Immigration Law Forum

[sngilbert]

What schools offer strong immigration law programs? any specific to Latin America? How is the demand for immigration lawyers? For what services? Any other information on U.S. immigration law is welcome. Thank you.

[blank403]

Don't know your exact reasons for wanting to learn about Latin American immigration law, so forgive me if you already understand any of the following. When someone comes to the US there is very little different procedurally based on what country they are coming from.

As for what services are most in demand, most serious immigration law jobs will be mass importing Indian and Chinese foreign nationals for tech companies.

I would try not to come into to the field with delusions of representing Spanish speaking people in court trying to fight for their right to stay in the country. In practice, immigration law is mostly paper work. Lots of assembling and submitting petitions to the USCIS and DOL.

With regard to school and specialty rankings for immigration, these are basically useless. From my experience with corporate immigration firms, it's a pretty niche field, and hiring is pretty incestuous. Pick an office where you might want to work and look where everyone went. At my firm everyone tends to come from one of three different schools. Don't think it'd be worth picking a school based off of trying to get into one firm, but it'd be more useful than specialty rankings at the very least.

Hope that helps.

[blank403]

All the above is from the perspective of corporate immigration law, by the way.

Smaller law firms that are geared towards helping individuals with the immigration process are much less profitable and the market is way over saturated. Drive down the street in most Latin American neighborhoods and you will find multiple law firms with signs reading "inmigración." These firms almost certainly do something else to earn enough money to stay in business. Not something I would go to law school with the intention of practicing after graduation.


....though, admittedly, you would have a few more chances to get some mileage out of that español.

[sngilbert]

Hey, thanks for the post. Un millón de gracias.