Law students from Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law, alongside Professor Michael Bazyler, have created a growing project to assist with the refugee crisis that has come from the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Bazyler initially started the project with two law students, Laura Evans and Sasha Seagull. The group has now grown to 35 volunteer law students and immigration law attorneys from across the country and is working to find Ukrainian refugees’ safety in the United States.
“We basically created a pop-up immigration law clinic specifically for Ukrainians to deal with this emergency,” Bazyler said in a press release.
It can take months for some of the documentation to be processed but the project has had 11 active cases since May.
They titled the project “ДітиМатеріТранспорт: Ukrainian Mothers and Children Transport” which is a connection to the 1930s Kindertransport program that allowed 10,000 Jewish children to enter the United Kingdom from Nazi-occupied Europe prior to World War II, according to its website.
The project is important to Bazyler because of his personal experience as a Russian-speaking Jewish refugee. He came to America in the 1960s with his Holocaust-survivor parents.
“I want to help folks in similar situations as when I came to this country as a refugee,” Bazyler said. “I feel like it’s my time to step up. I already have three children, but I feel like I have a fourth daughter named Ukraine – and that fourth daughter needs my attention.”
Bazyler considers the project part of his responsibility as both a faculty member and a member of the local community.
“One of the things the law school community is supposed to do, if we want, is engage in social action,” Bazyler said.
More information on the project can be found on its website.
