Cover
story Slogging away at idealists pay
By ARTHUR JONES
NCR Staff Newark, N.J
Young attorneys can pull in $100,000 a year almost anywhere in
corporate America. So what would motivate a committed few to slog away with the
Catholic Legal Immigrant Network, earning $35,000 a year?
I went to law school for idealistic reasons, said
detention attorney Ran Z. Schijanovich, who works with clients in detention
centers. Schijanovich, Israeli-born son of an Argentinean father and U.S.
mother, has worked since February at the Elizabeth, N.J., Detention Center.
I wanted to do good -- a good ideal for a human being,
obviously -- and at the same time I wanted to challenge myself, he
said.
With anxious asylum seekers like a Liberian young man who escaped
his rebel captors, and an Iraqi teacher who escaped Saddam Hussein,
Schijanovich has met his goal.
In Los Angeles, Allison Wannamaker is a detention attorney because
she sees a need. Its something I feel strongly about, she
said. These are people who come to the United States looking for a new
life or a new start, and I -- I feel I want to help them have that opportunity.
Unfortunately our laws right now make that very difficult, she said,
but some times an attorney can make a difference.
In New York, Tom Shea is finding that the salary he earned as a
Catholic network attorney in El Paso isnt stretching at his new post in
Manhattan. But I like what I do, said Shea. Fortunately,
its never been a big desire of mine to be mega-wealthy. But,
he added with a wink, If it happened I wouldnt be opposed to
it.
My experience with the law students we see, said
attorney Jim Haggerty, the Catholic networks special projects director,
is that they are generally idealistic.
Which is just as well, for Haggerty appeals to local bar
associations and Jesuit law schools to help fund and staff its programs.
Schijanovichs slot, for example, is funded by the New Jersey
Bar Association. A new venture in Louisiana, which Wannamaker will head up, is
a three-way cooperation among the Catholic network, Jesuit Refugee Services and
the School of Law at Loyola University, New Orleans.
The project will focus, says the Catholic network, on the
desperate needs of individuals detained in Louisiana: some 700 to
800 in local, often rural, jails throughout the state, and more than 1,000 in
Oakdale, a federal facility three-and-a-half hours from New Orleans.
Federal judges report that two-thirds of Louisianas
detainees, which the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service is trying to
remove, are legal permanent residents. The state claims Cuban refugees from the
1980s who have spent nearly two decades in detention.
South, West or East, the detention attorney job can be emotionally
draining.
Schijanovich, a Cardoza Law School, New York, graduate, outlined
two of his cases. You have to deal with people who have suffered,
he said, and they suffer in front of me.
One is a 21-year-old Liberian who was 10 when rebels took away
first his father and then took him. For five-and-a-half years they used
him as a slave, carrying their loads, cooking, fetching water,
Schijanovich said. They also used him for sexual abuse, and forced
him and others like him to loot property as the owners stood
by.
Because of the looting, some Liberians presumed the boy had joined
the rebels by choice. Because of that identification, when the boy escaped the
rebels, he had to flee the country. He eventually made his way to the United
States as an asylum seeker.
His decision date is fast approaching. Schijanovich holds out
hope, even taking a telephone call from the worried young man, calming his
anxieties, during the NCR interview.
Another of Schijanovichs cases involves a former Iraqi
teacher, a Shiite Muslim in a country ruled by another Muslim branch, Saddam
Husseins Sunis. He suffered beatings and threats because he would not
join the military, though as a teacher he was exempt. After the Gulf War, Kurds
in the North and Shiites in the South of Iraq revolted against Hussein, only to
be crushed.
The teacher and remaining members of his family fled to the
southern swamps, which Saddam Hussein systematically drained to flush out the
Shiites. As the swamps dried up, the teacher went over into Iran. After years
in detention, he escaped and stowed away.
The ships final destination was the New York-New Jersey Port
Authority terminal.
On the basis of the political persecution, and the risk of ethnic
persecution if he returns, the teacher has very good prospects of
being granted asylum status, Schijanovich said.
National Catholic Reporter, September 29,
2000
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