Dream Works: The Immigration Lawyer

The tie-wearing, court-going, corporate lawyer career path pictured in TV shows like “Suits” is one that feels familiar, so I wanted to learn more about the journey to becoming a social justice lawyer, or what Monika Batra Kashyap referred to as a “rebellious lawyer.”

So, in continuing with our venture to find a ‘dream’ career, this week I met with Monika Batra Kashyap, immigration lawyer and visiting clinical professor at Seattle University School of Law, to learn more about her career path.

Batra Kashyap didn’t always know that she wanted to be a lawyer, let alone an immigration lawyer, but she wanted a large aspect of her job to be helping people. Her career path in many ways started before she was born as a part of her personal history — her parents are immigrants — and took a more concrete form during Batra Kashyap’s undergrad experiences in New York City.

“It has been so rewarding to do immigrant justice work. It taps into my politics. It taps into my lived experience, my ancestors, my relationship to this country, to history,” Batra Kashyap said.  

In starting her college process, Batra Kashyap explained, “I didn’t know anything about lawyering beyond corporate lawyering, so [social justice law] was not on my radar at all.” After deciding she did not want to pursue a foreign service major at Georgetown, Batra Kashyap moved to New York and majored in Middle Eastern and South Asian languages at Columbia University, where she studied Hindi.

 “So I ended up going to Columbia, because when I visited there I felt the pulse of immigrants everywhere,” she described.

In her journey to immigration law, Batra Kashyap was searching for where she felt like she belonged.

“The way I actually came up into social justice law was through finding my affinity group,” she said.

When Batra Kashyap arrived at Columbia, she tried out various clubs that in some way aligned with her values (a feminist group — which was mostly white women — and a rape crisis counseling group), before finding her fit: a South Asian domestic violence support organization.

She said she remembered thinking, “We’re feminists and we’re South Asian, and some of you speak the same language I speak. We look the same with the same color skin. Wow, this is what affinity feels like.”

While volunteering as a sophomore in college, she was exposed to social justice lawyers and befriended lawyers who worked at The Legal Aid Society in New York. “I remember meeting them and they had sneakers and jeans. I was like, you can look like this and talk like this and act like this and be a lawyer? How does that work?” Batra Kashyap said.

Batra Kashyap worked as an interpreter as a go-between for lawyers and survivors before interning at TheLegal Aid Society in Brooklyn.

It was during this time that she realized this was what she wanted to do, and what would make her happy. In addition to her own happiness, Batra Kashyap explained how “it was a path and for my immigrant parents, it signified success.”

Before going to law school, Batra Kashyap worked as a paralegal for two years: first in public benefits and then in immigration law. While her parents were slightly alarmed at her choice to delay law school, Batra Kashyap knew this exploration was something she needed to do.

Reflecting, she said, “I [wanted] to figure out more what kind of lawyer I want to be … So then I did and then I was in the immigration law unit as a paralegal for a year, and I loved it.”

After graduating from the U.C. Berkeley School of Law Batra Kashyap went directly into immigration law work and has been doing it ever since. When she moved back to Seattle, her hometown, Batra Kashyap worked briefly and rigorously for a for-profit removal defense firm. The firm worked to defend people who were “deemed to be deportable by the government.” Unlike in the criminal justice system, there is no system of public attorneys for immigrants facing deportation.

Batra Kashyap explained that “in the criminal justice system there is a right to an attorney when your liberty is at stake, but in the immigration legal system, there isn’t that same parity.”

This work took place through trials but often not in the type of courtroom we immediately picture.

Batra Kashyap said, “If it wasn’t in a court in Seattle, it was in a court that is located inside a detention center. … I would have to meet clients … in rooms with no windows and no air. Even the courtroom, no windows, no air, just locked with guards standing at the doors.” 

For these two years, Batra Kashyap worked tirelessly, commuting back and forth from the detention centers and working nights and weekends.

For her, some of the most challenging aspects of being an immigration lawyer are when cases don’t work out and she feels trapped within a broken system.

