Steve Forester

Immigration Policy Coordinator, Raritan Valley Community College

Steve Forester has since 2007 served as Immigration Policy Coordinator for the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH).  He was a staff attorney (1979-1985), board member (1986-1992), and supervising attorney (1992-1995) at Miami's Haitian Refugee Center.  Steve is the author of “Haitian Asylum Advocacy: Questions to Ask Applicants and Notes on Interviewing and Representation,” which appeared in the New York Law School Journal of Human Rights (Spring 1993).  His advocacy for Haitian refugee rights was profiled in Spring 1994's Boston University Public Interest Law Journal.  In 2000 he received Stetson University Law School's Wm. Reece Smith, Jr. Public Service Award (2000).  Steve has led campaigns to create the Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act of 1998 (HRIFA) and the Haitian Family Reunification Parole Program (HFRP), under which respectively 20,000 Haitians became legal permanent residents and 8,000 beneficiaries were paroled into the United States.  He has worked to help achieve and preserve Haiti's Temporary Protected Status designation and to stop ongoing deportations currently spreading COVID-19 worldwide.