June 4, 2008 11:56 AM
This series commemorates the 25th Anniversary of the founding of CARECEN in 1983.
In teaching ESL at the Methodist Church in Hempstead to a class of Salvadorans and Guatemalans, I found out about the exposed legal situation most of them were in. Because of Reagan-era discrimination in the asylum system, and because they could not afford an attorney, most of them faced arrest and deportation if they encountered the INS. For many, having seen family members murdered in their homelands, this would have amounted to a death sentance.
At the time I was a factory worker trying to finish up my B.A. I had interrupted my education to care for my widowed father when he had a near-fatal stroke. I was trying to decide what I should do when I graduated, particularly whether I should continue on in Philosophy. I decided that the people I worked with needed a lawyer a lot more than they needed a philosopher, so I enrolled at Hofstra Law School, where I now teach.
As a first year student I combined the grind of school with teaching English. I also started reading everything I could get my hands on in the law library about political asylum. I hoped that I could organize a volunteer clinic at Hofstra where students could help refugees apply for asylum. I figured there were probably a dozen Central Americans we could help each year, and that this would fill most of the refugees legal need.
At the end of my first year of law school I took a job delivering refrigerators. I ran into my old friend Ken Lederer and told him of my plans for a mini-clinic at Hofstra. He said that a new group was forming at St. Brigid's Church in Westbury around a young lawyer who wanted to set up a full-time professional organization to defend refugees. He called it "CARECEN", which neither of us was exactly sure how to pronounce.
A couple of months later I went to visit CARECEN in the basement of the priest's residence next to the church. I walked down the stairs in November of 1983 and in many ways I have never left.
Other entries in this series on CARECEN
CARECEN's 25th Anniversary
Teaching English-Learning about immigration