Each season Immigration Equality offices welcome interns, legal fellows, and volunteers. Beginning this week, we will be introducing you to some of them with 20 questions. Want to work with us? Find out more here.
Name: Clement Lee
Age: 27
School/Major/Year: Cardozo School of Law/Immigration Law/3L
Position: Legal Intern
Office: New York Headquarters
In one sentence, what do you do all day?
This summer, I’ve been working closely with the rest of the legal team in doing client intake, putting together client asylum applications and declarations, conducting practice mock interviews with clients, and Spanish-language interpreting for clients during their asylum interviews.
How is that going?
“Two Thumbs Up!” say Ebert and Roeper.
What are you hoping to accomplish while here?
Learn more immigration law! I’m hoping to get as much time as possible working with the legal team on tackling our clients’ immigration issues. During the school year, duking it out with the Immigration and Nationality Act and the Code of Federal Regulations with hypothetical situations is pedagogically interesting, but it doesn’t quite hold a candle to dealing with real people and legal problems in the flesh.
I’m also excited to catch a glimpse of some passionate practitioners as they advocate for a segment of the LGBTQQIA community less able to protect themselves through traditional political processes because of their immigration status. Contemporary Queer activism has made great strides toward civil equality, and I feel that ImEq works to make sure that those efforts are fully inclusive. To that end, I’m thrilled to play whatever small role I can at ImEq.
Where are you from?
I was born here in New York City, spent my ’tween and teen years in Livingston, NJ, my college years in Providence, RI, and my post-adolescent idealistic phase (read: pre-law-school) in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I currently live in the Lower East Side.
Who did you root for in the World Cup?
“Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)” by Shakira, Official song for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
What do you like most about New York?
Having my $2.25 times table memorized for MetroCard purposes, the flat geography of Manhattan that makes it ideal for bike-riding, the abundance of theme restaurants, and the fact that traffic jams and parallel parking are too much of an infrequent novelty to actually be annoying.
The least?
The entirety of the 34th Street/Herald Square/Manhattan Mall complex and the pseudo-European plaza there with chairs and tables nestled right next to the DMV.
What neighborhood are you living in?
Lower East Side
Any suggestions for interns trying to live in New York?
The trains secretly follow a timetable that you can pick up at any MTA booth, which is a particularly useful tool late at night.
What do you do in your free time?
I like to ride my folding bike, read non-fiction, dance to top 40, watch dystopian movies and documentaries, beachcomb, and think about what makes people tick.
What are you currently reading?
Among the books I’ve enjoyed this summer are, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (mystifyingly by Alex Haley); Don’t Sleep; There are Snakes (about a linguistic anthropologist’s travails with the Piraha tribe in Brazil); and Somewhere Inside (Lisa Ling and Laura Ling’s account of Laura’s captivity in North Korea). I’m currently reading Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman, who does an excellent expository piece about how David Koresh is like Kurt Cobain, and how Beyonce’s alter-ego “Sasha Fierce” paradoxically emphasizes how ordinary she is. Genius.
Favorite TV show?
Intervention
If you had one superpower what would it be?
To keep a cache of really red-letter days, rewind them like they were a VHS tape, and re-live them like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.
What's the most surprising part of your internship?
I had visited immigration detention centers before with my legal clinic at school, but I had never visited one where the government detained women. One of my first “field trips” with ImEq involved going to the Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey, where they do detain women. There, I saw a bulletin board with photos of detained women in brightly colored jumpsuits playing Connect-Four and having a Christmas party. Seeing detained immigrants trying to maintain a semblance of ordinary life in spite of bars and handcuffs was half heartening and half macabre.
What's the hardest part?
The regular leaps of faith I take that United States Citizenship and Immigration Services really DID receive that fax.
What's your interest in immigration rights?
I’ve always been a little personally mystified by a paradox in modern American civil rights rhetoric. There’s a near-universal consensus that the color of a person’s skin is an immutable characteristic that should serve as no basis to deprive someone equal protection under the law; but somehow, it’s okay for U.S. policy to systematically discriminate and exclude people based primarily on their place of birth, the most immutable characteristic of them all. I’m interested in playing a role in addressing that disparity.
How did you learn about Immigration Equality?
During my internship at Lambda Legal last summer, I’d regularly direct callers to Immigration Equality. The more I learned about the organization, the more intrigued I got.
Are you at immigration Equality just for the summer?
I’m on board the rest of the summer, and I’m excited to continue my internship part-time through the coming semester!
To whom would you recommend an Immigration Equality internship?
To anyone who shares my concern that true “equality” for the Queer community extends beyond the struggle for same-sex marriage.
What are you planning next after your time with us?
My last year of law school, and hopefully passing the New York State Bar!