Marsha Boyce was born in Brownsville, raised in Homewood and currently resides in Oakmont. The 56-year-old is a Penn Hills High School and Geneva College graduate who spent a decade teaching in public schools and has been working with social-service agencies as a family counselor for 25 years now. Her Western Pennsylvania roots run deep, as does her not deeply religious but “pro-God” outlook on how to approach every aspect of her life.
In 2017, Ms. Boyce received an out-of-the-blue Facebook message from a man in Nigeria named Segun Daniel Lawal. The two had a mutual friend, and although Ms. Boyce approached the situation skeptically, those Facebook conversations soon evolved into long phone calls and Skype sessions. He also had an education background and a strong connection to his faith. In 2018, she flew to Nigeria to be with him in person, and sparks flew.
“It didn’t feel like I was meeting a stranger,” she said.
The couple married on Oct. 19, 2019, at a church in Gambia. Ideally, the plan was for Mr. Lawal to be granted a visa so he could come live with Ms. Boyce in Pittsburgh. That process has taken three years now and has so far included two approvals, one revocation of said approval after missing a deadline due to bureaucratic red tape, one interview postponement because of the COVID-19 pandemic and endless hours of frustration at how long it has dragged on.
It’s of some comfort to Ms. Boyce at least that she has the support of the Christian Immigration Advocacy Center, a North Side nonprofit that provides low-cost and sometimes pro bono legal assistance to Pittsburghers struggling to navigate the immigration system, guiding her through the long and windy road to finally being reunited with her husband for good in the United States.
“From the very beginning, they made me feel comfortable, hopeful and what I had in my heart, they also shared the same thing,” she said. “They were very compassionate and patient. I’ve never met any group of people that provide a professional service like that and are so full of love and compassion.”
CIAC is the brainchild of founder Glenn Hanna, 69, of Penn Hills, a recently retired pastor at the North Side’s Allegheny Center Alliance Church. His desire to pivot from preaching the Gospel to helping immigrants and refugees was sparked by a realization that the North Side’s Northview Heights neighborhood was home to a lot of Somali Bantu refugees and a meeting with one of that community’s leaders who said what they really needed was help learning English and legal aid.
The city itself also seems to have come to a similar conclusion given that outgoing Mayor Bill Peduto recently proposed the establishment of a permanent Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs that would provide those communities with language and financial assistance, among other initiatives.
Mr. Hanna officially started CIAC on Jan. 1, 2019, with the goal of serving 100 clients in its first year. It wound up helping 142 clients that year, 242 in 2020 and more than 500 overall representing more than 40 countries as of July. CIAC has also worked with 200 refugees that the University of Pittsburgh referred its way who recently fled Afghanistan and required their help in obtaining special immigrant visas to stay in the U.S.
“We have a mandate as Jews, Christians, Muslims to welcome the strangers among us and love them ...,” Mr. Hanna said. “They’re coming from very desperate situations and they arrive not only with no money or resources, but [also] no means of understanding the culture we’re living in. It gives me an enormous amount of satisfaction to help them.”
He hopes that everyone who comes to CIAC for an intake appointment leaves feeling like “there’s someone here who sees them and shares their heart with them.” It’s not uncommon to see CIAC team members praying and even openly weeping with clients, he said.
Many of CIAC’s legal team actually are not immigration attorneys, but rather accredited representatives who trained through the Department of Justice’s Recognition & Accreditation Program that allows nonattorneys working for nonprofits such as CIAC to represent clients. For example, Ms. Boyce’s accredited representative is Jessica Weaver, 34, of the North Side, who also serves as CIAC’s finance director.
Ms. Weaver has a journalism and social-work background and got involved with CIAC after finding out about it through the Alliance Church. She said CIAC’s work spans multiple legal processes related to immigration while providing more specific services such as offering free translations in any language or tracking down documents that these folks might need but are not sure how to acquire.
“Our goal as Christians is to offer compassionate care for people in their legal needs when they’re at their most stressed,” she said. “We would offer care that goes above and beyond just legal. We want them to know that we do care about their culture and them as people. We’re hoping that we can spread the word that we can be a safe place to navigate really complicated legal processes with people.”
For Ms. Boyce, CIAC has been instrumental in maintaining her sanity as she continues her quest to get her husband here permanently. She is also the mother of two boys — Shaun, 10, and Harvey, 12 — and has set up a GoFundMe page to help relieve the economic stresses she has faced during this process. She praised CIAC for waiving some of the fees she owed and putting her on a payment plan to ease her financial burden.
She said that her husband is “ecstatic about coming” to live in Pittsburgh. He’s been heavily researching the Steel City, and she can’t wait until his visa is finally approved and they “can get on with our lives.” Until that day, she is thankful to have CIAC shepherding her toward an eventual finish line.
“I am just blessed to see people who have dedicated their lives to helping other people’s dream come true,” she said. “The dream of love, the dream of family. That’s the highest honor, love and family. And CIAC’s mission, helping people to be together and have a better life, it’s like the ultimate witness of God.
“When you have them in your life, it’s like being hugged by God.”
Joshua Axelrod: jaxelrod@post-gazette.com and Twitter @jaxelburgh.
First Published: November 28, 2021, 11:00 a.m.
