[Blog]

I am now the uncontested nominee for the Chair-Elect position with the Missouri/Kansas Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA). The term begins each June at the annual conference. This year I have served as Secretary of our chapter. The Chair-Elect position runs for one year, then that person takes over as Chair of the Chapter for the following year, in my case June 2013-June 2014. I am very excited about this volunteer position. I have been a happy member of AILA since I was a law student. AILA is an organization I feel has a large role to play in advising the government of how to structure immigration laws and regulations, and to hold them to the law when they violate it. By properly training attorney's AILA helps to make sure immigrants in this country get adequate representation. Needless to say, I am excited about taking on this new role. 

I have also been nominated to be the Vice Chair of the Missouri Bar Association's Immigration Law Committee for the next two years. Normally, the Vice Chair then takes over as the Chair for a two-year term, meaning 2014-2015 I would be the Chair. The Missouri Bar's Immigration Committee has been strengthening in importance in the last few years under the leadership of Mira Mdvani and then Nalini Mahadevan. The role of the committee is primarily two-fold, first to attempt (however vainly) to get the Missouri Bar to take positions on anti-immigrant legislation being proposed in the House, and second to inform attorneys in Missouri of the immigration implications of their work. That is, to make sure family, business, criminal, and tax attorneys keep in mind the importance of the immigration consequences of their representation on their foreign-born clients. Through articles, presentations, and more in-depth publications, we hope to inform other attorneys at least enough to know when something they are doing might have a particular immigration impact. I am also excited in continuing to help this important committee move forward as well.