YAKIMA, Wash.- La Casa Hogar will hold their Citizenship Clinic on August 5, at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church.
The Citizenship Clinic offers free or low-cost legal assistance to those that are interested in becoming a U.S citizen.
“Folks are welcome to come in, they can get council for their case, where we tell them if they’re eligible or not,” said Eilish Villa Malone, director of citizenship legal services. “If they have any issues with their case, we’ll look up criminal records, we’ll do an analysis, make sure that they’re eligible and then we will fill out their forms, which is a pretty big part of it; the application for naturalization is actually twenty pages.”
La Casa Hogar focuses on culturally competent trauma informed legal services. Rafael Torres, Department of Justice accredited representative, said that fear and lack of money affects undocumented people to the point that they don’t want to talk about their immigration status.
“There’s a lot of people that don’t really want to pursue because they don’t know about the process, they don’t have the means to cover and ways of having the money to cover, but I just want to say that everybody is welcome,” said Torres. “We don’t charge you and we find ways to help you.”