“I love it when I am able to give people the good parts of the system, but when I have to give the bad parts of the system, that’s when it feels like I’m part of the system that is saying no, and it does that probably 90% of the time,” she said.  

In the next, but not final, chapter of Batra Kashyap's career, she worked as a clinical professor for 12 years. In this position, instead of having 100 clients at once, she had four clients at a time. Batra Kashyap described being a clinical professor like running a residency program: She was the head surgeon and her group of third year law students, the residents. Under her guidance, they worked together for their clients.

Just like the removal defense firm, working for an academic institution had its values and vices. She said that being a professor “fed other parts of me, like the teaching part and the mentorship part … but I will say that it was definitely not the most exciting of my jobs in terms of the lawyering, and I will also say that it was probably the most oppressive place to work … a huge academic institution and how hierarchical they are and how much systemic racism there is built into [the institution] … versus a nonprofit.”

So what does it mean, and what does it take to be a rebellious lawyer, I wondered. The concept of the rebel lawyer was created by professor Gerald López at the UCLA School of Law. Batra Kashyap thinks about it in the broadest sense of the word. It’s a kind of lawyer that tries to fight against the status quo and thinks of clients as partners in that fight.

“To be a rebellious lawyer, as an immigration lawyer, is to recognize how the system is a failed system, or how it is harmful … but the most important thing is how you treat your clients,” Batra Kashyap said.

Instead of thinking in terms like “I am helping my clients,” Batra Kashyap asks us to think, instead, about how clients help lawyers fix a broken system.

“‘Rebellious lawyering to me is even rebelling against the concept, the traditional model of lawyering, that believes that lawyers are on top,” Batra Kashyap said. “When your client says thank you to you, which they will always do … really you should be saying thank you to them for trusting you while engaging in such an untrustworthy system, in trying to make the system better. And showing you how the system works because without their engagement we wouldn’t be able to see how unjust the system is.”

Batra Kashyap said, “It’s so rare in college for there to be exposure to this type of non-traditional lawyering. …  If I had known about it, I would have saved a lot of time.”

Batra Kashyap described an experience she recently had with a client to me. “The most rewarding part of being an immigration lawyer is when you’re able to help transform someone’s life from a life of no safety to a life of safety,” she said. “And, if you are lucky, you get to see that happen in your lifetime because sometimes these cases take so long.”

A few weeks ago, she had one of these moments. “I got a text from a client I helped in 2016 apply for asylum,” she said. “And now, almost eight years later, she just had a daughter, got married. … I got to see such an evolution because I knew what it took for her to get from the incredibly traumatized place that she was [in] when we applied for asylum, which was just a few months after she came from The Gambia.”

“I got to see the picture of the baby and the minute I saw that, I cried,” she continued. “That makes me really happy because I know that those pieces of paper, and there were a lot of them, all those pieces of paper that we put together, all the advocacy, it really changed her life.”

When I asked Batra Kashyap for this interview, she told me that she is currently in a moment of transition, deciding where she wants to take her immigration law career next. I thought this was all for the better. I’m learning that finding our passions may happen in a moment, in an internship or in a volunteer experience, and that even after it all clicks into place, the journey continues. I am excited to see where and who Batra Kashyap fights for next, and I thank her for sharing her journey with us.

Wishing you luck in all your dream-catching endeavors, especially the rebellious ones.

Dream Works: The Producer

The sleeping voyages to weird places and with stranger people, the daytime rambles that are only slightly more rational: I’ve always been good at dreaming. To my chagrin, but not surprise, I was recently informed that my biggest red flag is that my head is often off somewhere in the clouds. Yet, despite all this dreaming, in college I find myself a tad bit lost: How do people discover their dream jobs? In this column, I endeavor to not only stumble upon my future career, but maybe yours too…

In honor of the recent screening of All Static & Noise here at Tufts, today we will meet David Novack, producer and sound engineer, of this new, exposing documentary. The film is a collection of testimonies from family members of Uyghurs who have been detained and survivors of Chinese “re-education camps.” Their stories bring attention to the “mass brutality of state-sponsored oppression in Western China,” of the Uyghur population. 

