Last year, the New York City Unaccompanied Minors Initiative was established in order to deal with the thousands of cases of underage immigrant children in New York. So far, the initiative has proved successful, granting asylum for 14 foreign national children. This has met Melissa Mark-Viverito's aim of providing representation for every undocumented child facing deportation.
Lawyers trained
The initiative has trained 5,000 lawyers and volunteers in order to help the cases, Ms Mark-Viverito said. Fans of the scheme say cases with a lawyer are always more successful than cases without one. Around 91 per cent of children facing deportation without a lawyer are removed from the country, compared to only 22 per cent of undocumented children who had a lawyer. Source: New York Daily News
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