Only one out of four immigrants had a lawyer among the 211,096 persons whose cases were backlogged in Chicago as of December 2023, according to TRAC.
That put the Chicago court among those with lower rates of representation. In comparison, the rate was 49% in California and 44% in New York state.
But having a lawyer can be essential to navigating the court system — from knowing when their court date is, understanding how to update their address, knowing what immigration relief forms they apply for, as well as ultimately having someone to represent them and plead their case in front of the judge.
According to the National Immigration Forum, someone’s chance of winning their asylum case is five times higher if they have an attorney to represent them.
I mean, a little bit of searching and reading shows the Democratic party has been inexcusably awful on the issue of allowing people to immigrate here and claim asylum as well (like, there’s a reason Obama got called “deporter in chief,” and the bipartisan border security bill Schumer is flogging recently is depraved trash)
Of course, as is the case with so many other issues, the Republican party are genuinely monstrous on this and aren’t just doing it in a misguided attempt to win votes (they plan to get rid of the need to do that at all), meaning there’s no reasoning with them and they just need to be defeated.
So, yeah, vote for Democratic candidates, but also write your lawmakers and let them know there are voters out there that want them to actually do better on this.