The Hit Magazine Miami will be recoginizing the extraordinary work of Cristina Collado in its march edition. Cristina Collado joined the IRC in Miami in 1992, providing case management services to Cuban refugees arriving in South Florida. Later, she supervised the program that handled the resettlement of refugees who fled Cuba by raft in 1994 and 1995 and had been detained at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay.
One of Cristina’s major strengths has been her versatility and willingness to step in and offer help wherever and whenever it’s needed. In 1997, she even assumed accounting duties for the Miami office at time when it was short-staffed.
However, immigration work is where her heart is – and where she is a genuine professional who knows how to maneuver through the bewildering maze of the bureaucracy, knows how to guide her clients past the pitfalls, and knows how to get the job done for them. Over the past 10 years Cristina has personally assisted thousands of clients – many of them anxious or apprehensive – and helped them complete applications for adjustment of status, naturalization, and family reunification and many other important immigration documents on which their futures depend. Along the way, she has served her clients as investigator, educator or counselor – playing whatever role is necessary to complete the task at hand.
Cristina’s dedication and professionalism to the IRC and to the clients she serves – primarily refugees from Cuba, Haiti and Burma – has earned her such a reputation in Miami that the demand for her services is extraordinarily high. Currently, the wait for an appointment with Cristina is three months. So highly valued are her know-how and experience that her clients say they would rather wait the three months rather than get served sooner at another agency.
Cristina says, “I love my job at the IRC. It makes me happy to know that I am helping people who really need this service to succeed in this great country. I feel rewarded when someone simply says, ‘Thank you for your help.’”
