October 3, 2002
Anita Ramasastry, Law
Sara Flores made it all the way from her native Colombia to America, but the real challenge came when the U.S. citizen she married started abusing her physically and emotionally.
Flores (not her real name) was forced to flee her home with her young daughter in order to save her life. Almost as bad was the knowledge that her abusive husband had control over whether she could stay in America.
This is a surprisingly common dilemma for immigrant women who must rely on the sponsorship of husbands who are citizens or hold green cards, said Anita Ramasastry, assistant professor of law.
Ramasastry receives this year’s Outstanding Public Service Award for helping Flores and nearly 100 other immigrant women and children gain legal U.S. residence without having to stay in dangerous relationships.
“Imagine how trapped you would feel if your immigration status depended on your abuser,” said Ramasastry, who founded the Immigrant Families Advocacy Project (IFAP) in 1996.
That was just a couple of years after Congress also had seen the injustice of that situation and passed a law allowing immigrant women in abusive marriages to petition for a green card themselves. At least, in theory. In practice, the burden of producing the required documentation as proof was beyond the ability of many would-be petitioners, especially non-native English speakers running away from crisis situations.
Ramasastry’s scholarly pursuits run more to e-commerce, consumer protection, banking, Internet privacy and the study of international legal jurisdiction — she is associate director of the law school’s Shidler Center for Law, Commerce and Technology — but one of her law professors at Harvard had kindled an interest in the legal problems of battered women. When Ramasastry arrived at the UW in 1996 she saw the need to train more law students to serve a growing influx of immigrant women in the Northwest, particularly from Southeast Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe.
The Immigrant Families Advocacy Project started by Ramasastry has blossomed into an ongoing partnership between UW law students and the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. Each immigrant client is paired with a team of law students and practicing attorneys (working pro bono).
“Professor Ramasastry is helping to meet a grave need for legal services for a very deserving and imperiled group of clients,” said law faculty colleague Joan Fitzpatrick. “Simultaneously, she is exposing students to legal practice in the nonprofit and private sectors, and she is training students in a field of law that they can continue to pursue on a pro bono basis after they have been admitted to the bar.”
And how do the students feel about taking this on?
“The greatest gift is a taste of the immeasurable rewards that accompany providing legal services directly to at-risk clients,” said Lori Rath, who was the first IFAP student volunteer in 1996 and now practices law at the Riddell Williams firm.
One hallmark of the Immigrant Families Advocacy Project is that, of all the law-student organizations, it is the only one that permits first-year students to work directly with clients in need.
“I came to law school ultimately to assist women and children,” said Erin Green, now a third-year student. “By participating in IFAP, I was able to do so immediately.”
Though it continues to operate on a shoestring budget, the project’s fabulous reputation has yielded a $25,000 endowment gift from New York attorney and UW alumnus Bruce Garrison and his wife Aphrodite.
Ramasastry, for her part, praises the project’s volunteer lawyers and the students who get their first taste of legal service.
“For a first-year law student,” she said, “to have a client whose safety is brought about by the work you’ve done — that’s just incredible.”
