February 2025

Creating Local Solutions to National Problems

View this email in your browser VAAP NEWSLETTER February 2025 Vermont Asylum Assistance Project (VAAP) is a legal services and technical assistance organization that exists to mentor no-cost and low-cost immigration lawyers and legal workers; educate and serve VT immigrants and community members; coordinate maximal impact across sectors and governments; and advocate to protect immigrants’ rights. FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Click here to watch a January 21 video message from VAAP. Watch the update Greetings, friends of VAAP. We hope you are hanging in there, and we thank you for your continuing partnership. To our client communities: We recognize how grossly insufficient Vermont's current supply of legal services is compared with communities' ever-growing needs. For that reason, we are balancing direct services with systems advocacy, so we can generate more local resources and legal protections for the benefit of ALL Vermont immigrants, not just the lucky few we can represent directly.  To our volunteers and financial contributors: We are overwhelmed with gratitude for your outpouring of support and explosive interest to get involved. VAAP will resume coordinating volunteer direct services this month, in balance with our critical efforts to diversify funding sources and survive federal divestment.  To our community partners: We are so grateful for your collaboration during this overwhelming time. Our sectors are navigating this period on "hard mode" given Vermont's lack of a nonprofit coordinating body, like Upstate NY's Immigrant Advocates Response Collaborative (I-ARC) or the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA). The challenges we are facing coordinating statewide across subpopulations is exacerbated by Vermont's lack of a state-based clearinghouse office enjoyed by about half the states, like MA's State Office for Refugees and Immigrants and NY's and ME's State Offices for New Americans. We are eager to work with you to establish statewide coordinating mechanisms that foster solidarity across subpopulations. To our leaders: We echo national partners' advice to exercise caution and verify information before sharing it forward. We also urge you to refrain from prematurely complying with evolving policy directives until agencies have established clear implementation plans. Many emerging policies are blatantly unlawful and likely to be overturned in court, or at least to face prolonged legal challenges. We need your leadership in centering rule of law and minimizing harm to communities. We pack a LOT of information into this newsletter, including self-help resources, recordings, FAQs, legislative analysis, events of interest, and more. We encourage everyone to continue familiarizing yourselves with VAAP's multilingual, multimedia resources and spread the word so impacted community members can do the same. Remember: we've been here before and we know how to fight, and we'll get through this. Read on! Thanks for all you do, Jill Martin Diaz, Esq. SUPPORT OUR WORK Every contribution, of any amount, keeps us focused on immigration lawyering at this pivotal moment in Vermont's history. We're a small staff of direct legal service providers working to meet ever-increasing demands without the help of administrative support. Join the fight against anti-immigrant censorship and austerity and donate to VAAP today. Donate to VAAP Besides donating, learn about VAAP's online resources and events so you can help others to help themselves. Check your sources before sharing information, and say no to doom-scrolling. Trust us to share reliable information as it becomes available. Volunteer with patience for slow response times and openness to new technology and workflows. Report an ICE Arrest Finally, help VAAP fight the harmful effects of misinformation. Yes, ICE activities are up in VT, but let's be clear about what they are so people aren't excessively discouraged from taking their kids to school, accessing healthcare, and generally participating in public life. We work to verify reported events before disclosing them on our website and with the media. Report what you see here and review our data analysis here.  FROM OUR WEBSITE Absent a state-based Office of New Americans equivalent to serve as Vermont's legal information clearinghouse, VAAP is growing the scope, content, and accessibility of our educational website, available in English, Spanish, French, Pashto, Haitian Creole, and Portuguese. Please join us in encouraging folks to visit our website as a first step for the best available immigration legal information at any given time: www.vaapvt.org. Get oriented This month, VAAP partnered with Community Asylum Seekers Project to present Know Your Rights to 150+ in Brattleboro. VAAP joined Congressperson Balint, Vermont Afghan Alliance, the Vermont State Refugee Office, and the Vermont Attorney General's Office for a Know Your Immigration Rights press conference. VAAP also joined Treasurer Pieciak, the Vermont Chamber of Commerce, Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility, and partners for an immigration rights and obligations webinar to a live audience of 1000 and an additional 800 YouTube viewers. VAAP delivered Continuing Legal Education (CLE) to 150+ at Vermont Bar Association's Mid-Winter Thaw Conference in Montreal. VAAP a launched service learning Working With Refugees course with 28 Bachelor of Social Work students at the UVM College of Education and Social Sciences. Read our blog In the State House, VAAP joined Vermont Judiciary Access to Justice Coalition colleagues in testifying before Senate Judiciary on the unmet civil legal assistance needs of low-income Vermonters. VAAP also joined partners in supporting a draft Senate Bill (long form forthcoming) to study the need for and create an Office of New Americans equivalent for Vermont. VAAP also signed on to Migrant Justice's draft House Bill (long form forthcoming) to expand fair housing protections for Vermont immigrants. VAAP also joined Vermont Queer Legal Professionals in presenting immigration legal orientation to Burlington's Worth Fighting For community organizers.  