What kinds of things might bar a refugee or immigrant from entering the United States? What is our obligation as a UN nation to helping refugees? And what role does faith play in providing services to them? In Part 2 of our special two-part series on Immigration and Refugees, Director of Outreach & Immigration Services at Exodus Refugee Megan Hochbein and Immigrant Justice Program Staff Attorney Rachel VanTyle answer these questions and share some of their favorite moments working with refugees.

What exactly is a refugee? What kinds of screening processes do refugees undergo before entering the United States? What barriers do they typically face and what kinds of services are available to help them integrate into our community? Join host Ashley Caveda for Part 1 of our special two-part series on Immigration and Refugees. She discusses common questions and misconceptions regarding refugees with Director of Outreach & Immigration Services at Exodus Refugee Megan Hochbein and Immigrant Justice Program Staff Attorney Rachel VanTyle.

This month included one of our biggest volunteer events of the year: Refugee Adjustment Day 2015. Coordinated by Immigrant Justice Program Manager Brandon Fitzsimmons and Staff Attorney Rachel VanTyle, the Clinic helped 51 refugees complete green card applications in just one day! In fact, a majority of the photographs* in this month's collage feature men, women, and children who have fled catastrophic conditions in their home countries and who now reside in our community. During this event, we streamed our first live broadcast using the Periscope app. If you're interested in receiving an alert the next time we broadcast live from an event, please be sure to download this app and follow us @NCLegalClinic. We also learned more about Grace Church and all of the ways they are using their position to serve the community via the Grace Care Center.

Rachel VanTyle, the lead staff attorney for RAD, adds that mass volunteer events like this are important for the community and for efficiency’s sake. She says, “What it would take me 4 months to do, we can do in 8 hours with this many volunteers.” Such days also give the Clinic the opportunity to provide services for which we might lack funding. Rachel explains that each application, if completed by a paid attorney, would cost roughly $500 per client. Therefore, by relying on volunteers to help so many people at once, the Clinic is able to provide more than $25,000 worth of services that might otherwise be impossible.