How Novack found himself in the position to help build an international platform for Uyghurs to share their stories began back in 1982 at UPenn. He was studying engineering, singing with choirs, and performing in “music pits,” when he met his wife Nancy, film editor on the documentary, and back then, a film major. After a quick stint in the pharmaceutical industry, Novack immediately sought out a different career path: one that would stimulate the “music-side” of his brain. 

“I came across a music video in 1985…and I was listening to the sound of the drum in this piece of music, and it became clear that there was an engineer behind the creation of that sound,” Novack said. So, off he went to Berklee College of Music for music production and engineering. 

For the next decade, Novack worked in sound mixing for film, but he always knew he wanted to someday produce. The first story that found him was inspired by the history of his great uncle, a famous Jewish liturgical musician in Ukraine. This inspiration would become his first documentary, Songs of Odessa. After producing, Novack said, “I sort of had this two-sided thing again, where I really liked filmmaking and I had been learning the language of film through mixing.” 

Songs of Odessa took Novack to Ukraine, while his next expedition would lead him to the U.S. mid-Atlantic. A pitch that began as a “positive reality show” about researchers (the market, more focused on reality TV like The Bachelor, wasn’t ready), turned into a Human Rights documentary that exposed the dangers of the mountaintop removal in West Virginia and Kentucky: Burning the Future: Coal in America. Novack said, “I found that the nature guy in me, who was very much connected to my father, who was a landscape architect and botanist, said ‘wow, this has landed in my lap for a reason. I am meant to make this film. And I’m going to make this film.’” 

I know that Novack’s career path has been a winding one, but we are learning that following passions often are, so stick with me. These experiences along the road, for Novack, were the catalyst for a strong filmmaking drive and “solidified not only the filmmaking process, but [his interest in] making films that have some connection to human rights…bringing awareness to things that are going on that people don't know about.” 

Another career pivot occurred when Novack became a professor. He has now produced four films, and teaches graduate and undergraduate film and sound studies at a university in Lisbon. “I decided that ….I would teach sound and film so that I could share my knowledge and continue to grow and get to do research in the sound sphere, but with a little more liberty in time.” Novack explained, “there's more freedom of time in academia than there is in industry, for sure.” 

From sound engineer, to producer, to professor, Novack’s career is not a sedentary one. “You know, I feel like these things call to me. People ask what's your next film? I don't really know yet,” Novack said. 

While traveling in China, at the request of the U.S. State Department, to share Burning the Future Coal of America, Novack met Janice Angle Ford, who became his co-producer of All Static & Noise. From the get-go the new film was about human rights, but was not initially about the Uyghurs but more general changes in China. 

During that filming Novack explained, “we learned of what was escalating in Shinjang and the Uyghur region. The more I dug into it, the more I realized it really had to be a film of its own.” He went on to say, “that's how the paths are - not linear, right? Our career paths are often not linear nowadays. They don't need to be linear. I think a linear career path is a thing of my parents' generation.” 

I asked Novack if he was living his dream career. It was a question I was scared to ask because career satisfaction feels deeply personal, and I also worried if the mere concept of living our dreams bordered on being too cliché. In any event, to share our journeys is vulnerable, so I thank Novack, for sharing with us today. This is what he said: 

“I don't feel like I'm living my career dream because I don't think that really exists. I think we can have career dreams. And then when we are in them, if we are thinking people, we're usually thinking about other things that we really want to get done. And it doesn't necessarily mean another career. But even just like my next film… I honestly don't think for me, I don't think it exists [a dream career], because I love to do everything.” 

