Free law clinic opens at Fresno's Mexican consulate to help Valley's immigrants

By Heather Somerville - The Fresno Bee

JOHN WALKER/THE FRESNO BEE
Gregory Francisco Gillett, center, and Justin Atkinson, center left, both faculty advisers of San Joaquin College of Law’s New American Legal Clinic, conduct an orientation for students, including Rajinder Sungu, left, and Zachary Stringham, right, Wednesday afternoon.

For more than 30 years, Modesto toiled in the central San Joaquin Valley fields, saving every spare penny to bring his family north from Mexico. Last year, he wrote a $30,000 check to an immigration consultant in Fresno County.

The day had finally arrived when Modesto -- a legal U.S. resident since 1980 -- could afford to bring his wife and five children to live with him in the U.S.

Or so he thought.

The immigration consultant filed sloppy and incomplete paperwork, took the money and ran. Modesto's family didn't get the visas, and he lost his life's savings.

It's stories like Modesto's that inspired professors and students at the San Joaquin College of Law to open a free law clinic at the Consulate of Mexico to help legal immigrants in the Valley.

Modesto's misfortune is fairly common, said Justin Atkinson, an attorney and professor at the San Joaquin College of Law who shared Modesto's story. Embarrassed that he was tricked, Modesto declined to provide his last name or more details about himself.

Modesto became Atkinson's client after the immigrant wandered into the Consulate of Mexico in Fresno last fall, bewildered and angry over the scam. There sat Atkinson and law student William Buttry, offering free legal advice. They were testing Atkinson's idea for the student-run law clinic.

Atkinson and Buttry filed Modesto's immigration paperwork -- correctly this time -- and Modesto's family will join him within a year, Atkinson said.

"It was a very, very simple case," Atkinson said. "But he just went to the wrong guy."

After helping more than 200 immigrants like Modesto at the makeshift law clinics last semester, Atkinson decided he and his students were ready for the real thing. Today, Atkinson and nine San Joaquin College of Law students officially open the New American Legal Clinic.

The clinic will fill a need in the Valley, which experts say has been overrun by immigration-service frauds. It also will train law students who can fill the area's deficit of immigration attorneys, which has opened the doors for scams, said some immigration authorities.

"We've got such a huge immigrant base, but there's not a lot of competent practitioners here," Atkinson said.

The clinic will offer free assistance to legal immigrants who qualify for citizenship, legal residency or a change of visa. Law students and professors will help legal immigrants get family visas or work permits, and victims of domestic violence who may be here illegally but qualify for a special visa to stay in the country.

The clinic will be open twice a week at the Consulate of Mexico, and students will take appointments at the San Joaquin College of Law campus in Clovis. Faculty advisers Gregory Francisco Gillett and Atkinson said they are prepared to help more than 2,000 immigrants in the spring semester, although they expect to be overrun with more demands for free legal advice than they can handle.

"One hundred percent of people who walk through the door, they're normally very desperate," said Buttry. "They're looking for any person who can reach out a kind hand."

Students and professors say they haven't heard from any critics of the clinic, but they're prepared for backlash from organizations opposed to immigration.

One prominent farm industry labor group, the Nisei Farmers League, supports the clinic and has offered to raise money for it.

Atkinson and Gillett say the law clinic is not an advocacy group, and they're not taking a position on immigration reform. Students will advise immigrants of their legal options and will only take cases from illegal immigrants who have a pathway to become legal. Last semester, Atkinson said he and Buttry turned away more than 40 undocumented immigrants looking for help.

"There's a place for people to advocate and change laws, and I think we need that," Atkinson said. "But that's not our place here in the clinic. Our place here is to train lawyers."

Demand growing

The San Joaquin College of Law is the latest to respond to the growing demand for affordable immigration law services. Law schools at the University of California at Los Angeles and Davis also have clinics.

Despite its vast immigrant population and reputation as a gateway to the country for Latin American immigrants, the San Joaquin Valley lacks legitimate immigration services, said immigration attorneys, advocates and labor groups.

In their absence, a network of fraudulent immigration service providers has sprung up, attracting clients with promises of a quick path to a visa or green card. Like Modesto, many of their clients fork over large sums of money and get little in return.

"People are getting advice from people who are not lawyers," said Sharon Rummery, spokeswoman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. "They'll say, 'Hey, give me $3,000 and I'll give you a green card, ' and you never see them again."

