When attorney Nadia Galash arrived with her deaf Ukrainian client at the Los Angeles asylum office for their second scheduled interview, Galash hoped that this time they would finally be able to move forward.
The woman needed a chain of interpreters — someone who could shift between Russian Sign Language and American Sign Language and a second person who could go between American Sign Language and spoken English. During their last visit, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services hadn’t been prepared to have the pro bono interpreters that Galash had found for her client appear virtually.
