There is so much fear out there right now. What’s going to happen with DACA? Will ICE come to my house and deport me if I lose my case? Why is it taking longer than 90 days to get my work card – is there something wrong? These are serious concerns and people should be paying attention.
But I don’t want to be consumed by bad news. While we will always fight and answer questions with the latest information available, I don’t want to lose sight of the approvals and the lives we are changing for the better on a regular basis.
We had a VAWA case approved a few weeks ago for a woman with an old order of deportation. With this approval and grant of deferred action, she can live without fear of a knock at her door. There’s still work to be done to get her a green card, but we are on the right path.
We had an Advance Parole request approved for a DACA recipient just a week before the announcement to stop approving cases like hers. Yet, because she approved before the announcement, she’ll be able to visit her sick father and when she returns, she’ll be able to start the process with her husband to become a lawful permanent resident.
We obtained a dependency order in juvenile court for a young client two weeks ago. With this, he can now apply for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status and a green card. The trajectory of his life is forever changed – the future is wide open to him, a future without the fear of violence that plagued him in his home country.
We move so fast from the good news to the bad news that we sometimes forget to savor those moments of success. And each victory is pretty sweet these days.
-Tracie