AN IMMIGRANT IS APERSON who comes to livein a country foreign to them.They may have a variety ofreasons to emigrate, suchas being offered a job, orthe rest of their family is

already living there, or a famine, forexample, is making life hard.A refugee is a person who is fleeing for their life; aperson who is in imminent danger of being wronglypersecuted, imprisoned, tortured or killed.. They are notchoosing to leave as a convenience. They usually leaveall their worldly possessions behind, pick up theirchildren and run.

For one example, a well-known group of individuals whoare persecuted in Africa are albinos. African albinoshave long been dismembered and killed because theirbody parts are thought to have magical powers, orbecause of the belief that albinos are bad luck.

Because of the brutality of human upon human, thereare all sorts of vulnerable populations around the globethat would qualify as refugees if they were to flee theircountry. Many organizations that support refugees havearisen around the globe as a result.

The International RefugeeAssistance ProjectThe International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) isone such organization. Founded in 2008 by fivestudents at Yale LawSchool, IRAP is anonpartisan organizationlocated in New York thatorganizes law studentsand lawyers to developand enforce legal rights forrefugees and displacedpersons. Shortly afterbeing founded, law studentcounterparts at New YorkUniversity and U.C.Berkeley founded IRAP chapters.

What began at a single law school at Yale has bloomedinto a legal movement. The law students realized theimportance of engaging pro bono attorneys to providedirect legal representation to refugees over-seas whonever had access to counsel. The unique model of

partnering law students with pro bono lawyers allows IRAPto leverage every dollar contributed into ten in legal aid.

In 2010, IRAP joined the Urban Justice Center, a publicinterest organization headquartered in New York. Sincethat time, IRAP has established offices in Jordan andLebanon. The network of legal represen-tatives hasgrown to 29 IRAP chapters at law schools in the U.S.A.and Canada, and is supported by over 75 internationallaw firms and multinational corpora-tions that providepro bono assistance.

IRAP serves manydifferent populations ofrefugees, but it servesIraqi refugees because ofthe clear obligations ofWestern countries, andthe U.S. in particular, toprovide relief tounintended victims of theIraq War. IRAP hasexpanded to assistrefugees from

Afghanistan, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iran, Jordan,Kuwait, Libya, Pakistan, Palestine, Somalia, Sudan,Syria, Turkey and Yemen. Increasingly, IRAP isproviding service to more people from Syria because ofcivil conflict, and also many Somalis and Sudanese.

Their mission is to mobilize direct legal aid and sys-temic policy advocacy. IRAP focuses on and prov-ides

RESPONDING TO THEREFUGEE CRISISTHE INTERNATIONAL REFUGEE ASSISTANCE PROJECT

BY MARY MELDRUM

(Pub. Note: The names of our local contacts for thisarticle have been withheld at their request.)

A REFUGEE is a person whois fleeing for their life; a personwho is in imminent danger ofbeing wrongly persecuted,imprisoned, tortured or killed.

No, they are not; not at all. And yet, a lot of people refer to them like they are the same,grouping them together like they are all piling through our “open borders.”

We don’t have open borders.

Immigrants & refugeesare the same thing, right?