How to Fight the Harmful Proposed Changes to Immigration Filing Fees and Fee Waivers
In its latest attack on immigrants, on November 14, 2019, the Department of Homeland Security published a proposed rule increasing the filing fees on many immigration applications, eliminating most fee waivers, and transferring over $200 million to ICE. If implemented, these changes will make immigration benefits inaccessible to low- and moderate-income families while transferring the burden of enforcement onto the backs of immigrants, U.S. citizens and U.S. companies, all of whom would be forced to pay higher fees.
Join the ILRC to learn how you can fight back against these changes. During this video conference, we will discuss:
- The state of play including the main changes proposed in the fee rule, upcoming changes to fee waivers, and what these changes could mean for our communities;
- Ways to resist these changes including how to draft and submit an effective public comment by December 16, 2019; and
- The importance of involving your Members of Congress.
Peggy Gleason, who has dedicated her career to immigrant rights, joined ILRC in 2019 as a senior staff attorney in Washington, D.C.
She worked most recently in the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the Department of Homeland Security, dealing with civil rights complaints concerning U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Earlier, she worked on family and humanitarian immigration policy and legal issues for the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman and on legal access issues for the Department of Justice Executive Office of Immigration Review.
Before her time with the federal government, she was a senior attorney for Catholic Legal Immigration Network's training and technical support section for 23 years, providing technical assistance and training to CLINIC's affiliated programs and other nonprofits nationwide. She also represented immigrant clients of Catholic Charities Immigration Legal Services for the Archdiocese of Washington. She began fulltime practice of immigration law while working for the Colorado Rural Legal Services Farmworker Program.
She graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a B.A. in Ibero-American Studies and earned her J.D. at Antioch School of Law in Washington, D.C. She is a member of the Colorado Bar.
Peggy is a frequent speaker on immigration law topics and contributor to publications. She speaks Spanish.
Sally Kinoshita is the ILRC's Deputy Director based in San Francisco. In this role, she weaves together more than 20 years of nonprofit experience in immigration law, capacity building, advocacy, program development, and collaborative facilitation. Sally has provided technical assistance, trainings, and facilitation to groups on local, state, and national levels and has co-authored a number of publications including The U Visa: Obtaining Status for Immigrant Victims of Crime (ILRC), The VAWA Manual: Immigration Relief for Abused Immigrants (ILRC), Immigration Benchbook for Juvenile and Family Court Judges (ILRC), and Application of Protection Remedies for Victims of Domestic Abuse, Human Trafficking, and Crime under U.S. Law to Persons Physically Present in the U.S. Territories (Family Violence Prevention Fund).
Prior to working at the ILRC, Sally was a Staff Attorney at Asian Law Caucus and a consultant with ASISTA, the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild and Family Violence Prevention Fund/Futures Without Violence. During law school, she worked with the UC Davis Immigration Law Clinic, Northern California Coalition for Immigrant Rights, ACLU of Northern California, and California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation.
Sally is currently a member of the Leadership Council of Educators for Fair Consideration (E4FC) and has served as a Federal Bar Association Immigration Law Section Advisory Board Member and Central Valley Immigrant Integration Collaborative (CVIIC) Steering Committee Member.
Sally earned her law degree from the University of California at Davis. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of California at Berkeley, where she majored in sociology. She is admitted to the California bar.
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