Great Immigration Conference in Minnesota

On April 30 and May 1, 2009, the Minnesota Dakota Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) held its Upper Midwest Immigration Conference in Bloomington, Minnesota. This event was held jointly with the Advocates for Human Rights. I serve as the chair of the organization and the co-chair of the conference committee. It was an excellent opportunity for professionals in the region to meet, learn, and exchange ideas on the cutting edge issues in immigration. Special sessions lead by national experts on the anti-immigration lobby and the prospects of Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) were highlights this year. Almost 200 people attended including national experts and representatives from U.S. government offices.

Heidi Bierich of the Southern Poverty Legal Center, Alabama was our luncheon speaker. She was outstanding. She is the national expert on anti-immigrant hate groups in the country, groups she has closely monitored in the last several years. She explained how interconnected organizations like FAIR and neo-Nazi and white supremacy groups are. She further showed how violent some of the anti-immigrant groups can be. Her latest report, published in Intelligence Report, is a must read for all involved in the CIR debate: you need to fully understand your opponents to fully respond to their attack.

Marshall Fitz, the Advocacy Director of AILA was our speaker on national immigration reform. His update from the capitol was a source of hope to all in attendance. It is certainly premature to predict what will happen, but there was an optimistic sense that this is the year for change. Other community business leaders expressed their readiness to join in the fray for CIR.

A colleague and I presented on religious worker visas, focusing on the regulatory and case law updates in the past one year. It has been only 5 months since the new religious worker visa regulations went into effect, and practitioners are still figuring out how that will impact petitions filed under the old and new rules.

Furthermore, it has been less than a month since the landmark federal court ruling in Washington State. This suit is a nationwide class action lawsuit brought on behalf of all religious workers who have been unable to file Form I-485 petition because the regulations do not permit it. The court found the rules prohibiting concurrent filing of Form I-360 Special Immigrant for Religious Workers and Form I-485 Adjustment of Status is impermissible. According to the court, there is no reason under the statute why religious worker petitions should be treated differently from other employment-based petitions. The court had also stayed all unlawful presence or unauthorized employment resulting from the prohibition of concurrent filing.

Peace to all people of good will.