The Valley is so ripe with fraudsters posing as immigration attorneys that federal immigration officials chose Fresno as one of seven cities for a pilot campaign to clamp down on immigration-services scams. Federal immigration officials are working with law enforcement to prosecute scammers and are encouraging community organizations to get government accreditation to give immigrants legal advice, Rummery said.

Only attorneys and organizations that have been recognized or accredited by the Board of Immigration Appeals are qualified to counsel immigrants on legal issues, according to federal rules.

The only organization in Fresno recognized by immigration authorities as qualified to offer legal advice and representation in immigration matters is Catholic Charities. Rummery said her agency has received one accreditation application from a Fresno organization since the campaign began last June. She declined to identify the organization.

Until the New American Legal Clinic, most immigrants had two options in Fresno: pay an attorney or see a notario. The translation from Spanish is "notary," but to many Spanish speakers the word means "attorney." Some immigrants go to a notario thinking he or she is an attorney, only to discover they've paid thousands of dollars to someone who filed sloppy paperwork, took their money and ran.

Sandra Mendoza, consul for protection at the Consulate of Mexico, said desperation often drives immigrants to seek help from notarios: "They think that there are shortcuts available."

Law college, Nisei league join forces

The Nisei Farmers League has joined the San Joaquin College of Law to educate farmers about immigration issues and help farmworkers access free legal services.

Nisei Farmers League President Manuel Cunha, Jr. said the Valley's economy depends on a stable, legal agricultural workforce. But many farmworkers and seasonal workers are in various stages of immigration status, and many have left their families behind in their home countries.

"We need to make sure farmers can continually farm and farmworkers can continue to work and bring their families here," he said.

Farmers need a safe and affordable place to send workers who need immigration help, Cunha said.

Cunha said he's working with the law clinic and college leaders to organize workshops to educate farm workers and their employers about immigrants' rights. He also is assembling an advisory committee of farmers and business and community leaders to raise money for the law clinic and advise the college on immigrant-rights issues.



The dearth of good, affordable legal advice for immigrants is a decades-old problem, Cunha said. Following the 1986 federal immigration reform, Cunha started a legalization center with the Nisei Farmers League. In the few years it was open, the center helped thousands of immigrants become legal residents.

"Even at that time, I saw how many unscrupulous crooks there were advising people and stealing from people who work so hard," he said. "I hope (the clinic) will clean out the bad consultants and bad lawyers."

'A huge fear'

Most students at San Joaquin College of Law come from the Valley, and most stay in the area after graduating, said Janice Pearson, dean of the law school. Some students working at the clinic said they plan to practice immigration law in the Fresno area.

Third-year law student Rajinder Sungu said he wants to open a practice in Fresno because he knows the value of a good immigration attorney. He chose law school because of his family's experience after emigrating from England about 20 years ago. Through a series of mistakes that Sungu blames on incompetent lawyers, his family lost their legal status, putting his parents' livelihood in jeopardy. The Sungu family, who are Indian, own an ethnic grocery store and a fabric store in Fresno.

Sungu said his family lived through "years of uncertainty and worry." But once they found a good immigration lawyer in Los Angeles, "it was just a slam dunk" to get their residency, he said. Sungu, 32, has been an American citizen for about four years.

Other students are using the clinic to find out whether they like immigration law.

The students are in their second and third year of the three-year law school program, and most will be taking their first course in immigration law this spring. Atkinson and Gillett will review every case the students work on.

Students also can expect to get a lesson in the wrenching emotions that often get entangled in immigration law. Last semester, Buttry and Atkinson helped women who were abused by their husbands get U visas, which give temporary legal status to victims of certain crimes and allow them to work in the U.S. for up to four years.

The law clinic plans to partner with the Marjaree Mason Center, a nonprofit in downtown Fresno that helps victims of domestic violence. Erica Gonzalez, an attorney at the center, said the clinic could encourage more women to come forward to get help.

"There's a huge fear," Gonzalez said. "There's a lot of misinformation. They don't understand the law. They don't understand what their protections are."

Pearson said donations from alumni and the community defray the clinic's costs. The college pays Atkinson's and Gillett's salaries. The consulate donated space, and the students, of course, work for free.

Pearson said fundraising efforts are under way, and the college will apply for grants. She expects to raise enough to expand the clinic within the next year.

"Will we solve the entire problem? No, because the need is overwhelming," Pearson said. "But we can make a dent in it and train students at the same time."