For some, the American dream requires lots of paperwork

“Have you ever committed, or threatened to commit, any hijacking, sabotage, kidnapping, political assassination or used a weapon or explosive to harm another individual?” asks Ashley Whelan, a lawyer at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, ticking the crimes off on her fingers.

Zeyah, a bespectacled, 24-year-old immigrant from Afghanistan, gives a tiny shake of the head and mouths a silent, “no.”

Forty-eight questions down. Thirty-eight to go — more, actually; some questions have multiple parts.

“Have you ever assisted, or participated in, selling, providing or transporting weapons ... ?”

It is Tuesday, in a large, sunny conference room on the 28th floor of 155 N. Wacker. Lawyers and translators confer with clusters of immigrants at small tables. They are two hours into the process of filling out paperwork for getting a green card.

Only three hours more to go.

“Have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” Whelan asks.

Slogans are easy, reality is hard

Those grumbling about immigrants invariably try to hide their xenophobia behind a fig leaf of legality. They only want newcomers to do what’s legal, they insist, without having the faintest idea what a complicated, yearslong odyssey being a legal immigrant entails, or how difficult it can be to keep right with American law under the best of circumstances.

“Have you ever been a stowaway on a vessel or aircraft ... ?”

And these are literally the best of circumstances. The morning began at 9:30 a.m. with fresh berries, assorted little pastries and coffee, as volunteer lawyers from Skadden and JPMorgan Chase were walked through how to help one specific group — the 76,000 Afghan immigrants airlifted here after the fall of Kabul in 2021 as part of Operation Allies Welcome — fill out one specific document, the Department of Homeland Security’s 20-page Form I-485, Application to Register Permanent Residence.

The preparatory talk, illustrated with 59 slides, took an hour.

“There are a lot of bars to admission to the United States — criminal, medical,” began Geoff Cebula, a senior lawyer at the National Immigrant Justice Center, which guides Chicago law firms helping immigrants. He touched on fine points that can derail an application, such as “names rendered in different ways on different documents.”

Or addresses. The form asks for every address where an applicant has lived over the past five years, a challenge for those fleeing war zones.

“There may not be street addresses,” explained Cebula. “It may be a town, or a district, or a province. If that’s the information that exists, that’s fine.”

Then there are the security questions.

“Some are factually impossible,” said Cebula, citing question 57, asking applicants if they were Nazi henchmen between 1933 and 1945.

“You need to take them seriously even if they seem silly,” he said.

The lawyers then moved into the next room to meet their clients and translators.

There is a certain naive pointlessness to the questions — it’s hard to imagine anyone actually intent on “opposing, controlling or overthrowing the U.S. government” then admitting to the fact.

Zeyah — I’m not using her last name, so as to not endanger her family back in Afghanistan — listens placidly.

“Do you plan to practice polygamy in the United States?” Whelan asks, then seeing the concept doesn’t register, explains, “marry more than one person?”

She is already married — to a fellow Afghan immigrant.

Legal status carries high price

At 2:02 p.m., Zeyah signs the form, and they start talking about the fee — it costs $1,225 to file the application. That can be waived due to poverty, but Zeyah earns too much to qualify, working full time as an attendant at an airline club at O’Hare Airport.

She lives in Albany Park and goes to school at Northeastern Illinois University, where she is studying computer science.

That’s what got her here — she spent almost five months living at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, before NEIU gave her a scholarship, and she took along her younger sister, Shiringul, 21, who’s filling out her form at the next table.

Both speak English quite well, though there is a stark reality behind that. They are Hazara, from central Afghanistan. A Shia minority — about 10% — in a majority Sunni country, the Hazara are oppressed by the Taliban.

“My life was at risk,” says Zeyah, who began studying English in the first grade. Speaking fluent English is seen as a ticket out to a better life.

Neil Steinberg/Sun-Times

“Because you’re Shia, you’re not [considered] Muslim,” adds Shiringul, who also attends NEIU and hopes to become a lawyer. “Hazara people are always in danger. Bombing. Killing. Kidnapping Hazara people. Torturing them anywhere they want.”

She does find certain official questions silly.

“Some of them, yes,” she allows, before uttering a sentiment not often heard from native-born American citizens. “But it’s the government. They know better than us.”

So did America meet her expectations?

“When I came here, I was really happy. It was really great,” Shiringul says. “A country that is the best. I could never have these opportunities in Afghanistan. At the same time, I was, ‘Oh my God, maybe I’m in shock. It’s a dream.’”

How so?

“I have my freedom. Should I wear hijab or not? Going to school. I can just decide what to study.”

Helping other migrants is ‘why I need to be a lawyer’

Helping Shiringul with this part of the process is Laura Bernescu, an attorney at Skadden for 10 years. She came to this country from Romania when she was 10.

“I can certainly relate to having to fill out forms that are so important and decide the rest of your life, the stress of them, and how it feels to do that,” she says. “Being able to offer a helping hand in that situation is really meaningful to me.”

Bernescu applied for citizenship when she was in law school at the University of Chicago. A discrepancy in addresses nearly derailed her.

“I was almost denied for a technicality,” she says. “When I went into my interview, my driver’s license didn’t have my Chicago address on it.”

One bureaucrat suggested she reapply. But she stood up for herself; there was some hasty rule-bending, and her paperwork went through. That stuck with her.

“I always try to do these clinics for that reason,” she says. “I remember calling my mom and saying, ‘This is why I need to be a lawyer.’”

Memory of the address snafu is one reason Bernescu is so meticulous — they are the last people filling out paperwork, after the room is nearly empty.

“We are not going to get dinged on a technicality,” she says. “It’s not going to happen. Not on my watch.”

Neil Steinberg/Sun-Times