Aileen Josephs’s clients remind the Florida immigration lawyer of her own family history.
Her grandfather fled Poland for China, eventually settling in New York, where her father grew up poor and speaking Yiddish. As a young man, he went to Cuba for work. Imprisoned after the Bay of Pigs, he ultimately moved to Mexico where Josephs was born.
She never felt fully at home. The society reminded her that she was Jewish, while her parents admonished her, “Always have your passport valid; you always need to know that you have a way to escape.”
Her struggle with identity and her sense of social justice coalesced into a career at Brandeis University, when she interned at Greater Boston Legal Services. Working with Salvadorian refugees, she empathized with their challenges. Her first job, with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), took her to New York.
Today, she obtains green cards and foster care for Mayan teenagers who, driven by economic desperation, leave behind parents and siblings in Guatemala to seek work in America.
“The Mayans have the same needs that my father and my grandfather had, and the same issues—poverty and lack of access because they can’t communicate.
