sofia (services offered for immigration advocacy) 9/2004

Sandy Schadewald rscj

Kit Collins rscj

Sandy Schadewald rscj

Kit Collins rscj

Kit Collins rscj

SOFIA (Services offered for Immigration Advocacy) was co-founded by Trudy Considine, rscj and Ali Golchin, now Esq. on September 1, 1995 in order to respond to the desperate needs of the immigrant community for low cost and Pro Bono services. The legal organization that both Ali and I were working for was closing, and we both felt a very strong commitment to the immigrants whom we were already helping, as well as a call of continual fidelity to the confidence that these people placed in us. Greatly inspired by the Act of Hope (of the United States province) and the Chapter of 1994, SOFIA sought to be a prophetic voice for the immigrant community, as well as a tool to educate them about their basic rights and to offer them affordable advocacy.

SOFIA operated in the manner of Popular Education, enabling each client to take responsibility for his/her own case, working together with them but not for them. Ali and I regularly, and as policy, discerned cases with clients before accepting them, in order to be sure that the situation was honest and that the client really wanted what they were asking for and was willing to work for it on a team with us. Because of this attitude, we regularly had a 97% win rate every year!

I had begun by doing outreach and social work for Guatemalan and Salvadoran immigrants in San Diego in 1987. They and their families taught me that I needed to advocate for them, arranging for their family members to be released from detention. In the process of gathering food and collecting clothing, and with the changes of Immigration law with the passage of ABC granting benefits for Guatemalans and Salvadorans, I began to register all of my Central American friends. They soon made me realize that what they really needed was not “Fish”, but “Fishing licenses”, that is, their documents, beginning with an Employment Authorization Card. Their needs pushed me into legal work and I finally become an Accredited Representative to represent them and protect them before INS (Immigration and Naturalization Services, now renamed Department of Homeland Security).