Lisa Powell, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project

As the Liman Fellow Attorney at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP), I specialized in U visas, which are visas created in 2000 to protect immigrant victims of certain crimes, including domestic violence, rape, attempted murder, kidnapping, and torture. NWIRP, founded in 1984, is Washington’s only legal services program specifically for low-income immigrants. NWIRP provides legal representation, pro se assistance, and legal information for more than 30,000 immigrants and refugees from approximately 150 countries each year. I worked within NWIRP’s VAWA Unit, named for the various forms of immigration relief, including the U visa, created by the Violence Against Women Act. In order to encourage effective prosecution of crimes against immigrants, immigrants who receive U visas must have been or be willing to cooperate with the investigation or prosecution of the crime committed against them. Although the government has not yet issued regulations for the U visa, immigrants who demonstrate prima facie eligibility can receive protection from deportation and work authorization.

As the U visa attorney, I provided direct legal representation to immigrants. Additionally, I provided community education and technical assistance to other attorneys and service providers, and I engaged in policy-related work. My direct representation of clients included clients affirmatively applying for U visas and clients in removal (formerly called deportation) proceedings applying for U visas to prevent their removal from the country. Cases in removal proceedings are more difficult because they can involve presenting other claims for relief, as well as preparing documents such as bond motions, habeas petitions, and motions to terminate removal proceedings.

The U Visa Project has been highly successful, but there is much work left undone. One of the primary goals of my project was to provide direct representation to immigrant crime victims to help them obtain legal status and work authorization. So far, the government has granted every affirmative application processed. Additionally, the government granted all but one of the applications for clients in removal proceedings that it has processed. In total, nine clients have been granted relief in affirmative cases, in addition to eight children or parents granted relief as derivative applicants. Two affirmative cases remain pending, while two more are nearly ready to file and will be filed by my supervising attorney when completed. Three clients have been granted relief in defensive applications, in addition to five children granted relief as derivative applicants in those cases. Three U visa applications in removal proceedings remain pending, while two additional applications for clients in proceedings are nearly ready to file.

The only client denied relief, “Jose,” has a strong U visa claim, as a victim of attempted murder, as well as a strong asylum claim. However, he has two criminal convictions, which do not preclude either claim but seem to have made the government determined to seek his removal. I have been collaborating with NWIRP’s Impact Litigation Unit and others about possible litigation to force the government to implement the U visa program in accordance with statute, in which Jose might be a named plaintiff. Additionally, I filed Jose’s asylum appeal brief at the Board of Immigration Appeals just before finishing my fellowship.

One aspect of direct representation was somewhat different than I had envisioned it. Because NWIRP’s VAWA Unit has a highly-effective intake coordinator and a waitlist for direct representation, the intake coordinator was responsible for providing clients with referrals to domestic violence advocates and helping with issues such as public benefits and crime victim compensation. That system worked well to help meet clients’ needs as early in the process as possible. Unfortunately, many clients need substantial and ongoing social services that NWIRP is unable to provide. Although we always made an effort to connect each client with any needed service, it was sometimes clear that clients’ needs for non-immigration assistance went unmet. Because clients’ receiving adequate social services is important to their immigration cases, both because service providers often help with documentation of the claims and because clients often have a difficult time focusing on their immigration applications if their basic needs are not met, NWIRP is working with area universities to arrange for NWIRP to be an agency where students can do a practicum for a Master’s in Social Work.

Although the U Visa Project has been quite successful in obtaining relief for clients, the demand for services far exceeds the Project’s capacity. In order to address part of this need, another NWIRP attorney and I developed a Continuing Legal Education (CLE) program for attorneys interested in learning about representing immigrant survivors of domestic violence and other crimes. Attorneys could attend the CLEs for a small fee, which was waived if they agreed to take one case from NWIRP pro bono within a year. During summer 2005, the two of us presented three CLEs, in Seattle, Olympia, and Bellingham, near the Canadian border. Subsequently, NWIRP referred twenty-one cases to private, pro bono attorneys, including eight U visa cases. Additionally, approximately six other attorneys have agreed to take a case within the next year. While the CLE program has successfully reduced the VAWA Unit’s waitlist, more than forty clients remain on the waitlist, including approximately fifteen clients seeking U visa representation.

Unfortunately, NWIRP was unable to raise sufficient funds to continue my position after my fellowship. NWIRP’s development office continues to seek additional money to hire an attorney to focus on U visas, and NWIRP has two grant applications pending, either of which should be sufficient to fund the position. Planning for the transition to one attorney in the VAWA Unit – trying to maximize the work completed while not leaving so many pending cases that they will overwhelm the remaining attorney – was one of the most challenging aspects of the last portion of my fellowship. In part, I focused more on outreach, education, and technical assistance, to educate others about the U visa and help other attorneys engage in representation without taking on many new in-house cases that will linger after the fellowship ends. Additionally, I recruited and trained four second- or third-year law students, each of whom already has experience in immigration law and with working with domestic violence survivors, to work under my NWIRP colleague’s supervision. Each intern is committing approximately ten hours per week of work during the fall semester of the school year, and each will work on one to three U visa cases at a time, depending on the complexity of the cases. Therefore, I hope that the VAWA Unit’s U visa capacity, at least for straightforward cases appropriate for legal interns, will be little diminished after I leave. Additionally, because the VAWA Unit received an outreach grant, the Unit’s Outreach Coordinator will continue to share the U visa educational materials that I developed during my fellowship.

The policy-related work of the U Visa Project also went somewhat differently than initially planned, constituting only an intermittent, as needed, part of the work, rather than a central element of the project. Looking back, it is difficult to say whether I could have found a better balance of direct services and policy work, as this is always a delicate balance, made ever more challenging by the shrinking safety net and increasing poverty.

After finishing my fellowship, I will move to Washington, DC, where I will be working for the union-side law firm Bredhoff & Kaiser.