danger for their journey to the airport. While we could certainly file the necessary forms and documents with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) as soon as possible, we were powerless as to helping the clients beyond that. The best we could offer was information shared amongst nationwide immigration attorneys via Facebook posts and WhatsApp groups. At the time of this printing, as far as we know, our clients are still in Afghanistan. However, there have been some Afghans that have been able to successfully escape. Some have arrived in Oklahoma, and thousands are on their way. Oklahoma is set to receive hundreds of Afghanistan refugees. 3 Only California and Texas are receiving more. State Faith leaders and organizations, such as the First United Methodist Church and Catholic Charities, have begun collecting donations to help the families settle in their new homes in keeping with the Oklahoma Standard where we welcome and help out those in time of need. As a first generation American and proud daughter of Mexican nationals, I know that standard and love this state’s roots and potential for generosity. Refugees and immigrants share one common thread during the holidays—they are thankful for the opportunities the United States has given them. The

3 CHRIS POLANSKY, Oklahoma Welcomes Hundreds of Afghan Refugees—Despite the State GOP’s Objections, NPR, Sept. 29, 2021, https://abaforlawstudents.com/2017/12/19/what-it-meansto-be-a-dirty-immigration-lawyer/.

United States is gritty and tough, but compared to the war-torn and violence saturated countries that most immigrants are from, including those fleeing Central America, the U.S. is a breath of fresh air. During the holidays, immigrants are thankful for that—thankful for their job, thankful for the roof over their head, thankful for the schooling for their children, thankful for the liberty to worship as they wish, thankful to be alive, and most especially, thankful for the helping hand from an American.

Another common thread shared by immigrants and refugees during the holidays is their hope to one day be reunited with their loved ones left behind. Holidays are meant to be spent with loved ones and family, and for many, they have not seen their families for decades. They painfully knew that when they made the journey here. Freedom and opportunities have their price. There is nothing simple when it comes to immigrating to the United States or gaining lawful status in the U.S. Our immigration laws are filled with inconsistencies, punitive consequences, and tangled procedures, as well as subject to the political leanings of the adjudicator. Thus, while getting to the U.S. is a battle in and of itself, the refugees from Afghanistan and Central American still have uphill battles to win their case in immigration court and/or submitting their appropriate and compelling paperwork to be allowed to remain in the U.S. and gain lawful status. In response to these difficulties, many nonprofits, including TIRN at the University of Tulsa, are recruiting volunteer attorneys to help with the filing of asylum requests and forms. Please reach out to Professor Miriam Marton at the University of Tulsa if you would like to volunteer. No experience is necessary. There is no better way to embody the holiday season than giving the gift of hope through your legal skills to a refugee who is seeking shelter in our great country, just like another well-known refugee family from 2,000 years ago who sought shelter in Bethlehem.