Spring 2008

COMMUNITY, COMMITMENT, AND COURAGE

THREE VALUES STRESSED BY THE KATHARINE AND GEORGE ALEXANDER COMMUNITY LAW CENTER, THE CIVIL CLINICAL PROGRAM OF SANTA CLARA’S LAW SCHOOL, AND BY JESUIT PHILOSOPHY GENERALLY, ARE THOSE OF COMMUNITY SERVICE, COMMITMENT, AND COURAGE.

These values are integrated into the education of law students who work and study at the Community Law Center. Students working in the Immigration Law program at the Community Law Center live and practice these values in the context of their legal education and practical training.

COMMUNITY SERVICE

Originally located in one of the poorest areas of San Jose, the Community Law Center has had the dual mission of education and community service. Law students assist immigrants, who work hard and sacrifice much to build new lives for themselves and their families. Community Law Center client families, many of whom mirror immigrant families throughout the country, are frequently mixed families with U.S. citizen, permanent resident, and undocumented members. These families have faced extended separation of spouses, parents, children, and siblings. Some have had to leave home, family, friends, and possessions when they fled torture and persecution.

For Santa Clara law students working at the center, service to the community means providing the highest quality of legal work. It also means treating each client with respect and dignity. Law students learn to work with interpreters and with cultural competence. They also learn to work with traumatized clients in a way that minimizes re-traumatization. The law students take these lessons to heart, and invest time and effort to perfect their interviewing and client skills. Clients respond by trusting their legal matters to the law students, and confiding experiences that are often difficult to repeat.

COMMITMENT

Commitment manifests as compassion, dedication, competence, and professionalism. Immigration law is technically complex. Sometimes called the second most complex statutory law after tax law, the layers of overlapping and sometimes conflicting provisions confound even the experts. Immigration law also evokes strong emotions. Marches in the streets, harsh rhetoric, and contentious political debates illustrate the strength and depth of the emotions. The complexity and the emotional nature of immigration law challenge international and national leaders, global and local communities, and law students alike.

For Santa Clara Law students, technical competence requires mental agility and flexibility. Immigration law changes frequently and reflect changes in laws, policies, and public opinion. Details matter when working with immigration law. The date someone last entered the United States could mean the difference between eligibility for immigration status and a bar to obtaining lawful status. A date of birth can be crucial for someone born outside of the United States to a U.S. citizen parent, since the date of birth could determine under which version of immigration law someone falls and whether they were born a U.S. citizen or not.

Santa Clara law students tackle the complexities of immigration with heart and intelligence. They invest many hours in their cases, often above and beyond the number of hours required to complete the course units for which they have registered. They may work late and come into the office on weekends to complete applications or briefs. Some return as volunteers during subsequent semesters to complete a case or represent the client in a court hearing or interview. Students report that they cannot stop thinking about their cases, and often remain in touch with the Community Law Center even after graduation to learn the final outcome of their cases.

Commitment on the part of Santa Clara Law students is a reflection of their professional pride in their work and their investment in and connection with their clients. Community Law Center clinical instructors remind each new group of students that the center was founded by law students who wanted to put their education to use for the community. Students are told that the cases assigned to them are their cases. The clinical instructors are present to teach, support, and provide the necessary license to practice law, but students are encouraged to take initiative and ownership of their cases.

COURAGE

Courage to work in the field of immigration law may mean the courage to look other human beings in the eyes and tell them that there is no legal avenue that will provide them a safe haven; that there is a possibility that once again they will lose their home, their job, and find themselves separated from family; that although they have a college or post-graduate degree, the only work they may be able to find without employ ment authorization is agricultural, construction, or janitorial employment. Law students learn that sometimes giving good legal advice means telling people they have no legal remedy. As hard as that is, in the field of immigration law, being honest and clear about what legal remedies exist means the person is less likely to be taken advantage of by the various scams that are perpetrated on immigrants. There are individuals posing as immigration consultants and there are attorneys who are willing to take thousands of dollars from immigrants in exchange for the promise of legal status or work authorization. Some of them are uninformed about changes in the law, while others are consciously defrauding the immigrant population. Santa Clara law students working on immigration cases learn to empower clients by giving them information, regardless of how discouraging the information may seem.

Courage takes another form for law students working with traumatized clients. It takes courage to ask people to recount the torture they suffered. It takes courage to walk with clients through their testimony of how their loved one physically and emotionally betrayed their trust. It takes courage to meticulously record how someone was tricked or forced into coming to the United States; used for forced labor or sex work; beaten, tortured, and threatened; scared and alone in a strange place among persons who buy and sell them like slaves. Working on these cases, the law students come face-to-face with the dark side of humanity. Yet, with much courage, patience, and support, the students can discover the light at the end of the tunnel and experience the beauty of humanity, the resilience, the hope, and the dreams of those who again find safety and a place to rebuild their lives.

CONCLUSION

Immigration law is a technically challenging area of law to practice. In addition, it provokes strong emotions—fear, hope, anger, joy, frustration, and satisfaction. Law students find that their time at the Law Center has not only taught them practical skills in an area of substantive law; it has taught them about working with people, about their own strengths and weaknesses, about service to community, and about the need to remain engaged in the formation of laws, not just the practice of law. It reinforces their own commitment to their chosen profession and to their future work in immigration law or some other area of social justice practice. It is this commitment that drew many law students to a Jesuit University, to Santa Clara University, and to the Katharine & George Alexander Community Law Center, and it is this commitment that offers a glimmer of hope in the darkness of the struggles that surround human migration.