Tag: immigration

On any given day, Serene Hawasli Kashlan is responding to the legal needs of some 88 clients. They represent more than 36 different countries, she says, but they all share a common goal, to make the United States their permanent home. As managing asylum attorney at the Georgia Asylum and Immigration Network (GAIN), she’s among a relatively small group of metro Atlanta professionals providing a service that’s in high demand: pro bono representation for those who are seeking asylum.

The Emory Farmworker Project exists to give medical care to approximately 2,500 itinerant farmworkers a year in South Georgia, who tend the fruits and vegetables we eat. Many of the workers are immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, or Haiti. Every June and October, Emory students, faculty, clinicians, interpreters, and volunteers (about 350 total in the summer and 120 in the fall) travel to the area, setting up and taking down entire clinics twice a day as they move from farm to farm.

In October 2011, activists founded an underground school in response to policies that made it harder for undocumented students to go to college in Georgia. That stopgap—and those policies—have now been in place for a decade.

Daniela Rodriguez organized the Savannah Undocumented Youth Alliance has twice been named one of the 50 Most Influential Latinos in Georgia. Helen Kim Ho founded the Southeast’s first Asian American civil rights nonprofit, now known as Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Atlanta.

"The lasting memory I’ll have of him is how much he made me and my community feel seen and known, especially during a time when we were the most in need of help," writes Asian Americans Advancing Justice—Atlanta founder Helen Kim Ho.

Hundreds of immigration advocates gathered at Plaza Fiesta on stormy Friday evening as part of the national Lights for Liberty event protesting the Trump administration’s treatment of immigrants.

The young leader of Clarkston, Georgia, which has been called the most diverse square mile in America, declared today he’s running for U.S. Senate.

"It is vital to the well-being and the rights of all individuals currently detained at immigration centers across the United States that the U.S. government be held accountable for these abhorrent conditions." Project South legal and advocacy director Azadeh Shahshahani and University of Pennsylvania law students Alicia Harte and Olivia Daniels penned this commentary on the state of conditions at two of Georgia's immigration detention centers.

The news that 21 Savage had been detained by ICE on February 3 in many ways overshadowed the Super Bowl that was taking place just miles away from where the rapper was arrested. Here's an overview of everything that's happened in the case since then.

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy allows renewable two-year respite from deportation for undocumented immigrants who entered the United States before they turned 16. Roughly 21,000 of them are in Georgia. Here, six metro Atlanta DACA recipients discuss their dreams, setbacks, achievements, survival, and what it’s been like to skirt federal and state laws in pursuit of better lives in America.