National Immigrant Justice Center

Opportunity for Interpreting for Asylum Cases

*attention fluent/native Spanish speakers*

Hello! My name is Natasha Reifenberg and I graduated ND in 2018. I am currently a Fulbright scholar in Chile researching gender-violence policy and worked on the asylum team at the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) in Chicago before my fellowship began in March of this year. NIJC is a NGO dedicated to blending direct legal services while advocating for broad-based systemic change to provide access to justice for all immigrants and is at the top of the game when it comes to immigrant rights advocacy, litigating and advocating at the federal level. Asylum seekers arrive at the United States after surviving threats, unimaginable violence, and persecution— often barely escaping death. They arrive with the humble hope of safety and peace for themselves and their family. NIJC serves those who most need legal support, as all clients must be at 200% or more of federal poverty guidelines. Since my sophomore year, I volunteered as an interpreter for asylum cases through NIJC and completely reoriented my professional aspirations and transformed me as a person.

I am reaching out because NIJC does a legal externship with the ND law school and the students need interpreters for client meetings and translators for many of the evidentiary documents. I usually worked as an interpreter for one case a semester, working closely with a team of law school students, getting to know the client very well. All of the clients I worked with were women from Central America with small children who had fled horrific domestic violence and other forms of gender-based violence. Not only did these women quickly become my personal heroes for their incredible strength and resilience, but also my time translating documents and talking to the law students exposed to me to the intricacies of asylum law. It is one thing to read about policy changes in the news and an entirely different one to experience them as consequential and often bleak realities for the lives of women and children escaping persecution.

I know many of you are interested in law, immigration policy, languages, and/or putting your time towards a cause greater than yourselves. If you are a fluent/native Spanish speaker I cannot recommend volunteering with the externship highly enough. Not only is it an incredibly worthwhile experience in and of itself, but if you dedicate time towards working with asylum cases it will be of great interest to future employers. During my interviews with the State Department and the United Nations Development Program, I was able to discuss my knowledge of country conditions of El Salvador and Honduras through my conversations with asylum seekers. I was offered internship positions by both to do research on gender and health related projects in the area, and I imagine my experiences with NIJC clients were instrumental. The personal statement for my fellowship proposal to study gender-based violence policy also centered in on a relationship I had formed with a client who had experienced jarring sexual violence by MS 13 gang members and how she had transformed the way I saw victimhood.

The time commitment can vary depending on your availability. You could commit to just spending an hour or two every couple of weeks to translate documents, or you could commit to interpreting in client meetings for two hours every week. I usually travelled to Goshen for client meetings every Friday since the work became so important to me (I wouldn’t have wanted to spend my class-less Friday mornings any other way), but I had friends who only interpreted in South Bend once every couple of weeks. I often felt depressed during the summer thinking about the trauma children and families were going through upon separation—how unforgiving and unnecessarily cruel our immigration practices had become—but it gave me strength to know I hadn’t just spent my undergraduate career talking and arguing about these issues, but spending a considerable amount of time helping a couple of brave asylum seekers in my own small way.

If you are interested in interpreting/translating, please email Lisa Koop <lkoop@heartlandalliance.org> Lisa is the associate director of legal services at NIJC and the professor for the externship. Also, if you have any questions about what interpreting involves or have any other questions, feel free to email me (nreifenb@alumni.nd.edu). If you are interested in Latin America, gender policy, and research fellowships more generally, I am always happy to discuss that as well.

If you don’t want to take my word for it, here are *unedited* testimonials from other ND students who volunteered as interpreters:

“NIJC gave me the opportunity to take a look into the lives of asylum seekers from various backgrounds. I was able to play a small role in the long legal and emotional journey that comes with seeking refuge in the US, all while drastically improving my Spanish language skills. This was easily the most humbling experience of my university career.”

--Natasha Cigarroa (Class of 2018)

“It was incredible to be able to partake in something that can have such a big impact on someone’s life. While it was incredibly sad to see some of these cases it also gives you hope that you can do something incredible with your time. “

--Sofia Daboub (class of 2018)

“NIJC taught me that conjugations and legal vocabulary were not the most important part of translation work. The most important part was that your empathy translated. That despite the unfamiliar legal process, a new cultural environment, and the uncertainty of it all you are the constant; there to walk beside the client to help make things just a little more comfortable by helping them metabolize the details of their immigration story through the language they know best.”

--Selena Ponio (class of 2018)

“Although it was very emotionally heavy, my experience interpreting for different cases of asylum made put in perspective what really happens in my neighboring countries. By giving it a name and face to the stories we hear of, it makes you realize that it is a reality, and that these people deserve a better life. Yes, it is difficult to hear the kind of situations that people have experienced that have left them so vulnerable, but sharing the hope that they and their loved ones can live in peace and security is an inexplicable feeling. One of the best parts of this work is to feel that you have given a feeling of confidence to someone at the level that this person can open up and talk about their life to be able to fight for a better future”

--Karina Chamorro (Class of 2018)

“Interpreting for NIJC is an exceptional opportunity. It changed my life. At the end, interpreting is more than a skill, its an opportunity to build a relationship.”

--Melissa Escoffery (Class of 2018)