Best Immigration Law Clinics;-All facets of our society are impacted by immigration, including individual lives as well as the cultural and economic success of our localities.
As an immigration attorney, you can choose from among many rewarding options: working directly with clients, making change through legislation, or working in the government. At USF, you’ll gain a solid understanding of how each of these areas works.
Our courses are taught by leading scholars and immigration experts and practitioners. They cover topics like employment, family, and administrative law.
An immigration lawyer assists foreign nationals who want to live temporarily or permanently in their countries. Immigration lawyers typically specialize in immigration legal cases that involve immigrant mistreatment, political asylum, visas and extradition and various aspects of human rights.
While immigration law is offered as an undergraduate course, most immigration lawyers feel it’s necessary to get a master’s degree in law as well. Many great reasons exist for studying an LLM in immigration law: The LLM in immigration law will enable you to study legal responses to the worldwide phenomenon of immigration at domestic, international, and supranational levels. It will also enable you to comprehend the operation and underlying principle of the law in context.
What does immigration law mean?
Immigration law is a body of law that governs the ways in which foreign nationals can enter the United States and how long they are allowed to stay. The rules for naturalization also apply to those who want to become U.S. citizens. When foreign nationals enter without permission, overstay their visit, or otherwise lose their legal status, immigration law governs how detention and removal proceedings are carried out.
As a border state, Texas offers many rewarding opportunities for those interested in practicing immigration law. A concentration in immigration law will give you the skills needed to:
- represent foreign nationals facing deportation
- Give advice to clients who want to enter the country with family.
- help employers who wish to hire people from other countries
- Work with a federal immigration agency to enforce immigration laws.
- Inform non-citizen defendants of the effects a criminal conviction will have on their immigration status
- Aid refugees with their asylum petitions, including unaccompanied minors.
- aid foreign nationals who have been harmed by domestic abuse or human trafficking in reestablishing their immigration status
- Provide guidance on immigration policy to legislators, charities, and advocacy organizations.
- You could choose to focus on immigration law, or you might choose to practice in a different area that calls for an understanding of immigration law, such criminal law, employment law, or family law.
Immigration Lawyers:
Immigration lawyers are experienced in representing individual and business clients before the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and in immigration courts and the federal circuit courts on issues dealing with immigration, emigration, visas, green cards, adjustment of status, political asylum and other important immigration and naturalization issues.
What Do Immigration Lawyers Do?
- Immigration attorneys can assist you understand the law, examine your personal rights, options, and strategies, and guide you through each stage of the difficult immigration process (or, if applicable, that of your sponsoring U.S. family member or company).
- They help you manage which items you must collect on your own and prepare a lot of documentation on your or your employer’s behalf, which can alone save hours (such as birth certificates or proof of a valid marriage).
- Immigration lawyers may, among other things, advise clients about their legal rights and obligations relating to immigration or represent clients in administrative tribunals.
- In addition, they make recommendations for actions based on their understanding of immigration law.
- They ensure that the details you provide while completing forms, gathering documents, or drafting statements and testimonies are accurate, complete, and consistent. The U.S. government official must believe your account in order to process many immigration petitions, thus accidentally providing incorrect information on different forms can have serious repercussions.
- Most essential, an experienced lawyer knows what to anticipate from the US government, how to minimize or avoid unavoidable delays, and what obstacles to anticipate to prevent seemingly straightforward applications from being delayed by legal nuances.
How can you become an immigration lawyer?
If you want to become a lawyer, completing a bachelor’s degree is usually the first step, followed by earning a Juris Doctor (JD) degree.
If you want to be able to practice immigration law, a law school concentration or specialization in the field will help bolster your expertise and give you an advantage in the field. However, it is not necessary to have hands-on legal experience through clinics, legal internships, externships, clerkships, pro bono activities and more as long as you have ample exposure to the immigration field through course work.
A career in immigration law requires certain skills. You’ll need to be able to read and write well, as well as understand complex concepts and communicate effectively with opposing counsel in an adversarial setting. Law schools seek out these skills in applicants and cultivate them in their students.
In many situations, it’s important to have strong interpersonal skills. For example, during any given day in immigration practice, an attorney may work with people who have undergone exceptionally traumatic experiences, including suffering persecution, human trafficking and torture. The ability to communicate compassionately with immigrants and families who may need reassurance as well as technical assistance in dealing with the legal complexities of immigration can be especially important in dealing with these issues.
What Are the Entry Requirements for Law School?
