Empowering Immigrants

Hi, my name is Sasha Morgan (she/her). I am a junior English major and Spanish minor from Leavenworth, Washington. This summer I am interning at Hand in Hand Immigration Services in Wenatchee, Washington. Hand in Hand is a non-profit that helps green card holders and DACA recipients renew their status or pursue U.S. citizenship.

A typical work week for me starts mid-day Monday, with set up for the scheduled appointments and walk-ins we will see that day. Throughout the day I help prepare for meetings with clients, log any mail we receive regarding cases, perform client intakes, and walk clients through paperwork we are filing on their behalf. On Tuesdays, I meet with individual clients at a local library to help them study for their citizenship exams and improve their English to make the reading and writing portions of the test feel less daunting. Later, I help lead a citizenship study group. These sessions are structured around teaching a specific subset of questions each week. On Wednesdays, the office is open again, so my days are a lot like Mondays and include a lot of time spent interacting with clients and screening them for citizenship eligibility or making copies of documents they’ve been asked to bring in. Since the office is closed on Thursdays, there are often info sessions scheduled on them. One week I helped run one in Moses Lake, from which I later got to do an official intake for a new client. My favorite part of the work is getting to see a client's case move along in real-time, and the relief it brings people to have their questions answered.

Since starting this internship, I have improved my Spanish by interacting with clients who speak limited English and listening to the other staff at Hand in Hand talk to each other in Spanish. I’ve found it really helpful to practice with people with a variety of different Spanish accents and of different ages. The vocabulary I am learning is also very different from what I get to practice in academia since a lot of it is immigration-specific or idioms.

I have also gotten very fast at identifying citizenship eligibility and the documents needed to fill out specific immigration forms. Because I help proofread applications, I have seen many of the exceptions and ways people might have a path to citizenship despite that not initially appearing to be the case.

This internship helps me work toward my long-term goal of becoming an immigration attorney, as many clients approach Hand in Hand either after speaking with an attorney or as an alternative thereto. I am learning a lot about what other jobs centered on immigration do, which will make me a better coworker to people in similar positions at my future jobs. My role with paperwork also worked on by attorneys gives me direct career preparation and will save me time others might have to spend learning how best to serve clients.