Greetings From The Aila Convention
Many of you may have noticed that it hasn’t been very easy to get an appointment with your lawyer this week. In case you are wondering why, it is because we are all here, in Salt Lake City, learning more about immigration law, practice and procedure so that we can be better equipped to help you, our clients. The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) holds its national conference every June and AILA members from all over the country, as well as some from outside the United States, attend the conference to discuss new developments in immigration law, share our experiences in immigration practice and procedure, and find new ways to navigate the “post-9/11” anti-immigration landscape facing us today.
Today (Thursday) our discussion topics include Nonimmigrant visas and how to survive the shortage of H-1B visas that seems to occur every year. Tomorrow we will be discussing Labor Certifications and PERM. Saturday we will talk about family-based immigration – and these are just a small sampling of the topics which will be discussed in a conference that lasts more than 3 days and includes approximately 200 hours of multiple-track discussion sessions.
AILA membership and participation in AILA conferences has become a fundamentally important part of my professional development. In fact, I do not believe it is possible to keep abreast of the myriad developments in immigration law without being a member of AILA. There are simply too many changes, coming from too many different sources, for an individual attorney to track without the assistance of a national organization such as AILA. In addition to its national and regional conferences, AILA publishes and distributes literally dozens of announcements and bulletins each week on developments from the courts, the Department of Labor, the Department of State, the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. If I tried to obtain this information directly from these various sources instead of relying on AILA, I suspect that I would spend so much time gathering information that there would be little time left to work on cases for my clients.
One of the reasons I’m boring you with all of this is that many people who come to see me really have no idea how hard many immigration lawyers work to remain competent in this field. Another reason is that there are many immigration lawyers who do not work this hard. As a result, they do not give their clients correct immigration advice and this often proves disastrous. I have been practicing immigration law for over 10 years now but it still amazes me how many people come in to my office having received incorrect and/or incomplete advice from a previous attorney – and sometimes from 2 or 3 previous attorneys!
Now that you know what it takes to be a responsible and competent immigration attorney, I hope you will use this information if you are ever in need of immigration advice. Not all immigration lawyers are alike. I am always happy to spend some time discussing my experience and qualifications with prospective clients and I think this should be true of any lawyer worthy of your trust. If you lawyer is “too busy” to discuss his or her qualifications with you, perhaps your lawyer is too busy to handle your case.