- An undergraduate degree
- Admissions tests
- Letters of recommendation
- A personal statement
1. Undergraduate Study:
The Juris Doctor is a postgraduate degree, so law schools generally require that you have completed a bachelor’s degree. You don’t need any prerequisite courses for prospective law students, though your degree must come from an accredited institution and your undergraduate GPA will be scrutinized. If you earned your undergraduate degree outside the United States, you should check with individual law schools regarding their policies.
2. Admissions Tests:
Until recently, the requirement that law school applicants take the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) was nearly ubiquitous.
The Law School Admission Test, or LSAT, is a standardized half-day test administered four times per year at various testing locations throughout the country. It consists of 175 multiple choice questions designed to test your reading comprehension, reasoning and analytical skills, as well as your writing skills. No prior knowledge of law is required. Scaled scores range from 120 to 180, with an average of 150. The more selective the school you want to attend, the higher your score would likely need to be.
3· Letters of Recommendation:
Law school applicants will want to have at least two letters of recommendation. These can be helpful, but they aren’t as important as grades and test scores.
If you are still in college, it is a good idea to start forging relationships with your favorite professors or those in whose classes you excelled. If a professor doesn’t know you, they will have a hard time saying much about you in a letter. Don’t be afraid to approach your professors during office hours; they are there for your benefit. And if you get the rare professor who seems too busy to help him or her write the letter, he or she probably wouldn’t write a good letter anyway.
It is better to get a glowing letter from a lesser-known professor who knows you and the quality of your work than one from a “big name” professor who barely knows your name. The whole point of recommending someone is an endorsement by someone who can credibly speak to his or her character and qualities. If someone is equivocal about providing a recommendation, find someone else.
4· Personal Statement:
Most law schools will ask you to write a personal statement. Be sure to tailor it to the prompt and make sure it’s responsive to the particular prompt. Don’t write a cookie-cutter statement that is not responsive to the prompt.
When writing a personal statement, make sure to polish it until it is error-free and have others review it as well.
You should probably know by now: Don’t have anyone else write your personal statement. That is not only unethical, but it does a disservice to both you and the schools that are considering you.
What Does Immigration Law Pay – Immigration Lawyer Salary?
Lawyers, including immigration lawyers, are usually paid either on an hourly basis or a flat fee basis. The median wage for lawyers in the United States is $55.69 per hour, with the lowest-paid lawyers earning $26.86 per hour and the highest-paid lawyers earning $90 or more per hour.
Is it worth it to become a lawyer?
You can make up your own mind about whether it’s worth becoming a lawyer. If you’re not sure if the risks outweigh the rewards, don’t worry! You can still pursue other career paths that may be more suitable to your skills and interests.
Immigration Lawyer Career:
Students interested in careers in immigration law can choose from a variety of options. The obvious career path is to become an immigration lawyer, but students interested in this field may also go on to become paralegals or law school professors.
To become an immigration lawyer, you must have a law degree and pass the bar exam. Paralegals need at least an associate’s degree and it is helpful to have a certificate in paralegal studies. Law school professors usually need a doctoral degree in law.
While becoming a lawyer is the most popular job choice for those interested in immigration law, becoming a paralegal or a law professor is also a possible option. You may decide if a career in immigration law is suited for you by knowing the fundamentals of each of these professions, including the educational requirements and income data.
Best Immigration Law Schools:
If you’re studying law at a U.S. university, chances are good that your school has an immigration clinic. These are great resources for students who want to learn more about the ins and outs of applying for citizenship, understanding what it means to be undocumented, and finding out about other aspects of immigration law. In this article, we’ll list ten top-notch clinics across the country so you know where to find one near your campus or hometown!
1.Harvard University Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program
Harvard Law School’s Immigrant and Refugee Clinical Program is a two-year program that offers students a variety of clinical experiences in immigration law. Students are placed with public agencies and private firms that deal with immigration issues, including detention centers and family-based visa petitions.
The ILRC also offers an LLM program to prepare lawyers for practice outside of the United States, which you can find here: https://www.nyulawglobal.org/en/programs/ilrc_llm_master_program/.
2.The Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC)
The Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC) is a non-profit organization that provides legal assistance to low-income immigrants and refugees. ILRC was founded in 1980 and is located in San Francisco, California. Its funding comes from the Ford Foundation, which also sponsors other immigration law clinics around the country.
