Geography major and senior Claire Bonzani ’22 is making a difference to asylum seekers. She volunteers at AsylumConnect to help digitally connect LGBTQ+ asylum seekers to a variety of resources through a free web and mobile app.
I was inspired to start volunteering with AsylumConnect after taking Professor Kraly’s (now Professor Mitchell-Eaton’s) course International Migration and U.S. Immigration in spring 2020. Through this class, we discussed various geographic, political, and social trends in both national and global migration, while working on research projects through The Center in Utica and Bassett Healthcare.
Seeing the work that The Center does to address the trends in immigration/migration that we learned about in class was a great experience, and it motivated me to pursue an opportunity volunteering with AsylumConnect — an organization that created the first digital catalog of resources specifically for LGBTQ+ asylum seekers. I got involved with AsylumConnect in June 2020, helping to expand their digital catalog of resources to all 50 states (which we reached by the end of 2021).
More recently, I’ve been tasked with helping to launch AsylumConnect’s efforts to list services for all U.S. territories (hopefully by the end of 2022). It’s definitely a challenge working with territories compared to states, but it’s been really rewarding working within current trends in migration to help connect asylum seekers with safe and affordable social services.
Since 2016, AsylumConnect has made 140,000+ connections between LGBTQ+ people fleeing persecution and vetted affirming services, the majority of which is in the United States, but also in Mexico and Canada. AsylumConnect’s resources include: social services, legal aid organizations, food pantries, housing, education, and medical and mental health clinics.