But, after three sessions now, I’ve gone from wholly disinterested to deeply intrigued. We may renovate around that sauna after all.

It’s bizarre how often history repeats itself. The port cities change, but the issues stay the same.

Should the persistence of these issues be a warning to us? Or a reassurance?

Although USCIS isn’t nearly as glamorous/notorious as the agencies mentioned above, it actually decides far more cases than the immigration courts. EOIR is notorious for having a backlog of more than 2 million pending court cases, but USCIS received over 9 million applications in FY2022 alone.

Maybe Being John Malkovich is great because it takes those dark and uncomfortable aspects of the human personality - in Jungian terms, the shadow that none of us can see (in ourselves, that is) and usually deny the existence of - and lays them bare in a way that it’s hard to look away from (in a train wreck sort of way, but with empathy).

This week, the students will have an in-class exercise where they will draft and format a short immigration court motion. The substance of the motion itself is simple, just a page or two. But there are specific rules about what has to be listed, what type of evidence has to be provided in support, and of course how the motion and evidence have to be formatted and filed.

Studies are starting to show that there may be a difference between what makes you fit and what makes you healthy. While intense exercise is often better for increasing cardio vascular endurance or muscle strength, longer and more moderate efforts seem to have greater benefits for heart health and metabolic flexibility.

Here was something extraordinary, I knew as deeply as I know my Christian faith: A people, united for two and a half centuries - not by race, creed, or origin, but only by a shared commitment to a 4,543-word document and its principles. Flawed as that project has been, it has also succeeded, miraculously, so far, in binding a country together into a people.

We also discussed an exciting opportunity for local nonprofits to host fellows to represent unaccompanied migrant children in West Virginia. This program, a partnership between Immigrant Justice Corps, Vera Institute of Justice, and Acacia Center for Justice, would help to ensure that kids living in our state don’t have to go before an immigration court alone.

If I sound like Pharrell Williams, well, please indulge me. Cuz remember, as Father Chapin from My Daily Living with Father Chapin likes to say, “Bitterness is like taking a daily dose of rat poison and hoping the other person dies.” Choose happiness!

But to see students develop agency is like watching new life begin. To feel the joy as we help a client emerge from our thorny immigration maze is like walking a fellow human being through the valley of shadows and into the light.

Samit decided not to go to law school because, he said, it looked too much like “doing homework for other people for the rest of your life.”