Name: Dounya Ramadan
Class Year: 2022
Major: Political Science
Hometown: Wilmington, Del.
Internship Organization: Nationalities Service Center
Job Title: Green Card Program Intern
Location: Philadelphia, Pa.
Award: Nancy N. Grape Summer Internship Fund
What’s happening at your internship?
After one year of residence in the U.S., refugees who were resettled in Philadelphia by Nationalities Service Center (NSC) have the option of receiving assistance through NSC’s Pathways to Permanency green card program to adjust their status to permanent resident (green card holder), as well as apply for family reunification if they qualify. As a green card program intern at NSC this summer, I am scheduling beginning legal consultation appointments for our refugee clients who are participating in the program with NSC’s legal team, medical appointments, helping fill out I-693 forms for those appointments, and collecting the necessary documents from clients for their applications to send to their attorneys. I provide direct client support/troubleshoot any issues that arise throughout the entire green card application process. In addition to acting as a liaison between clients and their pro-bono attorneys, I also help determine if clients qualify to apply for family reunification (P-3) and help prepare their P-3 applications for free if they qualify while they wait to hear back from USCIS about their green cards. Throughout the summer, I have also been doing check-in calls with clients who applied with our previous pro-bono clinics through our program in 2020, to see whether they have heard back from USCIS about their green card application status. If clients have not heard back, I communicate this information to their attorneys and ask their attorneys to contact USCIS to inquire about their application submissions.
Why did you apply for this internship?
I applied for this internship because I have always been/always will be a passionate advocate for immigrant rights. I wanted to dedicate my time to serving/supporting our local refugee population, help provide Arabic interpretation for Arabic speaking clients (as an Arabic speaker) and provide even greater support wherever necessary. Furthermore, as a political science major, immigration issues have always been of utmost importance to me/at the forefront of my work/studies at BMC. To be a better advocate, I needed to learn more about the kind of role immigrant/refugee NGOs play within this oppressive global immigration system, as well as the day-to-day document-based/legal bureaucratic hurdles that greet asylum seekers and refugees when they arrive in their host country (in this case, the U.S.). I knew this internship would supply me with more of this knowledge as well.
Was there anything special about how you found this internship?
I first learned about NSC through BMC’s Community-Based Work-Study program (CBWS) since they were one of the many organizations BMC’s CBWS program was partnered with for spring 2020. So, I first applied to be a refugee resettlement intern at NSC in January 2020 through Â鶹AV’s CBWS program. After receiving this internship and working at NSC during the 2020 spring semester, I asked my NSC supervisor if there was an opportunity to delve deeper into the legal side of these immigration processes if I were to extend my internship throughout the summer, and she was happy to offer me an intern position on the new green card program team. Therefore, as a 2020 Arthur Liman Fellow and summer funding recipient, my internship evolved into a combined green card program/refugee resettlement internship. Then, I became a volunteer and applied for summer funding again so I could have the opportunity to continue my internship with NSC at a greater capacity and further expand/explore more arenas in the legal realm. My journey with NSC really started with CBWS at BMC, and I am forever grateful for it!
What has been the biggest challenge you have faced at your internship?
The biggest challenge I have faced at my internship was the fact that I found myself wanting to do more to help clients in certain legal situations, but not having the credentials to do so without a law degree (an example: some state agencies are ill-informed about U.S. refugee law and they will only listen if clients present a letter from an attorney or an attorney calls on behalf of a client in those situations). Nonetheless, in these moments, I realized my superpower was to persistently communicate with/pester their busy attorneys to get them to help our clients with these situations immediately.
Visit the Summer Internship Stories page to read more about student internship experiences.