"Warm acceptance and macabre humor" -Len S

Vanessa's self-portrait as an advocate for immigrants

Vanessa’s words, 2017:
“Having practiced many different types of poverty law, criminal and civil, I would say that nowhere is this more significant a phenomenon than in the representation of poor immigrants: especially the cases we deliberately choose to undertake, usually involving serious criminal convictions or repeated immigration fraud, not so much heartwarming asylum-seekers. ‘Going through it with’ — the process of representation, of explanation, of translation, of shared outrage, of mutual education, of reconciliation, of warm acceptance and macabre humor, sometimes a certain form of redemption — the process of representation in itself HAS to be the objective and the source of our sense of accomplishment……….. Just because we cannot reasonably expect to ‘win’ does not mean we abandon or give short shrift: quite the contrary, it makes our diligence, our meticulousness, our ingenuity, our devotion all the more important. Our clients may end up deported, but they know in a pretty deep way that someone looked under every rock and pushed through every possible door trying to keep them here.”

Len Sandler