Washington University in St. Louis law school’s alumni are funding an optional clinic students can attend for nearly 21 hours a week to learn how to represent non-citizens in immigration cases.
The school introduced the immigration clinic for the fall 2018 semester. Students meet with clients in the St. Louis area, prepare arguments and conduct research while under the guidance of a professor, according to the Immigration Clinic description.
Students will work with clients on topics related to “naturalization, adjustment of status, family-reunification, obtaining employment benefits, deportation defense, and petitions for asylum,” the description says. There is also a two-hour weekly seminar and weekly supervised meetings for students.
The clinic would provide free legal counseling to non-citizens and is “the newest of 18 clinics offered to law students” at the university, according to Student Life Monday. The university was able to provide the program by matching the funding of one law school alumnus’s contributions.
“The interest in having a clinic has been there for a number of years, but I would say that it began in earnest about a year and a half ago when we finally felt like we had a person who was going to fund it, so we were able to put it all together,” Associate Dean of Clinical Education Robert Kuehn told Student Life. (RELATED: Foreign Nationals Who Were Indicted For Illegally Voting Still On North Carolina’s Voter Rolls)
St. Louis county, where the university is located, had 359 cases with legal representation out of the 481 pending immigration-related cases, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) data.
Law professor Katie Meyers will be in charge of the 10 students enrolled in the clinic for the semester. Meyers previously worked at the Migrant and Immigrant Community Action Project (MICA) in St. Louis.
MICA is a non-profit that provides low-cost immigration services and accepts clients in St. Louis, parts of Missouri and parts of Illinois, according to its website.
Washington University did not immediately respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.