Based on our conversation, I know that as an audience we can expect more Novack produced films in the future (maybe even fiction?), but for today I would like to end with All Static & Noise. Here is what you should keep in mind before watching: 

In 2017 the Party Secretary gave a speech to communist officials at Xinjiang University, which “painted Uyghur and other ethnic minorities in the Uyghur Region as ‘terrorists,’ guilty of ‘separatism.’” Novack said that “[the official] said that people have to speak the party line, and anything else, anything outside of what it’s permitted to be said, is static and noise and all static and noise has to be eliminated.” In referring to itself as All Static and Noise the film is a revolution; a declaration that, despite the risks, noise will be made. Spreading awareness helps amplify the brave voices that speak out for freedom and safety. With that said, I will keep you posted on when All Static and Noise comes back to Boston! 

Wishing you luck in all your dream-catching endeavors… 

The Somerville Flea Showcases Local Vendors and Businesses

As October comes to a close, Davis Square will have to say goodbye to the Somerville Flea for another season. Located on the corner of Holland Street and Buena Vista Road, the Somerville Flea has been open every Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. since August. The vibrant market features live music and welcomes customers and vendors of all ages.

The market is home to a variety of businesses and vendors, each with their own tent and tables. One tent offered all light blue and green furniture, as well as plates, mugs and old books. There are also multiple vendors with posters just waiting to be put up on a dorm room wall.

Helene Matteson, owner of Urban Kitchen Handmade Soap, described the market’s environment.

“It’s a mixture of farmers markets, resellers, vintage and artists,” Matteson said. “Everyone is always very supportive.”

Matteson and her soap brand were momentarily on a hiatus from the flea market, but are back for the season and the foreseeable future. Beginning with handmade soap, her business has expanded to a wide variety of products over time.

“I started with making handmade soap. I started making it for myself and people, and I gave samples and people liked it,” Matteson said. “[It] expanded into soy candles, bath and body products such as natural perfume, lip balm and massage and body oil.”

Matteson elaborated on the sense of community among the vendors at the flea market.

“People that have been here for years know each other,” Matteson said. “I know a lot of vendors because we’re set up next to each other and through the markets I’ve done through the years.”

Matteson also noted what she loves the most about being a vendor at the Somerville Flea.

“I think Somerville really supports its artists, and I think Davis Square has a really good community,” Matteson said.

Carolina and her business Recycled Glass have been coming to the Somerville Flea for 11 years, and over time she has seen the market grow.

“We have more vendors now, at the beginning it was just a few. Now it's more vibrant,” Carolina said. “It has always been a good market for me.”

Carolina has gotten to know some of the Somerville Flea mainstays over the years.

“Now, I know many of the vendors … and many, many of the customers,” Carolina said. “We do have many local people that actually go every Sunday. We get a lot of parents and students that come to visit their children’s school.”

Carolina mentioned the spirit and ambiance of the market as one of the reasons she has returned for so many years.

“This is the most, at the same time professional, but good vibe and laid back market,” Carolina said. “I like the diversity … and there’s always something different. You have to check it every week to see what you find.”

Her table displays a collection of glass jewelry including earrings, bracelets, statement pieces and more delicate necklaces. Like Madison, Carolina started making her products — recycled glass jewelry — for herself.

Recycled Glass' booth is pictured at Somerville Flea Market.

“It was my hobby and then people started asking, ‘can you make this, can you make that,’ and it became a business,” Carolina said.

On the theme of upcycling, Alexandra DiMauro started MayFly, an upcycled fashion business that she sells at flea markets in Boston.

“I started upcycling to combat the fast fashion industry and use second-hand material for all of my pieces, so that I could create something new out of old textiles and garments,” DiMauro said.

DiMauro, who has previously been a vendor at the Fenway Flea and the New England Open Market, is new to the Somerville Flea.

“[The Somerville Flea] is particularly nice because there’s really nice people that run it so they are really attentive to the vendors … which isn’t always the case for every market,” DiMauro said.

The market serves as a way for vendors like DiMauro to make new connections and generate publicity for new businesses.

