Student Spotlight: Setenay Akdag

How Knowing Another Language Can Save the World (aka the life of an immigration lawyer)

Meet Setenay Akdag. She’s an immigration lawyer, who is an immigrant herself from Turkey. As a multilingual powerhouse, Set learned her fifth language, Spanish, with Fluent City, studying in D.C. and New York. She loves connecting with communities and believes in making lawyers obsolete (wait, what?!). Oh, and what’s she listening to with those huge headphones? Reggaeton. Yep.

Caffeine or Else

“Oh man, I can drink almost ten cups and I’m barely human,” Set says as she sits down with a large cup of coffee from Cafe Grumpy. And we can’t blame her — as an immigration lawyer, she’s been working sixteen-hour days since the election, trying to assure those who now face an uncertain future. But one Wednesday morning, we were lucky enough to have the opportunity to chat with Set before she started her long day.

A Turkish NYC Transplant

When Set was eleven years old, her parents told her she and her family were going on vacation to the states. But she soon realized that she that she was waking up one morning and getting on a school bus and that her entire life was now in a small suburb in Long Island “without any diversity. Everyone’s families had come to the states on the Mayflower,” as she recalls.

Though it was a total shock in the beginning and she didn’t know any English when she arrived, Set realized that she could quickly pick it up watching TV, chatting with her classmates, and reading books (though apparently she was very quiet at first and people thought she was mute). But she recalls the first time that she said something in English to her friends in the cafeteria — it was about her favorite music, and the first time that she finally understood how to read in her English class. And from those moments, she realized, “Oh, okay. I am going to be able to make it here.”

Of course, no immigrant story is complete without a few silly miscommunication anecdotes here and there. Set tells us a story about her and her family going to McDonald’s, and trying to order french fries, and they would say “lonely potatoes,” when they meant to say “just potatoes.” Apparently the dictionary had told her that the word for “just” was “only” or “lonely.” And no one ever corrected her! But the employees at McDonald’s always understood her. She finally learned that “potatoes” were supposed to be called “fries” when she was watching TV .

And so, English was Set’s second language, but during her time in high school and college, she also ended up taking Italian and Arabic. By the end of college, she could speak and understand four languages.

Law & Borders

After graduating, Set knew she wanted to stay in New York and ended up going back to school — this time, to study law. That’s when she discovered the world of immigration law and never looked back. She compared the stories of immigrants from local communities and couldn’t believe how different they were from her own. She and her family and had just come to the states on a plane and were randomly selected for diversity visas. She describes them as a “set of accidents that led [them] to coming here.”

But in reality, she realized the very real reasons that drive someone to leave their country and move to another one — factors like war & violence, lack of resources and starvation, and political turmoil play a huge role. She was moved by these stories, which led her to study immigration law for three years in law school, where she discovered that not knowing Spanish was a huge road block.

It’s a bit like being a mathematician and not knowing calculus. You can only go so far. I realized, to serve the community that I wanted to serve, I would have to speak Spanish. It would be completely irresponsible not to do so.

During her first internship in law school in D.C., she visited various detention centers. Over 99% of the people there were monolingual Spanish speakers. Set said she “felt helpless” because she couldn’t communicate at all with them.

The Fifth Language

While she was studying for the bar exam, Set also took this as an opportunity to begin learning Spanish. Contrary to the majority of people out there, Set describes her two months studying for the bar as “the best two months of my life. Nobody expects anything from you.” And so, she took that extra time to start studying her fifth language.

She began learning vocabulary and the present tense digitally with websites and apps. But when she eventually walked into Spanish 2 at Fluent City in Williamsburg, she was impressed with the encouraging environment and how enthusiastic her teacher was.

After, she moved down to Virginia to do a clerkship with some judges. She had very little client interaction, so she also took the time to continue studying Spanish and realized that Fluent City was in D.C. as well. Set ended up taking Spanish 3–6 at FC. And after that, she started private lessons. And by learning Spanish, she was finally able to communicate with her clients in their native language.

“Without the language, my hands were tied. Spanish, in some ways, is more important than getting a law degree, especially if you want to help specific communities.”

Currently, she’s working as an Immigrant Justice Corps Fellow, in which she helps various organizations who serve communities who desperately need lawyers. She describes it as a “tremendously humbling experience, since it makes [me] confront [my] privileges along the way.”

While her personal goal may be to stay in immigration law and keep fighting for what she believes in, Set says that, “You should never work with a lawyer whose goal isn’t to make lawyers obsolete. Ideally, there would not be immigration lawyers needed. They should be unnecessary.” And that human beings should always be able to defend their own rights and laws would support those human rights.

But now, because she knows Spanish, she is able to communicate directly with the people that she works with, without an interpreter. Using someone’s native language, especially when they are going through a traumatic event, is extremely important.

Inspired to save the world by Setenay’s story? We sure are. You can start too by learning a new language.