Albany Med students providing asylum aid
At a time when asylum application denials in the U.S. are rising, students and physicians at Albany Medical College are volunteering their time and expertise to help those seeking to legally remain in the country by providing free medical and psychological evaluations.
Such evaluations, experts say, can provide stronger evidence for an asylum seeker’s case.
A student-run organization called the Capital District Asy
lum Collaborative has been administering the evaluations and affidavits since it began in 2015. The evaluations aren’t just for asylum seekers. Immigrants can use them in multiple humanitarian situations, such as batter y cases or for U-visa applications, which are for victims of crimes.
The Legal Project, an Albanybased nonprofit that helps people access protections of the law, will refer their clients to the group, where physicians will run the evaluations and students work as scribes documenting the process.
The group has served people from 19 different nations, but most are from the Central American countries of Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala.
All of the group’s clients with closed cases — a total of eight — have received legal status. There are 23 other cases pending, however, it can sometimes take years for a case to get through immigration court.
The U.S. denied about 65 percent of asylum applications in 2018, the highest percentage in the last 18 years, according to data from TRAC Immigration, a nonpartisan organization based at Syracuse University.
Although, the statistics aren’t in an asylum seeker’s favor, the evaluations can still be helpful, according to Natalie BirchHiggins, director of immigration services at the Legal Project.
“This is a very important added level of evidence that we can include,” Birch-higgins said. “It’s even more effective now and even more needed because the immigration (process) is not as understanding.”
Prior to the Albany Medical College program, Birch-higgins said, the Legal Project’s clients didn’t have free access to such evaluations. As far as she is aware, CDAC is the only group providing the service in the Capital Region.
Dr. Victoria Balkoski, chair of the department of psychiatr y and a faculty adviser at the medical school, said working with asylees can be different than working with other clients. Evaluations may take longer and there may be potential for retraumatizing people.
“It ’s dif ficult for people to go through and to tell their stor y again,” Balkoski said. “They can be ver y emotional and it ’s hard on them. It ’s hard to hear. A lot of these people have suffered a great deal.”
Bill Calawerts, a medical student on the CDAC leadership board, said he can attest to the high level of emotion.
“It ’s ver y humbling because they have told us things they may not have told many people in their lives,” Calawerts said.
He said he and his CDAC peers found themselves wishing they could do more.
“It ’s difficult because as providers we’re ... we want to be able to help these people, but during the evaluations our job is to be an objective obser ver,” Calawerts said.
That ’s why they have launched a continuing care program, which will work to set up their clients with insurance and connect them with a housing program. Calawerts said the program is still in the early stages.
“It feels good that we’re helping with their applications, but we wanted to take it a step further,” Calawerts said, noting it all started with the evaluations. “We’ve expanded in ways we didn’t believe were possible. It ’s been a good journey.”