Partner Grant Sovern Shares Perspective on Importance of Helping Afghan Refugees
Grant Sovern, a Quarles & Brady Immigration partner in the firm’s Madison office, is one of many people in the Wisconsin legal and social services community providing aid to Afghan refugees who were settled in the state after evacuating Afghanistan in August 2021.
PBS Wisconsin and Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR) recently delved into the challenges facing the refugees as they try to adjust to life in a new country and deal with concerns about family and friends left behind. In the stories, Sovern, who also is on the board of directors for the Community Immigration Law Center, talks about the pro bono work he and others are doing to help the Afghan refugees navigate the immigration process.
An excerpt from one of the WPR articles:
"Honestly, when we're at Fort McCoy talking with people about their own asylum case, their own SIV or a way to stay in the U.S., they almost always start out with, 'The most important thing to me is what can I do for my family or my friends or my colleagues who are still in Afghanistan,' and they're deathly afraid, for good reason, (of) what could happen to them," said Grant Sovern, an immigration attorney in Madison.
"What we realized about two months into everybody being here is they're going to have to apply for asylum like everybody else does who is afraid to go back home," said Sovern, who is the board president of the Community Immigration Law Center.