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Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP)

The Loyola Chapter of Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project is seeking law school students to assist on resettlement applications for Iraqi refugees in life or death situations in the Middle East. Our clients are children with medical emergencies, families who have suffered severe persecution or torture, women who suffer domestic abuse or forced prostitution, and other urgent cases referred to us by NGO's and our staff on the ground in the Middle East.

Students play a pivotal role in this organization by acting as a representative, with the supervision and formal representation of attorneys, for individual refugee cases. IRAP's legal team assists with all phases of the refugee resettlement process: from registering as a refugee with UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and navigating the UNHCR referral process, to applying directly to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) for Priority 2 Status or to the U.S. Embassy for a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV). IRAP takes referrals of refugee cases from NGOs operating in the Middle East and the U.S. as well as from IRAP staff members who work on the ground in the Middle East. The refugees we assist are located in Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt. We also take referrals directly from UNHCR of refugees who UNHCR feels have meritorious cases but were erroneously denied resettlement by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). We expect that helping refugees with these types of requests for reconsideration (RFRs) will constitute the bulk of IRAP's cases in the coming year.

 Because IRAP is a student-led organization, we rely on practicing attorneys for review of legal documents and in order to formally communicate with USCIS on behalf of individual clients. This includes signing a G-28 form to notify USCIS of the client's legal assistance. The responsibility for each case rests with a team of a few law students. The students will have primary responsibility for completing the work of the case, but the attorneys will oversee all final products.