As I finished up my final week at the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic, a few things came to mind. And more things come to mind as I anticipate my return home to Israel, where I will continue to study law and work with the refugee community.
It has been wonderful reacquainting myself with US asylum law — a system which those of us working on these issues in Israel strive to emulate. I mean, not the enormous backlog for family reunification applicants or, for that matter, the ardent xenophobia that is so prevalent in certain American states. But for the most part, it is encouraging to get acquainted with a system in which asylum seekers are given more than two options: getting deported and facing death or life imprisonment in their country of origin, or remaining in the host country with absolutely no basic rights.
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I will take this picture back with me to Israel, hoping that one day I will meet someone who fled terrible conditions in their home country and was welcomed in Israel with permanent residence status, and I hope that what we are doing today in Israel will have contributed to that process.