Asylum Success Story: Saadat Ahmadi
December 2023
Afghans served by ALL Iowa partners and the wider provider network in Iowa are seeing results from the expedited processing of asylum claims. In addition to the resumption of interview scheduling by the Omaha asylum office, dozens of Afghans at the close of 2023 have been granted asylum. Saadat Ahmadi is one of these individuals and we share his story here.
“I am a national of Afghanistan and was one of the many thousands of Afghan evacuees who arrived in the United States after August 2021. Prior to arriving in the United States, I had joined the Afghan Air Force Academy as a cadet and a nominee pilot and graduated from Academy in 2018. I was awarded the lieutenant rank by the Ministry of Defense and started my service in the Afghan Air Force.
In 2020, I was awarded a scholarship to the Republic of Slovakia and left Afghanistan for a specialized military flight training in Kosice, Slovakia. I had my military flight school in the Slovak Training Academy at the Faculty of Aeronautics where I flew helicopters on behalf of the Afghanistan Air Force. I was still in Slovakia busy with my flight school and in my last month of flight training when I found out that the Afghan government had fallen to the hand of the Taliban.
This motivated me to join Catholic Charities’ immigration legal services team as an Interpreter/Navigator in March of 2022. I saw the goal and ambitions of the immigration legal services program at Catholic Charities – they wanted simply to help the Afghan community find legal pathways to legal permanent residency in the US and provide navigation tools to help Afghans towards self-sufficiency. These goals were also in accordance with the oath I took while becoming a Lieutenant which was to help Afghan citizens and other people in need.
While I was busy serving other Afghans who needed help to make a new home and future in the United States, I also needed to find my own legal pathway for my own permanent residency here in the US. I reached out to one of the attorneys at Catholic Charities immigration legal services team and was assisted by Dee Patters. She was one of the staff attorneys with Catholic Charities who helped me put together my Asylum application. It was a very stressful time, but I am thankful for the legal help I received and because of my work with Catholic Charities I was able to understand the legal challenges faced by many Afghans.
I am fortunate to share that I recently received the official notice granting me asylum. This allows me to work and live in the US indefinitely and continue serving the Afghan community and other immigrant communities in general. Coming to a different country and finding yourself lost in a difficult immigration situation and being worried about the uncertainty of immigration status is stressful. These were huge psychological pressures for me but were also collectively experienced for all Afghans.
Another positive advancement for me was being given the opportunity by Catholic Charities to learn more about immigration law so that I could become a Department of Justice (DOJ) accredited legal representative. If I was approved, this would allow me to represent immigrants with their immigration applications before the Department of Homeland Security/US Citizenship and Immigration Services. I was provided support and legal training in immigration law by completing CLINIC’s comprehensive overview of immigration law course (COIL).
It was a difficult and unbelievable time for me because I was waiting to go back to my country and serve my people as a military pilot. I arrived in the United States at the ending of 2021. I spent 3 months in one of the military bases in Virginia and then was resettled in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I reconnected with the Afghan community in Cedar Rapids but saw how difficult life would be in this new country and how confusing it would be for Afghans to have a future.
Many Afghans could not go back to their home country but yet they had no pathway for legal permanent status or green card because many of us were in an immigration legal limbo. I heard about the immigration legal services at Catholic Charities in Cedar Rapids. While learning more about the immigration legal services, I was astounded by the work and legal immigration assistance offered to Afghans by the immigration legal services division of Catholic Charities I was able to improve my immigration knowledge by also attending other immigration law related training and had several hundred hours of shadowing with immigration attorneys within Catholic Charities. These hours of learning were instrumental in allowing me to obtain DOJ partial accreditation with the help of Catholic Charities. I am grateful and excited to end this year with wonderful news about my own asylum case and being granted DOJ partial accreditation to represent clients before USCIS.”
