On May 15, the International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet (ICLT) established the Tibetan Immigration and Asylum Law Clearinghouse. This initiative will create a nationwide pool of attorneys and information (briefs, memoranda and government forms) for Tibetan cases before the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).
Tibetans in the United States and abroad critically need immigration and asylum legal assistance but lack of organization on a national and international scale has been an obstacle to meeting this need. The new Clearinghouse will seek attorneys who sympathize with the plight of Tibet and use the Internet and World Wide Web to get Tibetans the legal assistance they need. A "brief bank" will provide attorneys with up to date legal research on these areas of the law. Attorneys who want to help Tibetans will find it much easier to do so through the Clearinghouse because they do not have to "reinvent the wheel" to take on a case.
The Dalai Lama's Representative to the United States Rinchen Dharlo stated "I am very pleased to hear that ICLT is planning to create the Clearinghouse. We receive many requests for legal assistance from individual Tibetans who are petitioning for political asylum. In the past, due to lack of resources and legal expertise, we have been unable to provide assistance in many cases."
The Clearinghouse will provide Immigration Law assistance to Tibetans who are already in the U.S. as they attempt to become citizens and bring their families to America. It will also provide legal materials on Asylum Law for Tibetans who are filing for political asylum because of repression in Tibet. The Clearinghouse will urge the INS to grant political asylum to more Tibetans. By doing so, the United States government will be recognizing that Tibetans are persecuted under Chinese rule.
On Saturday, May 11, five ICLT members and volunteers received training at the seminar "Representing Refugees: Asylum Law and Procedure" presented by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights' Asylum Project. They included attorneys Jane Patrick, Paul White, John Burgess, and Glen Gilbert, and summer intern, law student Ardavan Moaveni.
ICLT is currently assisting on seven cases in San Francisco, Santa Cruz, California, New York City, Albany, New York, Cleveland, Ohio, Scottsdale, Arizona, and Rio de Jaineiro, Brazil. Most recently, ICLT was able to involve the United Nations High Commission for Refugees to obtain a stay of deportation for a Tibetan woman applying for refugee status in Rio after escaping from Tibet last year. We are actively seeking pro bono attorneys across the U.S. to take on additional cases.
Please call the ICLT office at (510) 486-0588 or
email iclt@igc.apc.org
if you or someone you know can help with this project.
Glen Craig Gilbert
Executive Director, ICLT
2288 Fulton Street, Suite 312
Berkeley, California 94704 USA
510-486-0588 telephone
510-548-3785 fax
iclt@igc.apc.org email
