Do You Need a Psychological Evaluation for Your Immigration Case?
The United States immigration process can be lengthy, stressful, and laborious. This is true always and especially now with the current administration. Having a strong mental health evaluation can have a significant impact on your case. Whether you found us yourself or your attorney recommended us to you, we are happy to explore the evaluation process with you.
At Gatewell Therapy Center, we take pride in offering comprehensive psychological evaluations to immigrants in our community and beyond. Whether you’re seeking support for an asylum, extreme hardship, VAWA, or U Visa/T Visa case, we’re honored to walk alongside you in this process, documenting your experiences and providing a detailed report that can help strengthen your case.
There's a reason that top immigration attorneys routinely turn to us to support their work. Most immigrants have only one opportunity to present as strong a case as possible to an immigration judge. We highly recommend working with a mental health professional who has specific training and expertise in immigration evaluations versus a therapist who merely states that they are qualified to perform this critical service. Our director, Dr. Stacey Rosenfeld, was formally trained in full-battery psychological and neuropsychological assessment over 20 years ago and later went on to receive advanced training in immigrant evaluations through the Immigration Evaluation Training Center and Physicians for Human Rights. Our staff has worked with hundreds of clients over the years, providing mental health assessments to people who come from all over the world, and our practice locations in Miami, Florida and New York City position us in critical locations to assist immigrants and their families with their psychological needs. We have performed countless immigration evaluations, assisting immigrants just like you.
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Online Immigration Evaluations in 40+ States
We consult with immigration attorneys on a wide range of cases, including:
- Extreme hardship waivers: Our psychological evaluation can be a critical piece of evidence documenting that a family member would suffer extreme hardship if separated from the immigrant or if forced to relocate to another country in order to remain with them.
- Asylum cases: As trauma specialists, we are uniquely qualified to assess for PTSD symptoms and to examine events and circumstances that significantly impact well-being, supporting asylum to the U.S. in search of safer conditions.
- Domestic violence (VAWA) cases: We focus on assessing for trauma and abuse, detailing the psychological symptoms common in domestic violence victims, assessing clinical credibility, and highlighting less common abuse dynamics.
- U Visa/T Visa cases: If you have been the victim of a crime and are assisting authorities with prosecuting this crime, you might qualify for a U Visa (or T Visa for trafficking). Our evaluations help document what you went through and the emotional impact of the crime.
We perform immigration evaluations in our Miami, New York City, and Greenwich offices and remotely for those located throughout Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
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Our Immigration Evaluation Approach
At Gatewell, you are not a case or file number. You are a human with a story.
We deliberately only take on a few cases at a time so that we can give your case the attention it deserves. We approach each immigrant we evaluate with compassion, care, and empathy. We may never fully understand the events that have landed you in our office, but we provide a welcoming, trauma-informed space for you to share the experiences, fears, and concerns that are central to your case. While immigration evaluations aren’t therapy, many of the folks we’ve evaluated have reported that the process serves as a springboard to important healing and recovery.
We provide a comprehensive assessment of an immigrant’s mental health functioning via clinical interviews, ranging in length from two to three hours. While some evaluators only meet with clients for an hour (or less), we know that longer meetings are required to produce the best report. We also have you respond questionnaires that ask you about your experiences. These are called self-report measures and have been used by thousands of people across ethnic and national backgrounds. Assessments might also involve interviews with family members or a review of relevant records. At Gatewell, you can be assured that our decades of experience determine our methods and how we spend the time with you.
Our reports are typically 15 pages in length (often more), including data from various sources. They contain all of the critical information that can help support a case, increasing the likelihood of a favorable ruling. Our immigration assessment fees reflect the time spent meeting with you (and possibly your family member(s)), consulting with your attorney, interpreting self-report measures, summarizing findings, and writing a thorough psychological report. Court fees are an additional expense due to the highly specialized nature of the preparation required.
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Common questions about immigration evaluations. . .
Are these evaluations therapy?
While some clients may experience the evaluation process as therapeutic, they are not therapy. The purpose is to assess your mental health symptoms for help with your immigration case.
How difficult is the process?
Our evaluations typically take about three hours of meetings with you. Sometimes, folks find these sessions challenging. Talking about emotional events and experiences can be difficult to do. Of course, sharing this information can be helpful to your case. We generally recommend that clients create some space after the meetings for self-care and support.
Why are these evaluations so expensive?
We know they're not cheap, but our evaluations involve hours of assessment and report writing. At Gatewell, we've spent years refining our process, and we consistently hear from immigration attorneys that our reports are comprehensive, well written, and helpful to their work.
Most of our clients have one shot at an immigration evaluation. They prefer to spend a little more to ensure the highest quality.
We are incredibly grateful to be able to offer immigration evaluations to our community, as we find this work to be particularly meaningful and inspirational. If you’re looking for a solid psychological evaluation by a team that has conducted hundreds of mental health assessments with individuals from all over the world, if you’re looking for trauma-informed professionals attuned to the specific symptoms associated with an immigration case, and if you’re looking for a compelling, comprehensive report to help strengthen your immigration case, Gatewell Therapy Center is the place for your immigration evaluation.
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