incomplete asylum application
[Alt text: A flyer on a door that says "PRO SE MEANS: ON YOUR OWN"]
Yesterday, I spent about 8 hours at a Pro Se Asylum Workshop, working on an application for political asylum for one of two brothers who escaped Afghanistan when Kabul fell to the Taliban last August.
What follows is mostly a brain dump, because I'm afraid I will forget so many of the details unless I write them down.
Backstory: A couple times a month I hang out at a temporary shelter for migrants (the people the Texas governor is rounding up and putting on buses to DC), organizing donations and restocking their clothing pantries. At one shift, another volunteer asked what I did for a living, and when she heard that I could write and edit, she forwarded me an email she'd received from Lutheran Social Services. They needed people to "write narratives" for Afghan refugees. It sounded way more urgent than folding used pants, so I signed up.
The setting: A basketball court inside a Mormon temple. No shit. Lutherans helping Afghans on a Mormon basketball court. I have so many questions: Wait, Mormons play basketball??? Were the Mormons nice enough to donate their space for this, or did the Lutherans have to pay them? Were we all going to Mormon hell because there were cans of full-caffeine Coke in the room?
The court was set up like a wedding reception, with large round tables and metal folding chairs. Lots of power strips. Costco refreshments and huge vats of tea in the back. Up front, 2 microphones. One for the person telling us in English what we needed to know or do, one for the translators — suave, suited Afghan men who took turns because I guess this work is tiring. This event was for the subset of Afghans who speak Dari, not Pashto.
There are two parts to the asylum application: The application itself (which is gigantic) and a separate document where the applicant can go into detail about the persecution they experienced at home, or will experience if they get sent back. We spent most of the day working on the latter. All these documents are stored on a USB drive that the client keeps.
That document had been pre-populated with almost a hundred questions, like "If I return to Afghanistan, the Taliban will know because _______." My job was to have my client answer all the questions, and then write his story in a compelling way for the asylum officer who will eventually read it.
It took a few hours for the story to come together: Two brothers (I was working with the older one, the woman next to me was working with the younger one), who are members of an Afghan ethnic minority. Their "tribe" and their entire neighborhood is known for being anti-Taliban. Their parents run or ran some kind of store. A couple years ago, before the Taliban took power, there was a suicide bombing on their street. The target was a member of Parliament. Their father sustained major damage to his ears. The shop was destroyed. They have a sister who is married to an American. So there's already a target on their backs. Apparently the Taliban considers anyone who has any relationship with Americans to be a "slave" who must be punished, and that includes anyone who leaves the country with American help. There are neighborhood spies who will rat people out, presumably in the hopes of saving their own lives. Last August, their sister got an email from the U.S. saying GTFO right now. But a grown woman can't go anywhere without a male chaperone, so her brothers escorted her to the airport in the middle of all that chaos, a Marine waved them in, and they got on a plane. (I am making it sound much easier than it was.) Their first stop was Qatar. I have since learned that Qatar stepped up last August and sent its planes to pick up 100,000+ people leaving. Then a military base in the U.S. And finally to their brother in-law's house.
We didn't have assigned translators at our table, but luckily one of the other volunteers was an Afghan American who spoke Dari, so he helped me out. Google Translate was also a lifeline, and it was kind of fun to watch my left-to-right English questions transform into right-to-left Persian characters in real time.
The work was slow and frustrating, because the Lutherans wouldn't or couldn't give us enough time to talk and translate and write before moving on to the next set of questions. They were becoming visibly annoyed at all of us talking while they were talking, and every few minutes they would clap like this: CLAP. CLAP. CLAP-CLAP-CLAP and we would have to clap back in the same pattern to indicate that yes, we were listening.
Because these were two brothers, I was worried their stories wouldn't match, so I spent most of the lunch break (they brought in Afghan food) comparing notes with the other volunteer.
Mid-afternoon, we went back to the actual online application. There was a section called "evidence." This is where you upload photos of, say, a murdered relative, or a news story that corroborates your experiences, or whatever proof you have of persecution. The Lutherans had preloaded the USB drives with 28 files — news stories and government reports — about how and why the Taliban is bad. Which, you'd think a U.S. government asylum officer would already know. Anyway, we were told to go ahead and upload all of them at once.
Imagine 45 volunteers, each trying to upload like 10GB of files, at the same time, on one internet connection. Or imagine trying to feed a basketball to a snake. Total shitshow.
Sometime around 5 or 5:30, they had all the volunteers stand up to be acknowledged. They told us to save our work on the thumb drives, give them back to the clients, and we were free to go.
I was like, I'm sorry, what? WE ARE NOT EVEN CLOSE TO BEING DONE HERE. My shit is still uploading, I still need to fill in some story holes, there are questions I haven't asked because you moved on too fast, I haven't had a chance to re-read what I wrote, I need at least two more days with this kid and a translator to really do this right.
And that's just the beginning. Once the application gets submitted (he has another 10 months), there's an interview, which requires coaching and practice.
Fuck.
I emailed the Afghans my contact info and told him and his brother to call or text me and we'll keep going. Shook their hands and left.
"Pro se" means "on your own." If this kid is really on his own with the rest, I'm worried. The clients are all in a WhatsApp group chat thing. I hope the Lutherans are in there too to help them with the next steps.
So I see your "pro se" and raise you a "non satis temporis." Not enough time.
Fingers crossed I get to finish what I started. In the meantime, re-upping this visual as a reminder to myself:
[Alt text: A diagram of things that are out of my control (the past, the future, the actions of others, the opinions of others, what happens around me, what other people think of me, the outcome of my efforts, and how others take care of themselves) and things that are in my control (my boundaries, my thoughts & actions, the goals I set, what I give my energy to, how I speak to myself, and how I handle challenges.]
Links
"We’ve been conditioned to think there’s only room for a select few so we must be the best — to see others as competition instead of companions — to dismiss our gifts if they don’t meet some externally-based standard — to view outcome as more important than the process of creating itself. We’ve been conditioned to think in terms of productivity and winning, of constant growth and surpassing, of individual success and social status. It’s no wonder we constantly question what we’re creating, sharing, and doing." (Substack)
Why do I only appreciate my health after I’ve been sick? (Atlantic) I saw this article right after I had a Covid scare this week and remembered how often I take my health for granted.
Being stuck on the streets of San Francisco in a driverless car is one of my nightmares. (NYT)
Google v. Apple maps. Apple wins. (Tech Radar) Though they both suck outside the Bay Area. Example: Telling me to do shit like MAKE A U-TURN on the Van Wyck. Or leading me into a residential neighborhood a mile from the ocean and telling me that I have arrived at my destination, which is a LIGHTHOUSE. (Tech Radar)
DC can't spell Virginia. (Washingtonian)
An app that is supposed to help with jetlag. (Timeshifter)
A Reddit thread about how easy it is to identify Americans. (Digg)