After almost a week in Buenos Aires I am starting to feel pretty comfortable at navigating my way around the city using public transportation. I use the bus at least 2 or 3 times a day to get to and from one area of the city to another and now that I have my SUBE card I don't have to worry about having correct change. So convenient! To get to work I take a bus on the corner of the block near my house to the downtown area, which takes about 40 minutes.
Today at work I spent the majority of the day reading publications and reports that La Fundación Ciudadanos del Mundo has published in relation to Argentinean immigration law. The reports were pretty heavily laden with terminology that I am not very familiar with, so it was slow going, but I'm learning a lot of new vocabulary. One of the projects that I will be working on soon will be to help with the translation of their newsletter. One of my employees has already done the majority of the translation, but because he translated it literally (word for word) it needs a lot of corrections to make it readable.
After completing all the readings I feel a lot more familiar with the Argentinean policies which many of the immigration cases I will be dealing with pertain. In 2010 the government of Argentina passed a law that made it illegal for refugees and immigrants to be deported or discriminated against for lacking identification papers. All citizens--and non-citizens--are legally granted free access to hospital care and education. But a big issue has been that hospitals have been denying immigrants access to medical care when they are unable to present their papers.
Today I worked with my co-worker Juan on a current case of a woman who has been denied access to a heart procedure which she desperately needs. The woman is from Paraguay and had been to the hospital to be examined for her heart problems and was told she would need to undergo a procedure for further analysis, but the hospital refuses to provide it. First they told her it was because she didn't have identification papers and then they told her it was because they didn't have the correct machinery to conduct the tests. If this were so the hospital would be obligated to give the woman a referral to another hospital, which they have not been willing to do. This case, like many others is part of what La Fundación deals with regularly. Sometime this week one of the Social service providers will accompany the woman to the hospital to put pressure on them to provide a referral for the woman to receive the care she needs. If they still refuse to cooperate as a last resort La Fundación will have to notify the police. Juan said I might get to go with the social worker to the hospital if I am in the office when they plan to make the visit.
Tomorrow I am going with the director of La Fundación to the Office of Immigration and Migration to deal with another case and observe the procedure immigrants must take to obtain naturalization papers. Super excited! Sorry for the long post, but I hope this gives a better impression of what my internship is all about. More info to come!
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