This webinar will discuss issues related to immigration enforcement against U visa applicants, including strategies for responding to RFEs, NOIDs, and denials. Join to hear the latest enforcement trends and tips on how to advise and screen clients to help protect and inform them of the risks of immigration enforcement.
Presenters
Alison Kamhi is a Supervising Attorney based in San Francisco. Alison is a dedicated immigrant advocate who brings significant experience in immigration law to the ILRC. Alison provides technical assistance through the ILRC’s Attorney of the Day program on a wide range of immigration issues, including immigration options for youth, consequences of criminal convictions for immigration purposes, removal defense strategy, and eligibility for immigration relief, including family-based immigration, U visas, VAWA, DACA, cancellation of removal, asylum, and naturalization. She leads ILRC’s project on driver’s licenses for immigrants, and also conducts frequent in-person and webinar trainings on naturalization, family-based immigration, U visas, FOIA requests, and parole in immigration law.
She has co-authored a number of publications, including The U Visa: Obtaining Status for Immigrant Victims of Crimes (ILRC); Parole in Immigration Law (ILRC); FOIA Requests and Other Background Checks (ILRC); Hardship in Immigration Law (ILRC); Naturalization and U.S. Citizenship (ILRC); Special Immigrant Juvenile Status and Other Immigration Options for Children and Youth (ILRC); A Guide for Immigrant Advocates (ILRC); and Most In Need But Least Served: Legal and Practical Barriers to Special Immigrant Juvenile Status for Federally Detained Minors, 50 Fam. Ct. Rev. 4 (2012).
Prior to the ILRC, Alison worked as a Clinical Teaching Fellow at the Stanford Law School Immigrants' Rights Clinic, where she supervised removal defense cases and immigrants' rights advocacy projects. Before Stanford, she represented abandoned and abused immigrant youth as a Skadden Fellow at Bay Area Legal Aid and at Catholic Charities Community Services in New York. While in law school, Alison worked at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project, and Greater Boston Legal Services Immigration Unit. After law school, she clerked for the Honorable Julia Gibbons in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Alison received her J.D. from Harvard Law School and her B.A. from Stanford University. Alison is admitted to the bar in California and New York. She speaks German and Spanish.
Maria Baldini-Potermin—Founder of Maria Baldini-Potermin & Associates, P.C
Maria Baldini-Potermin has been recognized nationally as a leading immigration attorney, being awarded an American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) President’s Commendation, the AILA Edith Lowenstein Award for Excellence in Advancing the Practice of Immigration Law, the Chicago AILA Minsky Award, and other awards. Maria obtained her B.A. from the University of Dayton (Ohio) and her J.D. degree from the University of Minnesota Law School. She has been involved in the field of immigration law since August 1990 and is the founder of her law firm in Chicago. Maria is the author of Immigration Trial Handbook, published annually, and the update editor of Immigration Law and Crimes, published twice a year. Both publications are published by Thomson Reuters. Maria regularly speaks at national, regional, and local continuing legal education seminars and trains public defenders and non-profit organizational staff.