Immigration Evaluations
What is an Immigration Evaluation?
An immigration evaluation is a mental health evaluation that assesses various psychological aspect involved in immigration cases and are recognized by the immigration courts. Every evaluation is highly personalized to take into account the individual experiences of the person coming in for an assessment.
Simply put, an immigration evaluation is a way to document “evidence” of the emotional scars or traumas one carries that can help support one’s case for asylum, acceptance into the DACA program, or the cancellation of the removal of a loved one—for example—when appearing before immigration courts.
I obtain this information through a combination of interviews and assessments. Because of the various components involved in completing a thorough evaluation, it may take several weeks to complete. Before you feel overwhelmed by the timeline components of this process, the work is mostly on my end. You already know yourself better than anyone else, you know what you’ve been through, and the potential hardships you may have endured or will endure; you already have the answers to the questions. I then evaluate the assessment results in order to document the findings in a manner that can be presented in the immigration courts.
While I am a therapist, an immigration evaluation is not the same as therapy. If you are currently seeing a therapist, they may be able to provide me with additional information pertaining to mental health conditions. However, the documentation often varies as therapy and immigration evaluations are very different processes and involve different types of training.
What kinds of immigration evaluations do I do?
I generally complete:
Hardship Waivers
Asylum
VAWA
U-Visas & T-Visas
Why should you get an immigration evaluation?
That’s a great question. While having an immigration evaluation does not guarantee the success of one’s immigration case, oftentimes an attorney may suggest one. The reasoning for this is that immigration evaluations have been seen to have a positive impact on immigration court cases and are oftentimes more successful than cases that go without one.