“I definitely have had certain people come to different markets that I’ve been doing to look for my work, which is pretty cool,” DiMauro said.

Kevin Guicho, who is a collector and owner of Wicked Güicho, has been coming to the Somerville Flea for 10 years. Following in the steps of their mother, who has been collecting for 34 years, Guicho has continued this tradition.  

“I never would have seen myself doing this way back when. It actually started with my mother and my aunts,” Guicho said. “They were in Somerville and they came across the flea during the first season.”

When the Somerville Flea first opened, it became the perfect opportunity for Guicho to start their business and put their collection to good use.

Andrew Wiley, another vendor at the Somerville Flea, is the owner of High Energy Vintage, a storefront that sells vintage clothing, belts and shoes.

“I started this vintage business close to 15 years ago as a booth at the Solo Vintage Market in the South End,” Wiley said. “Then I opened up a storefront in Teele Square about 11 years ago.”

Like Carolina, Wiley has gotten to know the community well via the market.

“I know a lot of people that are coming by. I’ve watched kids grow up,” Wiley said. “The flea is definitely a very community-oriented event.”

The Somerville Flea season will come to an end on Monday. The last market will be Halloween themed, with vendors dressed in costume and handing out candy to market-goers. Make sure to mark your calendars with this special edition!

Notes from the New York Underground

I enter from the West 86th Street station on Saturday, Feb. 18. I scan through the turnstile using Apple Pay, thinking about how taking the subway felt much more romantic when the only option was a MetroCard, and I make a mental note to buy one for the way back. On the platform, a girl pulls her boyfriend away from the tracks as the train pulls into the station. I push myself into the car. The downtown bound 1-train is packed.

Usually when I take the subway, I keep my eyes glued to my phone (typically playing the New York Times’ game Spelling Bee), or my head tucked safely behind a book, avoiding all eye contact and conversation. I customarily remind myself that it’s vital to keep aware of my surroundings while seeming engrossed in something else. I try to build a world that's impenetrable. Exposure feels unsafe. I never take the first train car, that’s usually pretty empty. There’s nowhere else to run if there's a problem. The first car is a trap. Those are the types of things ingrained in New York teenage girls.

Two people are reading books, a two-year-old is on an iPad with the music blasting out loud — her mother’s on the phone and a man in a brown fur coat and a black and white patterned silk bandana with wire headphones and gold framed sunglasses covering his eyes nonchalantly leans against the doors.

“Stay clear of the closing doors.”

One of the people reading, a girl, talks to her friend, or possibly her sister, about her book. “Her parents are mathematicians … they be flirting with math,” she says. She shows the photographs in the book to her companion as she describes the different characters and their names. A child next to them looks on, and the three look at the book together.

There’s an ad for “Degrees Without Debt,” a “Rolling Bike Party,” “Tap Your Free Fares Away” and “Thierry Mugler at the Brooklyn Museum.”

I leave the 1-train to switch to the D-train at 59th Street.

On the platform, there is a woman selling candy bars: Twix, Milky Ways and Snickers. Her daughter runs around her in circles and swings on the stair railing. Her sparkly pink backpack bounces up and down with her movements.

There’s a man playing the accordion with a brown cowboy hat on. At first, he is encircled by a crowd. When a C-train arrives, the crowd disperses, and only one listener places money (a few dollars) in his trunk.

By the track, there is a woman in bright pink pants and beige stilettos talking to a French family who is visiting. She says, “Je m’appelle Rachel.” These are the only words she offers up in French. She gives the family directions and goes on to tell them she’s an actor. Taking their phone, she types in her TikTok handle. “I’m kind of big on TikTok,” Rachel tells them. The family takes a picture with her.

She has a white headband on, with curly hair poking out of a high bun, like a bunny’s tail sitting on her head. Her tote bag says, “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return — Moulin Rouge.”

I decide she feels approachable. I tell her I’m a college student writing an article about the subway. She looks down at me from her high-heeled perch with a look of warmth and a hint of condescension.

