L4GG Applauds TPS Designation for Afghanistan

Rapid Response Advocacy Organization Lawyers for Good Government Supports TPS for Afghan Refugees

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has designated Afghanistan for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 18 months, securing critical protections for over 76,000 Afghan nationals currently living in the U.S.

Lawyers for Good Government (L4GG) supports Sec. Mayorkas’ decision to designate Afghanistan as eligible for TPS. In times of crisis, L4GG has mobilized its network of thousands of legal professionals, activists and supporters to provide legal aid to individuals in need, most recently through a pro bono remote legal clinic specifically for Afghan refugees, held this February. The clinic provided assistance to almost 100 Sacramento, California-based Afghan refugees, helping them with asylum and adjustment of status applications. 

The 18-month TPS designation provides the right for Afghan nationals to live and work in the United States for a temporary period. Many of the Afghans risked their lives by working with the U.S. military in Afghanistan and were evacuated with their families to the U.S. after the Afghan government fell last August. 

Mika Fernandez, L4GG’s Vice President of Policy and Strategic Engagement said: 

“We are thrilled that Afghan families now have access to critical protections to live and work in the U.S. through Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Many of these families risked their lives to help the U.S. in Afghanistan, and would be in particular danger if they returned to their home country. As an organization that has consistently been on the frontlines of support for immigrants and refugees, L4GG applauds Sec. Mayorkas’ decision, and believes that all families seeking safety should have the ability to find stability and pursue the next chapter in their lives.”

L4GG is also currently building out a national pro bono clinic to help Ukrainian nationals apply for and secure TPS, in light of the recent designation of Ukraine for TPS on March 3, 2022. For more information, click here.

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Lawyers for Good Government (L4GG) coordinates large scale pro bono programs and issue advocacy efforts to protect human rights and ensure equal justice under the law, and has a network of 125,000+ lawyers to assist in its efforts.

Helping Afghan Refugees, Fighting for Clean Drinking Water, & More

In times of crisis, L4GG mobilizes quickly, such as with the pro bono project we’re currently building to help Ukrainian nationals in the U.S. apply for Temporary Protected Status (TPS). But that doesn’t mean our existing work stops. 

Here’s a quick update on 4 of the ways L4GG is making a difference in our communities right now, with your support:

1. Helping Afghan Refugees

We recently completed a pilot project in partnership with the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) and Kirkland & Ellis to support Afghan families who arrived in the U.S. as refugees by airlift after America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. Through this program, nearly 100 Afghan refugees were screened and received legal assistance to complete and file applications for asylum and adjustment of status. Our pro bono volunteers were deeply moved by the experience, and told us that they were honored to serve this community. 

We are now exploring ways to replicate and build on the success of the pilot project, to help even more refugees secure immigration stability. 

2. Fighting for Clean Drinking Water in Michigan

L4GG’s Climate Change team recently launched a project in partnership with Great Lakes Environmental Law Center (GLELC) to establish a right to clean, affordable drinking water in Michigan. We’re focusing first on the community of Benton Harbor, Michigan, where the residents, 90% of whom are people of color, are forced to rely on bottled water as a result of lead contamination in their water supply over the past three years. 

Together with GLELC, we’re conducting FOIA research and document analysis to determine how and why the Benton Harbor Water Crisis took place, and help ensure the infrastructure is fixed as quickly as possible. Next, we’ll write a report and draft policy recommendations to help protect Benton Harbor and other disadvantaged communities in Michigan from lead water crises in the future.

You can read more about our climate change work, and our climate change director, Jillian Blanchard, here. 

3. Advancing Racial Justice through State Legislative Advocacy 

You may have seen our inaugural policy report on child farmworkers late last year. Since its launch, we’ve been hard at work with our coalition partners, developing policy recommendations for all 52 states, and working to improve labor employment protections for child farmworkers at the state level. L4GG’s Policy team, led by Vice President of Policy and Strategic Engagement, Mika Fernandez, is working to see this process recreated multiple times for issues with large support that impact marginalized communities, such as voting rights, criminal justice reform, and more. 

Read this interview with Mika to learn more about Lawyers for Racial Justice, and how L4GG hopes to plug into important state legislative battlegrounds in 2022. 