3.Georgetown University Law Center’s Immigration Law Clinic
Georgetown University Law Center’s Immigration Law Clinic is one of the best immigration law clinics in the U.S. It has been in operation since the early 1980s, and it remains one of Georgetown’s most popular programs today. The clinic is located on campus at Georgetown University Law Center, which was founded in 1838 and became an academic institution four years later when its first classes began meeting regularly on Sundays for two hours each day (the school currently offers evening classes).
The main goal for students interested in pursuing a career as an attorney
or judge with federal courts or state courts should be to study under professors who have experience practicing before those entities themselves—meaning that you will have access not only to their knowledge but also their experience working within them directly!
4.University of California, Davis (UCD) School of Law Immigration Law Clinic
The University of California, Davis (UCD) School of Law Immigration Law Clinic is located in Davis, California and established in 2004. The clinic has a staff of seven attorneys and two legal assistants who provide free legal assistance to low-income immigrants and refugees.
The clinic offers services in English, Spanish and Chinese languages.
5.Yale Law School’s Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization Immigration Legal Services (ILS)
Yale Law School’s Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization Immigration Legal Services (ILS) is a member of AILA and provides free legal services to immigrants and refugees, including those with criminal records or who are facing deportation. If you need help with your immigration status or have questions about what you can do after being released from detention, you can contact the clinic by calling 203-432-6374 or emailing ils@lawyermichaeldixon.org
6.Stanford Law School Immigration Clinic
The Stanford Law School Immigration Clinic is a program of the Stanford Immigration Policy and Practice Program, which was founded in 2000 and focuses on providing pro bono legal services to immigrant communities.
The clinic’s purpose is to help low-income immigran
ts understand their rights under immigration law, as well as the legal options available to them if they’re facing deportation proceedings or have been detained by federal authorities. In addition to providing advice on how best to navigate these situations (e.g., by seeking asylum), the clinic also offers workshops about citizenship applications for those who want it but don’t qualify for naturalization through family ties or military service—a process that involves submitting an application fee along with supporting evidence like birth certificates or marriage certificates from both spouses so that USCIS can approve your petition before issuing you an actual certificate proving eligibility for citizenship.”
7.Northwestern Pritzker School of Law Immigration Project
Northwestern Pritzker School of Law Immigration Project is a legal clinic that provides free immigration services to low-income individuals. The organization’s mission is to help people with their immigration cases, whether it’s helping them file for asylum or citizenship. They also provide other services like food pantries and community events.
The staff at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law Immigration Project consists of attorneys and paralegals who have been trained in immigration law by the Legal Aid Society (Lawyers’ Committee). The location is on Chicago’s North Side neighborhood near Millennium Park where they offer free consultations every day from 10 AM-1 PM from Monday through Friday except holidays
8.Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Immigration Clinic
Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Immigration Clinic
Cleveland-Marshall College of Law is one of the best law schools in America, and its immigration clinic is no exception. The clinic provides free legal services to low-income immigrants and refugees who need help with their immigration cases. It’s also part of an organization called the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), which has been recognized by the American Bar Association for its work on behalf of immigrant rights.
9.CUNY School of Law Immigrant and Non-Citizen Rights Clinic
The CUNY School of Law Immigrant and Non-Citizen Rights Clinic offers free legal services to immigrants and non-citizens. The clinic has won several awards for its work, including the National Lawyers Guild Award for Outstanding Civil Rights Litigation in 2013, which recognizes lawyers who have made significant contributions to civil rights litigation.
The clinic’s website is a good resource for information about immigration law at all stages of an application process—from initial consultation through filing an application with USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Services) or other government agency such as the Department of Labor; to visa processing; court proceedings after being denied entry into the United States; appeals proceedings if your case is rejected by an immigration judge; etcetera.
10.University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law Immigration Law & Policy Clinic
The University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law Immigration Law & Policy Clinic offers students the opportunity to gain practical experience in immigration law. The clinic is a part of the Arizona Law School’s James E. Rogers College of Law, which is located in Tucson, Arizona.
The clinic provides legal services to individuals who have been detained or deported by U.S., Canadian or Mexican authorities as well as those who have been victims of human trafficking; it also works with other stakeholders such as international organizations and government agencies on issues related to forced migration (i.e., people fleeing violence), asylum seekers, refugees and others seeking protection from persecution based on their national origin/ethnicity/race etcetera).
Conclusion
We hope you’ve enjoyed perusing this list of the best immigration law clinics in the U.S. We know how hard it can be to find a good clinic and we’re so happy that these ten were chosen. While we have our own favorites (like Harvard and University of Arizona), they all offer a great opportunity for anyone looking to pursue legal research on immigration issues.
