Law Students

Triage

By Andrea

I mean to blog more than I do these days, but my days are full and tiring. That, plus I'm still trying to figure out how much I feel like I can say about work or immigration in general and be an ethical immigration attorney who wants a future in public service. I had all these news items I wanted to write about, and forgot to.

Lemme see what I had. Uh..there was a 300-person raid in South Carolina. Hate the feeling the administration's getting every raid it can in before leaving office. Hope the community's doing OK. Uh..I found out the extent to which U.S. Attorney's offices spend huge chunks of time prosecuting not-at-all-dangerous people for illegal reentry and keeping them in federal prison for a couple years before deportation. It's the #1 prosecution in some offices. This does not strike me as getting the bad guys. Er. I had more. Various stuff is BS. Yeah.

Today everyone who normally answers phones was out of the office except for me, so I took the full assault. It was pretty brutal. We only go on jail visits a few times a month, and we only answer phones 2 hours a day, and you still feel like all you do is give people really bad news. How do you explain to someone that given the procedural posture of someone's case, the judge absolutely will not care about the precarious medical position of his citizen child? If you know, can you write it up and send it to me so I can say that next time?

"Tour of duty" might have been a more accurate phrase than I realized to describe this job, because today I felt like the law I practice is closest to battlefield medicine. Everyone in the field says "triage" and "on the ground" a lot. Don't get me wrong, there are lots of good (and slower-paced) days - this just wasn't one of them.

Anyway, this weekend we take our last big trip for a long time (phew) to see our beloved buddies get married. It will be a wonderful, love-filled, sunny outing - my favorite kind. And I spend most of next week at a fellowship conference in D.C. networking, getting inspired, all that crap :) So this is a great time for some renewal of the spirit.

Full post as published by Peanut Butter Burrito on October 09, 2008 (boomark / email).