4. Defending the Rights of Asylum Seekers

We’re continuing our work both on the southern border and for asylum seekers throughout the country. On the border, our Project Corazon team continues to secure humanitarian parole for particularly vulnerable asylum seekers (i.e., those with medical or psychological conditions, pregnant women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and third-language speakers). And, through our Work Permit Pro Bono Program, we’re securing work permits for asylum seekers once they’ve entered the U.S so they can provide for themselves and their families while awaiting the outcome of their asylum cases. 

We recently received a very touching note from an asylum seeker we helped secure her work permit - here’s an excerpt: 

““Thanks to [Project Corazon’s] dedication to service and spirit of solidarity towards others, they achieved in less than a month what I had not achieved in 2 and a half years — SECURING MY SOCIAL AND WORK PERMIT. God bless you greatly.””

That’s just a small look at what we’re working on at the moment, and we’re so grateful to be doing this work with and for our L4GG community. Thank you for your continued support. 

Interview with Jillian Blanchard

“I’ve always been an outdoor enthusiast. I consider the outdoors my temple.” 

That’s one of things that drove Jillian Blanchard, the Director of Lawyers for Good Government’s (L4GG) Climate Change program, to cross the Pacific on a 35-foot sailboat with only her husband as fellow crew. 

“I’ve been thinking about the issue of climate change for a very long time,” says Jillian. “What I’ve found is that tiny changes make real impacts, especially at the state and local levels. It really is up to us. Sometimes, people view the environment as this existential thing removed from our daily lives, but it’s all around us. If we don’t care for it, it’ll impact everyone in ways most people can’t even imagine.”

Below, Jillian discusses her beginnings with L4GG, the work of the climate change program, and what’s on the horizon for 2022. 

““I’ve always been an outdoor enthusiast. I consider the outdoors my temple.” ”

— Jillian Blanchard, Director of Climate Change Program, Lawyers for Good Government

How did you start working with L4GG? 

On the night of the 2016 presidential election, I was one of the panicked attorneys who saw Traci Feit Love’s original Facebook post that began L4GG. I’ve worked in environmental law for 20 years, and in that moment I knew that we were all going to have to work very hard  to prevent a major regression on environmental issues.  I also recognized, as Traci did, that if the nation’s lawyers, in the form of this new organization called Lawyers for Good Government, focused on climate change, we could make a real impact. 

My immediate reaction to the election and knowing that Trump would pull us out of the Paris Accord was ‘it’s all up to us now.’ Without the federal government’s support of the Paris Accord, I knew that the only way we could meet, and then beat, the terms of the Paris Accord was at the state and local levels. That’s why the day after Trump announced the country’s withdrawal from the Paris Accord, I reached out to Traci and pitched her on an initial sketch for a climate change program that could help all 50 states to meet and then beat the Paris Accord.  

Traci was immediately on board, and I began in earnest. I reached out to the major players making a difference in the climate change space and colleagues from my years of practice, like the Sierra Club and Bloomberg Philanthropies, and  asked them how an army of lawyers could enhance their existing climate work? 

I was told that cities and states were making verbal commitments to move towards 100% renewable energy, but many didn’t have the resources or technical knowledge to get there. I found that leveraging a team of over 125,000 legal advocates to fill the legal gaps and provide technical assistance to support the country’s shift to 100% renewable energy at the local and state level could lead to meaningful, impactful action on climate change right now. 

What is the work you’re most proud of having done with L4GG?

In my time with L4GG, the Climate Change Program has been able to mobilize 350 attorneys to assist us and educate 47 different cities in 21 states on tools to help them switch to renewable energy sources. Helping cities meet aggressive climate targets creates a new and reliable demand for clean energy that moves markets, creating a ripple effect of positive action to address climate change. It has been incredible to see how many different NGOs, cities, and small communities have responded to this service. 

We’ve done amazing research for our State Profiles, which provide a general overview of policies affecting local renewable energy policy in that particular state. That research can make a world of difference for communities with smaller budgets. These communities want to make changes, but they don’t have the resources or funding to hire lawyers to navigate municipal and energy law to meet aggressive targets. That’s where L4GG’s work is so impactful. 

I’m also really proud of the partnerships we’ve created with the Sierra Club, RMI (formerly Rocky Mountain Institute), World Resources Institute and other impactful climate organizations to help them enhance their climate campaigns. My goal is to make sure we’re standing in the gap and magnifying existing efforts, not trying to reinvent the wheel.  

There’s so much work to be done, and lawyers are poised to do it.

What are the things you’re most excited about in 2022?

