Kia Ora from Wellington, New Zealand

Greetings, Kia Ora. I've completed my first week of work at the Wellington Community Law Centre in Wellington, NZ. The experience is already more than I could have ever hoped for this summer (winter here).

The office environment at the centre is one where you can truly tell that the lawyers and volunteers working here truly are committed to the service that they are providing. It is less of a situation of going to work for a set number of hours to get a pay check at the end of the week and more of a place where people are dedicated to providing legal services to those that cannot afford them financially on their own and those that also cannot afford to sit idly by as their rights are eroded.

In the first week of our work already, I have met with a number of clients. Most of my work will focus on Refugee and Immigration Legal Advice Sessions (RILAS). This week, that entailed everything from helping translate for some Spanish-speaking clients about a half hour train ride out of Wellington in Porirua, NZ to writing a memo on what type of documentation is standard for cultural marriages in Afghanistan, despite what may appear to be officially recognized as proper documentation by law. We focused our attention on cases where the client has refugee status but is seeking to obtain refugee status for the family that is left in the country of origin. I have found already that it can be a long and painful process of waiting and spotty success. Our work is important because we take a multiple prong approach to each case, working to bring the family over to NZ legally either as refugee or through normal immigration means, though this tends to be a much more difficult track to take.

Today I am off of work for public holiday for the Queen's birthday, so I've travelled north by bus to Rotorua for the weekend. I stand anxious to get into my next week of work at the centre and am optimistic about the changes that we can make in our clients' lives, though we all need to be patient and work in the framework available through the guidelines of Immigration New Zealand.