Human Rights Project Asylum Initiative Assists Migrants on their Path to Citizenship
Human Rights Project volunteers assist migrants at an asylum clinic held in Yonkers in April.
I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Danielle Riou, educator and Associate Director of Bard’s Human Rights Project. The Human Rights Project (HRP), which Riou has co-led for 16 years, is a research and advocacy center that engages with local and global communities to teach and foster discussions about human rights. Recently, Bard HRP has partnered with NeighborsLink, an organization based in upstate New York that provides empowering services to immigrants. With Riou’s leadership, the Human Rights Project and NeighborsLink created the Bard HRP Asylum Initiative, a program that allows Bard students to directly support migrants through volunteer work.
Bard students were an essential part of the Asylum Initiative from the very beginning. In the summer of 2023, as the migrant crisis began to worsen, Riou gathered a few students and began driving to Poughkeepsie to help legal service providers. This led to a partnership with NeighborsLink to help asylum-seekers in the Hudson Valley. NeighborsLink, an organization dedicated to educating, empowering, and employing asylum seekers, has a strong legal services and advocacy program, which engages with HRP volunteers.
“This project emerged out of our desire to engage in a meaningful way,” Riou says. “The legal services side of things is complicated, and scary sometimes. So we thought that may be a good space for us to help develop a kind of volunteer system, to try and make it less scary for people who want to help. We wanted to demystify the asylum-seeking process.”
The project launched in September of 2023 and has had a strong impact on the NeighborsLink immigration law services; this is achieved through asylum-seeking clinics where student volunteers help fill out asylum applications and provide support for migrants. Riou says, “A volunteer can be in a room with somebody to be an interpreter, to have a conversation with that person, to facilitate an applicant's understanding of what the asylum form is. People appreciate having someone there with whom they can talk in a language that they feel a lot more comfortable or confident in.”
The asylum-seeking clinics are held in hotels that are housing migrants, and consultations can also be done over the phone. The Asylum Initiative team has visited hotels in Yonkers, Newburgh, and Poughkeepsie, where immigrants are temporarily living, working with them out of conference rooms and basements to fill out individual asylum applications. “We spend the entire day there,” Riou says, “If you’re doing well, you can see two or three applicants a day.” At the clinics, there are snacks, food, and play areas for children while parents fill out the asylum application. The clinic serves more than a practical purpose; it also works as a community-building event and educational experience.
Riou emphasizes that the immigration process is much more complicated and nuanced than many understand. She says, “The asylum application is a 12-page form. Our group of volunteers can do the tedious first half of the form; even the first half takes three to four hours of work, which we are capable of doing because we’ve undergone a large amount of training.”
By filling out asylum applications, student volunteers play a pivotal role in the process of helping migrants on their path to citizenship, but they are also essential in mitigating the workload of the NeighborsLink immigration law team. “We want to enable the lawyers and paralegals at NeighborsLink to spend more of their time practicing immigration law for these asylum-seekers,” Danielle states.
Beyond their deep interest in helping, student volunteers also share the language, cultural, and intellectual capacities needed to be of service to migrants, says Riou. “And just having the time and willingness to be part of this partnership is a powerful thing,” she adds.
“There’s an immense amount of intelligence in the student group; ranges of experiences, knowledge, and language, and most importantly, empathy and care for another person. I feel like we can deploy our group to make a big difference,” she says.
The Asylum Initiative is a labor of love for the volunteers involved; it brings together students from different backgrounds and disciplines to work towards a common goal – helping asylum seekers directly. Student volunteers are not only doing the essential work of completing asylum paperwork, but also providing a space for asylum seekers to be seen and heard.
The Annandale Advocate thanks Danielle Riou for the wonderful interview. If you are interested in getting involved with the Asylum Initiative, reach out to the Human Rights Project at [email protected].
Post Date: 05-03-2024