Mission Action’s Deportation Defense & Legal Advocacy program seeks an immigration legal assistant to assist our immigration attorneys and to provide services to low-income immigrant clients.
About the organization
Mission Action nurtures individual wellness and cultivates collective power among low-income and immigrant communities to create a more just society. As a multi-issue, multi-strategy organization, we work to improve lives on an individual level as well as affect broader social change by engaging in advocacy and community organizing. We work together across programs to address homelessness, lack of affordable housing, and to support immigrant rights in order to meet the complex needs of our communities and collectively address the root causes of suffering and injustice. To learn more about our organization’s model and impact, we encourage you to watch the following video.
Since 2008, Mission Action’s Deportation Defense & Legal Advocacy Program has been a local leader in providing pro bono legal defense for individuals and families facing deportation. We use creative legal and advocacy strategies to challenge prolonged detention, constitutional violations, and other injustices in the immigration legal system. We represent individuals threatened with deportation through challenges to the charges of removability, as well as through applications for relief, including asylum, withholding of removal, relief under the Convention Against Torture, waivers of inadmissibility and deportability, and applications for U-visa, T-Visa, and VAWA relief.
Responsibilities
- Assist Mission Action immigration attorneys in all aspects of immigration legal representation for qualified individuals.
- Respond to intake calls, emails, and letters from individuals and community partners who seek immigration legal services.
- Meet with clients to gather documents, complete immigration forms, interview clients, and draft client statements for attorney review.
- Translate letters and other documents.
- Deliver legal documents to various courts and government agencies in San Francisco.
- Write letters to companies, institutions, and government agencies to assist the client in obtaining police reports, court records, medical records, and school records.
- Prepare various legal papers, such as pleading caption pages, list of exhibits, etc.
- Help attorneys conduct community outreach events as well as any other appropriate community education events.
- Manage and coordinate databases, case files, attorneys’ correspondence files, etc.
- Research and analyze issues where appropriate such as researching social and economic conditions and human rights conditions in the client’s home country.
- Perform other special projects and other duties as assigned by Mission Action attorneys.
Qualifications for successful employment
- Experience working with low-income, immigrant, and monolingual Spanish-speaking communities.
- Experience working with survivors of trauma.
- Strong commitment to serving low-income and underserved communities, with an ability to relate to and communicate with a broad range of clients and colleagues.
- Strong commitment to serving low-income and underserved communities, with an ability to relate to and communicate with a broad range of clients and colleagues.
- Fluency in Spanish recommended.
- Excellent word-processing and computer skills, including knowledge of Microsoft Word and Excel.
- Must be well organized, efficient, highly motivated, and able to handle multiple tasks at once, work well under pressure, and take initiative.
- Must have outstanding written, verbal and interpersonal skills, superb attention to detail, and excellent phone manner.
Ability to work independently as well as within a team. - Willingness to conduct training and outreach activities in the community.
- A Bachelor’s degree preferred.