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College student from Michigan helps DACA recipients get free legal aid

Fernando Urbina is helping individuals seeking citizenship, DACA renewal, Green Cards and permits.

MICHIGAN, USA — A Harvard University student from Michigan is working to help recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Program get free legal services. 

Fernando Urbina is a rising junior, studying Government with a Secondary Field in Ethnicity, Migration, & Rights. Originally from Paw Paw, Urbina and works as a Partnerships Director at Immigrants Like Us, an nonprofit founded at Harvard University. 

Immigrants Like Us provides free legal service to individuals seeking citizenship, DACA renewal, Green Cards and permits. DACA allows young immigrants who were brought to the United States as children the opportunity to work legally and protects them from deportation.

"The reason why we started was we recognize that many legal aid offices, while they do amazing work, are only able to help a certain number of people in person," Urbina explained. "Other attorneys can cost up to thousands of dollars, and so we want to help families bypass that high cost and be able to help a larger number of people."

RELATED: DACA walk takes place in Grand Rapids

Urbina said his family background has given him an understanding into how complicated the application and documenting process can be.

"I am the son of a Mexican immigrant, and I remember my mom went through a very complicated naturalization process, and so I wanted to give back to low-income immigrants by working on a project that would help streamline these complicated processes and make them much more accessible," he said.

Since attending Harvard University, Urbina said he's met classmates who are Dreamers, fueling his mission help those filing for DACA renewal. 

According to Urbina, the online application takes five to ten minutes. Individuals will go the Immigrants like Us website and enter their information into a Turbo Tax application, which screens cases, preparing the required forms and supporting documents. Those documents are then reviewed by Immigrants Like Us in-house legal team before being sent off.

"Our in house legal team reviews these documents completely for free and makes sure there are no errors before submitting them to the government to reduce the likelihood of them being rejected," Urbina explained.

When asked about this month's Supreme Court decision, which narrowly ruled against the Trump Administration's attempt to end the DACA program, Urbina told 13 ON YOUR SIDE it was a "win," but added more needs to be done to protect DACA recipients.

"It was definitely a huge win for the community, but there still remains a lot of uncertainty because individuals have to renew every two years. So what we wish for is a clear path for citizenship moving forward," he said.

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