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Citizenship and Naturalization
Date and Time:
04/03/2025 11:00am to 12:30pm PDT
Recorded Date:
04/03/2025
Place:
Online
Registration Deadline:
Thursday, April 3, 2025 - 11:00am
Presenter:
Eric Cohen
Peggy Gleason
MCLE:
1.5 CA (Qualifies for Legal Specialization Credit) & 1.5 TX

Level: Beginner

This webinar is for beginning audiences who are new to naturalization work or who need a basic review. We will provide a very basic overview of the legal elements for naturalization including lawful admission as an LPR, continuous residence and physical presence requirements, the English/civics requirement, exceptions, and the disability waiver, as well as the requirements for the oath. We will review the basic red flag issues that can cause an applicant to be denied or even deported. There are many red flags, including absences of longer than six months from the United States, failing to file taxes or pay child support, having an underlying application for permanent residence that contains a legal error or fraud, helping someone to enter the United States illegally, claiming to be a U.S. citizen, and voting illegally, among others. Arrests or convictions can also have major impacts on naturalization eligibility, but we will not discuss these during this webinar.

Presenters

Eric Cohen

Eric Cohen has been with the ILRC since 1988, and has been its Executive Director since 2007. He has extensive experience training attorneys, paralegals, community advocates, and organizers on a variety of immigration law, immigrants’ rights, and leadership development topics. Eric is a national expert on naturalization and citizenship law and is the primary author of the ILRC’s manual entitled, Naturalization and U.S. Citizenship: The Essential Legal Guide. Eric helped develop ILRC's community model for naturalization workshops. Additionally, Eric has worked on voter outreach and education programs for naturalized citizens.

Prior to working at the ILRC, Eric worked with the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, Labor Immigrant Assistance Project where he worked on legalization and union organizing campaigns.

Eric obtained a B.A. degree in History from Colorado College and a J.D. degree from Stanford Law School. He is conversant in Spanish and is a member of the State Bar of California.

Peggy Gleason

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.