By Andy Posner, Founder and CEO, Capital Good Fund
Immigration is about families. Many Georgia families want to improve their immigration status, but face a hurdle: paying the necessary legal and registration fees. Many have stories similar to newlywed Sonya from Macon, Georgia trying to get a green card for her husband Douglas so he can move to the United States from Nigeria. “An immigration attorney costs thousands of dollars, which is a lot of money,” she said.
Sonya uses a new option for families like hers. Last summer, my nonprofit lender, Capital Good Fund (CDFI), the Capital Good Fund, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) launched a program to offer AILA members the benefit of offering their clients who would otherwise do so a not able to offer affordable financing option to pay for these services. I firmly believe that immigrants shouldn’t have to choose between putting food on the table and living their American dream. We created the Immigration Loan Program to fund their efforts to apply for citizenship, a green card, or asylum. ask family members; fight a deportation order; and more. Since our first loan in April 2009, an $875 loan to cover citizenship costs for a low-income resident of Providence, Rhode Island, we have loaned over $3.6 million to nearly 700 families funded.
The $3,000 immigration loan we are funding for Sonya will accelerate her husband’s ability to live in the United States. She says this financial boost will help her reunite with her husband faster, which “means the world” as they hope to start a family together. Our goal is to be an alternative to other risky financial aid options such as B. Short-term loans, which often charge unattainable interest rates, keeping low earners in a cycle of debt.
Advocate partners help ensure the growth and success of such community development programs thrive. AILA Immigration Attorney Ayesha Chidolue Is All Too Aware of the Obstacles for Noncitizens in Georgia; She is the founder and managing counsel of Chidolue Law Firm, based in Roswell. It was ten years before her younger brother received his green card after family returned from Nigeria, where he was born. “To see my two siblings and I doing well while he, who came from the same household, was suffering was painful to watch,” she recalls, saying she’s grateful she was able to offer financing options to her immigrant clients who don’t harm them in the long run.
We are also incredibly grateful to the GoATL Fund, the impact investing arm of the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta, which invested $500,000 to expand our lending in Georgia. I spoke to Sydney Hulebak, the organization’s Impact Investment Manager, who said: “The GoATL Fund team has followed the great work of the Capital Good Fund over the past few years, so we were excited about the opportunity to support their expansion in . Georgia. In particular, we felt there was a market gap in concessional consumer lending as an alternative to predatory lending that the diverse product lines, including immigration lending, could strategically fill.”
Stories like Sonya’s are countless, in which underserved immigrant communities continue to struggle to secure a future for their families in the United States. It is now more important than ever that immigrants who need financial assistance have access to it, and we hope we can continue to do so in Georgia. To learn more about this resource, visit the Capital Good Fund website.