We’re currently working on a massive research and reporting effort with the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center to establish a right to clean, affordable water in Michigan. Our plan is to prepare a report that highlights the inequities around access to clean, affordable drinking water, and then propose stronger state policy to enforce this right. We’re also working with Great Lakes to directly assist the community of Benton Harbor, an environmental justice community whose drinking water has been contaminated with lead for over three years, to ensure their service lines are replaced. We also plan  to expand our efforts to research, analyze, and propose model policy around the right to water in all 50 states. By doing so, we’ll help create a coordinated, national push for the right to water, at the state level. 

What does a ‘right to water’ mean? 

‘Right to water’ relates to whether or not someone has access to clean and affordable drinking water. For example in Michigan, there are two issues, affordability and quality of water. We’re looking at the Safe Drinking Water Act, a piece of federal legislation, and analyzing whether it’s doing enough to ensure affordable drinking water for Michiganders. For example the communities of Flint and Benton Harbor in Michigan do not have access to clean water. Benton Harbor has had lead contaminated water for the past three years despite the fact that the Michigan and Federal Lead and Copper Rule regulations on lead contamination limits exist. 

Disadvantaged communities, predominantly communities of color, still have to rely on bottled water for drinking, and we want to know why.

L4GG’s climate change program seeks to identify the immediate needs and make a direct impact right now, while at the same time learning from that work so we can propose systematic change.

We’re doing this work with pro bono attorneys and virtually no money — imagine what we could accomplish when we have more sustainable funding! 

Lawyers have the unique opportunity to make a difference, in the way only we can. We can take what we’ve learned in our research and use it to push critical policy. Part of our reporting is to tell you exactly what is happening, and what needs to be done. On the ground programs and communities already know what they want and need, and we can help them get there. 

What else is going on in 2022?

We’re rolling out resources to identify federal funding for US cities to increase renewable energy and divest from fossil fuels through the big infrastructure bill that just passed in Congress. Similar to L4GG’s COVID-19 clinics, we hope to create a program where pro bono lawyers provide consultations directly to communities who need it most to help identify funding sources for clean energy and climate resiliency projects. 

We’ll also continue to directly assist cities, and hope to provide direct assistance to at least 150  cities, helping them make the transition to renewable energy and implement other climate tools. 

As an example, we have helped cities in 5 different states with guidance on contracts for renewable energy credits. Using our guidance, cities can engage their own contracts to incredible results. , One city entered a contract to purchase 79 million kilowatts of energy from a new solar panel project — the equivalent of taking 12,000 gas vehicles off the road yearly. 

And that’s just one contract for one city! 

We’re working with on the ground organizations like RMI and World Resources Institute to get cities on board, teach them how to put these tools into practice to make actual change. 

We can’t do this work alone, though. We need volunteers, and we need funding. Climate change work isn’t just addressing environmental justice in the immediate, it’s building the path for a sustainable future for the planet. I hope you’ll join me.

Afghan Refugees Find Support In New Remote Asylum Clinic

Lawyers for Good Government, International Refugee Assistance Project, and Kirkland & Ellis LLP Launch Afghan Refugee Remote Legal Clinic

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Lawyers for Good Government (L4GG), Kirkland & Ellis LLP, and the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) have partnered to launch a first-of-its-kind pro bono remote legal clinic to provide legal services for Afghan refugees who came to the U.S. by airlift after America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.  

The pilot clinic, held on Saturday, February 12, provided remote legal assistance to almost 100 Sacramento, California-based Afghan refugees, helping them with asylum and adjustment of status applications. Many of the refugees risked their lives by working with the U.S. military in Afghanistan and were evacuated with their families to the U.S. after the Afghan government fell last August. 

Approximately 60 pro bono attorneys from Kirkland & Ellis LLP participated in the pilot clinic on February 12. The attorneys screened each family to determine eligibility for various services and to assist with completing an adjustment of status. IRAP, PARS Equality Center, and Centro Legal de la Raza provided subject matter expertise on asylum and adjustment of status matters as well as cultural competition and how to work with interpreters. L4GG provided the pro bono program design and infrastructure necessary to run a large-scale, remote legal clinic.  

Traci Feit Love, Executive Director of Lawyers for Good Government said: 

“Families seeking safety have a right to apply for asylum, and we owe a special duty to those Afghan refugees who risked their lives to help Americans in Afghanistan. Lawyers are uniquely poised to help these families navigate the immigration process so they can find stability and pursue the next chapter of their lives. We’re grateful to our partners on this project, and hope we can grow and scale this work in the coming months.”