“Why are you taking the subway today, and where are you from?” I ask.

She tells me she’s from Chicago and in town to see plays; she has already seen “Hadestown” and “Moulin Rouge” (hence the merch) this week and been to a few auditions. She tells me excitedly she had an audition this morning that went really well. She’s taking the subway today to get to the Wolf play at the MCC theater.

I thank her for her time. She is the only person I talk to on my trip to the underground. She is the only one who I felt was approachable. I find it ironic that she is not even from New York.

“A downtown D-train is approaching the platform.”

The D-train smells overwhelmingly like weed and is just as crowded as the 1-train. There’s an entire family of five fast asleep. The baby is asleep in her stroller, with a beaded bracelet over her coat sleeve.

Three girls board the train speaking Japanese. Their enthusiastic conversation is interrupted with English phrases like, “you never know.” One has blue hair.

“Excuse me, stroller coming through.”

A man dressed in all blue — blue vintage cap, puffy blue coat, black sunglasses and Balenciaga sneakers — holds a sleeping child. Impressively, he begins speaking in Japanese to the girl with blue hair. “I travel a lot,” he explains.

I try to sneak a photo of the blue man and the child, but something about taking their picture makes me feel guilty.

There’s a lot of love on the subway. We whizz by a couple kissing on the tracks, and I’ve seen a dozen parents holding their children tight. Between the love there are also many blank stares and eyes glued to screens. At moments, it feels like the underground world could exist outside of time — with people in all sorts of clothing and styles, from all over the world, speaking different languages. Alas, the portable phones bring us back to the present.

And in some cases, there is a little too much ‘love.’ “Adore me, kiss me, surprise me, tease me,” half-naked women with candy covering their nipples exclaim from a lingerie ad plastered on the train wall. After doing some research into the Adore Me lingerie brand I learned that this Valentine’s Day promotion is not their first advertisement faux pas. In 2019, Adore Me released an MLK Day sale with the slogan, “We have a dream … about new lingerie!” Needless to say, people found the ad to be incredibly offensive and some suggested boycotting the brand. According to the article, none of their board members were people of color or women.

Later, on a less populated train, on my way back uptown, I’m tired and keeping my attention on my surroundings is getting harder. A girl in all red with her nails each painted a different color bobs her head to her music while pursing her lips. When she realizes she’s dancing, she stops.

A man yells across the car, “This train is not going uptown!” My heart drops for a moment, Shoot, have I been going the wrong direction this whole time? I think to myself. “My phone says it’s Motown!” the same man exclaims and presses play on his phone. It was all a joke. My nerves settle. He begins to sing “My Girl” and he’s pretty good. The music moves more clearly into my line of vision, and I realize there are two men singing. They hold out hats for money. A man in the back swings to the music, though his face remains serious. A woman sings along at the end.

The train gets crowded again at 34th Street.

“Stay clear of the closing doors.”

A woman on the verge of tears walks through the aisle asking for change. She says, “I’m suffering, and I have no one in my corner.” Most people, who are not already fixated on their phone screens, bring their gaze to the speckled floor. One girl gives her a quarter; the woman is very grateful.

The couple next to me holds hands and talks in Spanish. He stands, and she looks up at him. He kisses her on the head and gets off at the next stop while she stays sitting.

I’m tired and I don’t want to be on the subway anymore. Thirty blocks to go.

A man says, “Oh, I hate the subway.”

Yeah, me too, I think. But only sometimes. I hate that it can be dirty, smelly, delayed and claustrophobically crowded. I hate when someone walks by asking for money, and I feel conflicted about what I can do. And I hate that the city hasn’t done an effective job either.

Even so, I love that I can travel from my quiet apartment to the bustling Lower East Side in under an hour for $2.75. I love that a microcosm of the city exists just a few feet below all the skyscrapers, and while there is a lot of loneliness and hardship, there is also a lot of love. In the words of Dostoevsky’s actual Underground Man, “To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.”