Immigration Clinic

Catalog description

The Immigration Clinic is a course in which two students are permitted to enroll for an entire calendar year (May-May) and six additional students are permitted to enroll in each of the fall and spring semesters. Students selected to be in the Immigration Clinic for the entire calendar year must register for Immigration Clinic during the summer, fall and spring semesters (unless otherwise approved by the instructor), and are subject to the 12 hour cap on Immigration Clinic credit hours. Students enrolling in the Immigration Clinic represent low-income clients with immigration problems under close faculty supervision. Most of the work is in the areas of deportation defense, family-based immigrant visas, domestic violence-related petitions, Special Immigration Juvenile cases, naturalization applications, and asylum applications, although other types of immigration cases may be assigned to students from time to time at the discretion of the supervising faculty member. Students in Immigration Clinic can expect to engage in the following types of activities: factual development and analysis, frequent client interviewing and counseling, preparation of immigration applications and supporting documentation, attendance with clients at immigration interviews, appearing in Immigration Court on behalf of clients, state and federal court appearances (as dictated by clients' legal needs), legal analysis and planning, frequent creation of written work product (including but not limited to legal memoranda, briefs, letters, and so forth), analysis and resolution of professional ethics issues, and other skills necessary to function effectively as lead counsel on a variety of immigration cases.