With the possibility of DACA being terminated in the near future, nearly 580,000 DACA recipients could be left without any form of protection or ability to work.
Many nonprofit legal service providers prioritize humanitarian and family immigration pathways, while numerous employers are unaware of their ability to sponsor DACA recipients for various immigration visa statuses or do not have the ability to pay for an expert immigration attorney.
P2P seeks to bridge these gaps.
Our program brings together attorneys with decades of experience providing management-side legal services to various entities such as nonprofit agencies, multinational corporations, hospitals, and universities and attorneys who have specialized in representing DACA recipients.
Employers can sponsor DACA recipients to receive work visas, but many often do not know how to begin or do not have the ability to pay for an expert immigration attorney. Through P2P, experienced immigration attorneys are available to provide free legal consultations to DACA workers and their employers.
P2P also connects nonprofits, colleges and universities, and government agencies who sponsor DACA workers with pro bono legal representation.
In addition, our attorneys can train and support immigration attorneys in assessing employment-based options for DACA holders and representing DACA employers.
The Cornell Immigration Law and Advocacy Clinic is part of the P2P network. The clinic has been working on legal matters for DACA recipients since 2020 and has now integrated P2P projects into its work. Professor Jaclyn Kelley-Widmer is the managing attorney for P2P and supervises clinical law student attorneys working to represent DACA recipients on a variety of cases, such as advance parole. Law students also create training materials and deliver public-facing presentations on DACA and related issues. For example, the clinic presented a webinar on Advance Parole in collaboration with FWD.us and gave a workshop on supporting undocumented students for Cornell faculty and staff.