Invitations to the Safe Haven Awards are arriving this week. If you haven’t done so already, please mark your calendars for Tuesday June 8th, and buy your tickets today!
 
We’re especially excited to be joined by this year’s headliner: New York Times best-selling author Elizabeth Gilbert (pictured), whose book Eat, Pray, Love is currently being turned into a film starring Julia Roberts. Her new book Committed chronicles her experience as the American half of a binational couple.
 
This year’s event promises to be our best ever! Last year, more than 400 attendees raised nearly $200,000. In the same year, Immigration Equality’s hotline answered more than 1,700 inquiries and won a record 76 asylum cases for LGBT people fleeing violence and persecution in their home country.
 
This year’s awards will honor five pro bono firms for their outstanding service to LGBT immigrants and their families. Our Safe Haven Awards honorees include:
 

• Kirkland & Ellis LLP, which stood out for the high volume of cases it took on – and started winning! – in its very first year in Immigration Equality’s pro bono program. Kirkland formalized its LGBT Asylum Project as a firmwide program in partnership with Immigration Equality in 2009, taking on seven different cases and providing more than $750,000 in pro bono services last year alone.
   
• Paul Weiss, which has continued its record of excellence since 2004, when it accepted its first case for a gay, HIV-positive Jamaican man. The firm currently has six more challenging cases pending, in addition to significant wins for Immigration Equality clients in 2007 and 2008.
   
• Linklaters, which joined Immigration Equality’s pro bono program one year ago and took on — and won — six cases, including asylum for a gay man from Uzbekistan and two gay men from Trinidad who all had challenging one-year filing deadline issues. The firm also won asylum for a gay man from Jamaica, a gay man from Paraguay and a lesbian from Botswana.
   
• Ropes & Gray, which won asylum for ten Immigration Equality clients in 2009 — more than any other firm. Their victories included asylum for a lesbian from India, a gay HIV-positive Jamaican and his son, a gay HIV-positive Ghanaian in proceedings, a gay Ukrainian, and a gay man from Dominica.

 
We will also be honoring Fragomen with our “Defender of Freedom Award,” for devoting hundreds of hours to tireless legislative research and analysis in support of Immigration Equality’s advocacy for binational families.
 
All of these champions have literally made all the difference in the world for the Immigration Equality clients they have represented. I hope you’ll join me in saluting them on June 8th.
 
Invitations to the Safe Haven Awards should be in mailboxes soon. If you didn’t receive one, you can RSVP, reserving your spot for this year’s event, by purchasing your tickets online. Just click here to buy tickets, or join our host committee.
 
Your generous support will be put to immediate use in our work to end discrimination against LGBT and HIV-positive immigrants and their families.
 
To reserve your spot for this incredible evening, please visit us online today. I look forward to seeing you in New York on June 8th.