Jackie Haberfeld, Global Program Director and Pro Bono Counsel at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, said:

“Kirkland is grateful to be able to partner with IRAP and Lawyers for Good Government to provide legal advice to Afghan refugees seeking asylum and other immigration relief in the United States. Kirkland attorneys ranging from first year associates to senior partners participated in the pilot clinic. Many of the teams plan to continue to represent their clinic clients until their immigration applications have been decided, exceeding expectations. We are proud of our attorneys’ commitment to using their unique skills to help this vulnerable population.”

Wendy Fu, Director of Pro Bono at IRAP, said:

"IRAP is proud to work with our Pro Bono partners to provide the high quality legal services evacuated Afghans need to restart their lives in the United States with safety and stability. In addition to facilitating asylum access, IRAP continues to advocate for a permanent pathway to citizenship for all evacuated Afghans and continued support for the many at-risk Afghans still in Afghanistan and other third countries."

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Lawyers for Good Government (L4GG) coordinates large scale pro bono programs and issue advocacy efforts to protect human rights and ensure equal justice under the law, and has a network of 125,000+ lawyers to assist in its efforts. 

Kirkland & Ellis is committed to providing legal services without charge to those who cannot afford counsel, with the goals of improving lives, bettering communities and deepening our attorneys’ professional experience. Kirkland attorneys at all levels pursue pro bono matters dealing with a variety of issues such as immigration, disability rights, civil rights, prisoner rights, death penalty cases and criminal appeals, guardianship, veterans’ benefits, and the representation of nonprofit organizations, among other areas. In 2021, Kirkland devoted more than 122,000 hours of free legal service to pro bono clients. Learn more about Kirkland’s commitment to pro bono and corporate social responsibility at www.kirkland.com/CSR.

The International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) develops and enforces a set of legal and human rights for refugees and displaced persons. Mobilizing direct legal aid, litigation, and systemic advocacy, IRAP serves the world’s most persecuted individuals and empowers the next generation of human rights leaders.

TELL BIDEN ADMINISTRATION: Protect Ukrainians in the United States

In response to Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine, L4GG is working on two important fronts to ensure that the U.S. government protects Ukrainian nationals within the U.S. We invite you to join us today.

CALL FOR TEMPORARY PROTECTED STATUS (TPS) FOR UKRAINIANS IN THE US.

We’ve written a letter to President Biden, Secretary of Homeland Security Mayorkas, and Secretary of State Blinken urging them to designate the 30,000 Ukrainian nationals within the United States as eligible for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) or Deferred Enforced Departure (DED), as well as Special Student Relief (SSR).  TPS provides protection from deportation and permission to work for eligible nationals of countries that have been designated temporarily too dangerous for return.

Join us today by calling directly on the Biden Administration to make this designation.

CLICK TO TWEET:

The serious and ongoing armed conflict in Ukraine is a humanitarian crisis. @POTUS @SecMayorkas must immediately designate TPS or DED and SSR for Ukraine. Read letter from @lawyers4goodgov calling for TPS: https://L4GG.org/TPS4UkraineLetter

A country reeling from military aggression is not appropriate for safe return! We urge @SecMayorkas to designate Ukraine for #TPS and protect 30,000 people from deportation. Read letter from @lawyers4goodgov: https://L4GG.org/TPS4UkraineLetter

COPY AND PASTE TO FACEBOOK:

A country reeling from military aggression is not appropriate for safe return! We urge President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas to designate Ukraine for #TPS and protect 30,000 people from deportation.

Read L4GG’s Letter Here: https://L4GG.org/TPS4UkraineLetter.

DEVELOPING RAPID RESPONSE PRO BONO PROJECT TO ASSIST UKRANIAN NATIONALS

Just as we’ve done in similar moments of crisis, we’re currently working in coalition with partner organizations to better ascertain the needs of Ukrainian nationals and determine how L4GG might be able to mobilize the legal profession to help at this moment. If TPS/DED status is granted to Ukraine, we intend to move very quickly to implement a new pro bono project to provide legal assistance. We have already begun building the infrastructure for this potential project and will keep you apprised as things develop.

Urgency to Continue Transitioning to Renewable Energy

The war in Europe also highlights the urgency for the US to transition to renewable energy sources and away from reliance on fossil fuels and petrostates like Russia. L4GG remains committed to helping localities transition to renewable energy, and you can learn more about our work doing so with our Climate Change program here.