Legal Services: How It Works & What to Expect

By Victoria Neilson on 04/23/2010 @ 12:09 PM

Tags: Legal Aid

Every day, Immigration Equality receives calls and emails from binational couples, asylum seekers, detainees and others who turn to our legal team for free, confidential legal counsel. Each year, we receive thousands of such inquiries . . . all fielded by a legal staff of just four people. In recent days, we have received questions and concerns regarding how legal inquiries are handled by our staff, and want to shed some light on that process.

It’s important to know that, when you reach out to Immigration Equality for legal help, your inquiry is answered in relation to the urgency of your situation. We prioritize, for example, binational couples who are facing immediate separation and deportation; detainees who are already in detention and require immediate legal representation; and asylum seekers whose claims are particularly time-sensitive because of filing deadline issues. Our mission – when we were founded in 1994 and unchanged today – is to help binational couples, asylum seekers and those impacted by HIV immigration discrimination.

Other calls and emails are answered as quickly as possible, but given our staffing limitations this may take several days. Because our services are free, we never prioritize anyone based on their ability to pay. Because our resources are limited, we always respond to the most urgent requests first.

If you have a legal emergency – such as immediate deportation, current detention, etc. – please call our legal team, if at all possible. We accept collect calls from detention facilities. Otherwise, the quickest way to ensure a response to your inquiry is via our online contact form. Each message is reviewed by a member of our legal team, and we respond as quickly as possible.

Keep in mind that we are a small legal aid team, offering free legal counsel to a very large community of LGBT immigrants and their American family members. We do our best to be as responsive as possible, and we need everyone’s patience as we work to stop imminent deportations . . . help individuals who are detained . . . and win safe haven for asylum seekers who, because of legal requirements, have especially time-sensitive needs.