2022-100-Faces-Book - Flipbook - Page 67
Omar
Advocate. Immigrant. Defender.
Omar was a teenager when he saved nearly $2,000
to cover his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or
DACA, application and attorney fees. He was in high
school when Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights
Coalition (TIRRC), his now-employer, presented about
immigrant and refugee rights. That’s when he became
interested in their work. He says he had struggled to be
motivated in school and make good grades.
“I struggled to just find hope in my future.”
TIRRC told him about DACA and helped him begin his
application. Even with the guidance, the process
was difficult.
“I was in a single-parent household, so finances were
always kind of tight and just not knowing what the
process was like and finding an attorney that doesn’t
want to charge you a huge amount.”
He and his mom were able to save enough for the
application and attorney fees.
“The application is $495, but on top of the attorney
fees, I think I paid $1,400 the first time. Then to renew,
I went through the same attorney until I found a
Facebook group for DACA recipients where they share
a lot of resources, and I was able to renew on my own
the second to last time that I did it. And then this last
time, I had some help from TIRRC.”
Omar was 18 years old working as a busboy and
getting paid in cash while he waited for his application
to go through. He used his lunch break to call his
attorney to ask for an update. That’s when he found
out he had been approved.
“I’m on my break crying because I was approved …
to finally be able to work and have a license and do
all these things that normal people do. It was very
rewarding,” he says. “And I think DACA has definitely
opened up some doors that otherwise wouldn’t have
been there without the program and TIRRC.”
In 2019, a manager at TIRRC messaged Omar about
an open position. He applied and got the job. Now,
as a program coordinator, Omar oversees TIRRC’s
assistance line where people call to connect with
services such as signing up for English classes or
making a vaccine appointment.
“Another call that’s been popular since the pandemic
started is people needing rent or utility assistance. A
lot of people are obviously out of work, whether they’re
citizens or not. And a lot of our base clients are usually
women. We have domestic workers that reach out to
us—people that clean homes or take care of kids and
older people. A lot of them have just lost employment
and are undocumented, so they don’t have any other
resources. They can’t apply for unemployment.”
At the start of COVID, they’d have 200 people calling
at once needing help navigating the SNAP website.
United Way selected TIRRC as a grant recipient for the
COVID-19 Response Fund and Metro CARES funding.
TIRRC used that funding to help families pay rent,
utilities and keep food on the table.
“We were helping people navigate the website and
making accounts for them. And our attorney on staff
kept advocating for more language access or just
making that application process a lot easier. Just
finding resources and knowing where to look has
always been difficult, especially for someone who
doesn’t speak the language or who’s a newer arrival.
With the pandemic, it’s even more difficult.”
The pandemic has taught him how short life is.
“Just going for the things that we’re truly passionate
about. I’m passionate about helping people especially
when it comes to immigrant and refugee backgrounds,
so just focusing more on that work and figuring out
what the community needs are and helping people.”
Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition
