Women Creating Change: Immigration Attorney Shweta Rathore Shares How She Embraces Compassion and Empathy in Her Journey
“I have learned to hold on to that hope and fight even if sometimes the cost is bidding goodbye to your home and memories of your lifetime!” Today’s woman dreamer, Shweta Rathore is an Immigration Law Clerk with expertise in Asylum and Removal defenses (Domestic violence clients and women persecuted under Caste and religious inclinations). A 2022 LLM graduate of University of San Francisco, CA, Shweta previously was an Attorney in India, where she worked for many Pakistani Refugee young girls and women entering India. Currently, she is working as an Immigration Law Clerk for a prestigious Immigration Law firm in San Francisco, California. She is shaping her career by working in her dream job sector and her motto stands clear “being compassionate and empathetic is futile if we don’t practice it in real life”
1. Tell us your story. You are an Indian origin Law Clerk working at an immigration Law firm in San Francisco, CA. What inspired your interest in law and helping others?
I shaped my career in my imagination when I was 11 years oldI. My inspiration was and has always been my father and back then he served in the UN peacekeeping force in Kosovo, Yugoslavia. I knew I wanted to help people and I carried a strong zeal to some day extend my compassion to the world regardless of color, race, ethnicity, religion, nationality etc. It's never easy being a woman to choose a busy career but I listen to my heart which calls for extending kindness.Thus, I started my journey into the legal field and took baby steps in the direction of serving asylum seekers and Refugees who need the utmost level of compassion and empathy over anything else.
2. You specialize in Asylum claims and removal defense of Domestic violence clients and women persecuted under Caste and religious inclinations. Tell us more about your work in this challenging space, and what you have learned.
I encounter numerous painful and bleeding hearts on an everyday basis. Do they not affect my happy spirit? Certainly,, but then I channelise that sadness towards spirit to push harder and get these applicants a second chance from the system. When I ask my clients their stories, I prefer making them feel at home as only then they can trust me with their truths and with their lives. As their case worker, I try not just to prepare their legal cases but also get them help at mental and emotional level which is so very important for these Asylum seekers who sadly had to choose survival over home. I have learned to be hopeful from my clients, I have learned to hold on to that hope and fight even if sometimes the cost is bidding goodbye to your home and memories of your lifetime!
3. As you build your legal career, how do you hope to empower women in challenging circumstances?
While I work on my goals, my aim is not individualistic. I know one person can’t change the world but we have to do our part in whatever way life expects us to. I hope that in my professional journey, I will be able to touch innumerable hearts and restore hope in them by
giving them a piece of my compassion and empathy which all these women and humans at large need. Being women, it’s not easy to strike a balance between societal expectations and ones you have from oneself. Because being women, we are natural creators and we create harmony and peace for all around us. I hope I can make people believe that in the end it all comes down to collective growth and compassionate coexistence.
4. As the platform for women dreamers, what is your next big dream?
I dream to be better at what I do! I dream to be able to serve in a society which sees pain as pain without any color, race, nationality. I want to serve not only as a significant addition to the life of my loved ones but to this family which is called the universe. My work gives me that opportunity to extend my personality strengths into my profession. It helps me learn and grow with my clients and most importantly it teaches me something about myself every day. That’s life!