Announcement
Photo: Jo Truong/IRC
Annette Voth and Annette Hunt are a dynamic duo reminiscent of Mario and Luigi, Sherlock and Watson, Abott and Costello or any other favorite pair you can think of that can exist independently of each other, but, when coupled together, deliver a value greater than the sum of their parts. Both women share a tenacity and a clarity of focus when it comes to taking care of clients’ immigration needs. However, their differing approaches in client care and community outreach have balanced so well as to have significantly grown IRC Wichita’s Immigration Services. Last Fiscal Year (FY) 2018, IRC Wichita completed 46 citizenship applications. For this fiscal year, the department is on track to nearly double that amount, having completed 37 since last year.
The steady increase is due to a combination of efforts by both of these women and the productive arrangement between them; a sort of divide-and-conquer strategy. Annette Hunt started out as a volunteer with the IRC in 2016 and joined the office as AmeriCorps Immigration Case Coordination VISTA shortly thereafter. Discovering a newfound passion for immigration work, and having an overall spirited persona, Hunt fell naturally on the work of community outreach, taking it in stride.
Annette Voth praises Hunt, “She’s great; she has great people skills, outreach skills, good documentation skills. She can recognize challenges for people and respond to them. She’ll do wonderfully.”
While Hunt has only been in her position for about two years now, lending new energy to the Immigration Services program, Voth has been working with the IRC for 5 years, attaining the title of Immigration Case Worker in 2016. As for Hunt, she appreciates Voth’s years of experience and grounded nature, and attributes both qualities to be a source of guidance and support in the difficult work of immigration services. Specifically, "from her, I started to be more subtle and calm in delivering bad news. I learned, in a very graceful way, that sometimes you have to let people down. Before, I would just avoid it and let her [Voth] do it. She shows that she cares- it’s not nice to have to share bad news but she showed me how to.”
The demands of immigration service delivery can take both a physical and emotional toil, and the effective way both women have shouldered the work underscores the powerful dynamic they have.
As Voth begins to transition out of her position of four years (this is her last month) and Hunt takes over as the new Immigration case worker, I sat down with both to reflect on the trials, accomplishments, and lessons learned.
The bureaucratic effect.
Voth: One family petition I worked on, a client petitioned to bring over his wife and three children, which is a multi-stage process. The petition to USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) to sponsor his wife and their three kids (who are now teenagers at this point) was approved. The petition was then forwarded to the embassy, but the location of the embassy was suddenly moved to Kenya. They were in Uganda. So they submitted all their documents, attended their interviews, and made the trip all the way over from Uganda to Kenya. And then, because of the presidential declaration requiring additional screening and barring refugees from the seven identified Muslim-majority countries from coming to the U.S., they were denied. They had gone through the whole long process, they were told everything was fine but they were denied at the end. There was a potential of a waiver, so we filed a waiver request, but nothing has come of it yet. That’s the sort of thing that is so frustrating, when everything is done properly and it’s a family that should be allowed to be reunited but then the regulations change and they can’t come.
On proudest accomplishments and working with our clients
Voth: It’s always wonderful if you’ve managed to reunify a family, and that hasn’t happened as often as I’ve hoped because of additional regulatory burden. Processes are stretching out to be ridiculously slow and frustrating. But I remember, there was a wife from Eritrea and she was reunified with her spouse. I got photos showing the gathering and feast celebrating her arrival. Her husband had received a green card, and filed a petition to bring over her and their child. It’s remarkable how patient our clients are, the process is so frustrating and even when things go wrong….in the end, they have always been endlessly polite and understanding. Remarkably, lovely people.
On Immigration and caring for people
Voth: We need overall immigration reform that starts with a basis of understanding of our current situation. We have such resources that we could be doing many times more work than what we’re currently doing- and we would still be able to handle it. If we could just put even small amounts of funding towards it. This idea that we have an immigration crisis that can’t be addressed at the border is simply a matter of we aren’t willing to fund any more immigration agents at adequate numbers and we’re making it harder than it needs to be.
Hunt: I’m an immigrant [from Germany] myself. My personal experience helps me to empathize. When I was applying for citizenship, the offices and people were rude. One time during an office visit, an officer was talking to my husband about me like I was a chair, like I had nothing to say, and I wasn’t a person. But in retrospect, I had the golden ticket compared to what I see other people have to go through.
I care because birth is an accident, I could have been born somewhere war-torn, or where I wasn’t well off. I could’ve been born 50 years earlier in my country during World War II and it would’ve not been so great. I have never felt the sentiment that foreigners have to leave, it’s my country. And I wouldn’t want to deny someone else trying to have a good life. I really feel that saying, “Birthplace: Earth, Race: Human”.