VAAP also joined Association of Africans Living in VT at Vermont Afghan Alliance to present Know Your Immigration Rights to VAA's client community. Follow VT bills VAAP continued collating local reporting on immigration issues from January and February. VAAP's work was featured in several local stories: Northeast Public Radio featured VAAP's remarks during Balint's immigration press conference. So did Burlington Free Press. Vermont Public featured VAAP on Vermont's safe schools movement. New England Public Media, VT Digger, and WCAX all featured VAAP's ICE Tracker. NBC5 covered Winooski's leadership in sanctuary school policymaking with support from Education Justice Coalition of Vermont partners including VAAP NBC5 also interviewed VAAP to clarify immigrant tenants' Fourth Amendment rights with ICE in and around their rental homes. VAAP also continued collate immigration law and policy updates and share analysis on key developments, including:  Local advocacy opportunities State advocacy opportunities Federal advocacy opportunities Family emergency planning Protecting immigrant youth Sanctuary schools Immigration and Work Temporary status What happens after applying for asylum Know Your Responsibilities in VT Expanded educational programming for lawyers and service providers Ethics and nonprofit compliance in uncertain times Myth-busting misinformation and disinformation STATE HOUSE 2025 Last week, VAAP had the pleasure of sharing subject matter expertise with lawmakers alongside Vermont Human Rights Commission executive director Big Hartmann. Vermont is fortunate to be represented by leaders who are open to exploring creative local solutions to intractable federal problems. VAAP is following the progress of several initiatives this legislative session: Senate Judiciary Committee's access to justice working group Draft Office of New Americans (ONA) equivalent study bill Draft fair housing for immigrants bill Draft State Grant Reform bill H.34 expanding state workforce development H.38 increasing Vermont Human Rights Commission staffing H.53 mandating inclusive schools policies S.44 and H.81 creating legislative oversight of Vermont agreements with immigration agencies S.1 expanding Medicaid to all residents S.2 establishing a Vermont Office of Health Equity S.8 expanding Dr. Dynasaur Medicaid for pregnant people up to 26 Anyone can contact your representatives to express support for these initiatives or offer testimony. Even a one sentence email does the trick! Contact your rep REQUEST OUR HELP We are now offering attorney-for-a-day legal help clinics in your communities statewide. To make these clinics successful, we kindly ask partners with preexisting relationships with potential clients to share the clinic workload. We hope partners will coordinate client attendance and meeting space, while VAAP handles legal and language access volunteers and supervision. Learn more. We are introducing a fee-for-service limitation around our community education work. VAAP Know Your Rights (KYR) now costs a $500 flat fee. This way, we can continue meeting VT's growing legal information needs, especially rurally, while balancing the ethical and fiscal demands responsibilities of delivering nonprofit legal services. Learn more. Get in touch ACCESS MENTORSHIP Fellow service providers: please hold your questions and join VAAP and a community of practitioners at our recurring virtual meetings for legal advocates and lay service providers. This month's legal case rounds are on 2/20 at noon and 2/25 at 9am. This month's community Q&A discussions are on 2/18 at 9am and 2/27 at noon. The National Immigration Project cites engagement with communities of practice as the number one way we can best support our clients and each other in the uncertainty ahead! Events calendar Community partners interested in mobilizing Rapid Response teams: The National Immigration Law Center (NILC) and the Tennessee Immigration and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC) have launched a seven-part webinar training series on workplace raids resistance and response. Trainings are covering all facets of raids response from a power-building perspective and will be led by speakers with on-the-ground experience responding to workplace raids, including our experience responding to the 2018 raid at TN's Southeastern Provision meatpacking plant. FROM OUR TEAM Despite the unprecedented times we find ourselves working in, the VAAP staff and board have many milestones to celebrate this month: Staff secured initial employment authorization documents (EADs) or "work permit" cards to several VAAP clients. Staff also secured two clients with VAAP's first "green cards" or lawful permanent residence (LPR) documents! Staff also helped several youth in removal proceedings to get their next immigration hearings vacated pending resolution of their Special Immigrant Juvenile petitions in Vermont courts. Staff welcomed spring intern Eliza Gebb UVM '25 and spring volunteers Maggie Otto UVM '25 and Jacob Griffin UVM '25 to our team.  Staff also welcomed 14 history students and 28 social work students from UVM's spring service learning courses to help us expand our website and prepare country conditions evidence packets for VAAP asylum seekers. Staff also congratulated summer intern Phebe Lowry UVM '27 who was accepted into the VT Folklife Center's Community Fellows Program 2025, where she will be trained to conduct ethnographic research with VAAP's client communities in service of VAAP's public education and resource generation work.  The Board also interviewed five incredible candidates for our current vacancies.  We also continued to deepen our partnership with the Immigrant Justice Corps (IJC). IJC awarded VAAP its first ever Katzman Fellow in Catalino Londono VLGS '25 who joins the VAAP team for two years this fall. IJC is also featuring VAAP director Jill Martin Diaz as a panelist for its inaugural National Alumni Convening to which a national network of eleven classes of fellows are invited "to reconnect and feel the power of our community in defending immigrants." Remember: we've been here before and we know how to fight, and we'll get through this. Sending so much care and gratitude to all our client communities, partners, and allies.  Donate to VAAP   Vermont Asylum Assistance Project  P.O. Box 814, Elmwood Ave, Burlington, VT 05402 802-999-5654 ‖ info@vaapvt.org ‖ www.vaapvt.org Copyright © 2023, Vermont Asylum Assistance Project, All rights reserved. Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.