Immigration Nerds

Alessandra La Vaccara , Program Manager of the Missing Migrants Project from ICMP joins the podcast.

Dr. La Vaccara has been working on missing persons-related issues since 2012. Prior to joining ICMP, she worked for the ICRC, the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the European Commission, and the Italian Senate. Dr. La Vaccara has also pursued research activities on missing persons with the Harvard Law School as Albert Gallatin Fellow and with the Cardozo Law Institute in Holocaust and Human Rights as visiting research scholar.

Steve Yale-Loehr has practiced immigration law for over 35 years. He is co-author of Immigration Law and Procedure, the leading 21-volume treatise on U.S. immigration law. He also teaches immigration and asylum law at Cornell Law School as a Professor of Immigration Practice and is of counsel at Miller Mayer in Ithaca, New York. He also founded and was the original executive director of Invest In the USA, a trade association of EB-5 immigrant investor regional centers.

Charles Wheeler is Director of Training and Legal Support for Catholic Legal Immigration Network and Author of the most seminal books addressing the inner workings and legal nuances surrounding CSPA, “AILA's Focus on the Child Status Protection Act".

We discuss the major provisional changes he witnessed over the years covering CSPA.

Javier Miranda, Co-author of the National Bureau of Economic Research's paper "Immigration and Entrepreneurship in the United States" joins Immigration Nerds.

Co-authors: Pierre Azoulay, Benjamin Jones, J. Daniel Kim 

Immigration can expand labor supply and create greater competition for native-born workers. But immigrants may also start new firms, expanding labor demand. His paper uses U.S. administrative data and other data resources to study the role of immigrants in entrepreneurship. We ask how often immigrants start companies, how many jobs these firms create, and how these firms compare with those founded by U.S.-born individuals. A simple model provides a measurement framework for addressing the dual roles of immigrants as founders and workers. The findings suggest that immigrants act more as "job creators" than "job takers" and that non-U.S. born founders play outsized roles in U.S. high-growth entrepreneurship.

Since the release of the first edition in 1990, Kurzban's Immigration Law Sourcebook has been the go-to legal reference on U.S. immigration law. It cuts out lengthy explanations to provide busy legal professionals with what they need and want—comprehensive, authoritative, and concise analysis of a complicated area of law.

The author of that book, Ira Kurzban, joins to share his immigration career.

Erickson Immigration Groups Managing Director Hiba Anver joins.

The year 2020 marked a sudden break in mobility across international borders. The COVID-19 pandemic decimated tourism and business travel; cut the lion’s share of seasonal and temporary labor migration; temporarily ground refugee resettlement efforts to a halt; and held up the processing of visas of all kinds, from those for international students to family reunification. Yet even as the overall picture of human mobility in 2020 is of movement dramatically curtailed, the details of this picture varied over the course of the year and across regions.

Joining to share the data behind this shift is Migration Policy Institute's Senior Policy Analyst Jeanne Batalova and Policy Analyst Kate Hooper, with help from EIG's Lead Researcher Luke Bianco.

Ron Wada is Senior Counsel for TafaPolsky & Smith LLP and is a nationally recognized expert in US immigration law. He is the co-editor of the leading national immigration law treatise Immigration Law and Procedure and is the author of AILA’s Focus on EB2 & EB3 Degree Equivalency, a standard desk-top reference book for immigration attorneys nationwide.

He explains the journey to writing one of the most referenced immigration books in circulation today.

Director of Immigration Advocacy at Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC, Megan Horn Essaheb joins.

We discuss:

1. Reuniting Families Act provisions and how others can help.
2. #StopAsianHate campaign and recent events in Atlanta. Covid-19’s role in the rise of hostility towards Asian Americans and how AAJC is countering the surge in discrimination/xenophobia.

On March 12th, USCIS announced it would consider reopening select nonimmigrant petitions that were previously denied based upon three rescinded policy memos.

Jon Wasden Partner at Wasden Banias LLC discusses how his team litigated the memos that were later rescinded by USCIS on March 12th, and shares his experience with taking Trump-era policies to task in court.

Today we have a special guest, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Executive Director of Immigration Policy, Jon Baselice.

We explore key legislative and regulatory policies the chamber is advocating for in immigration, and how immigration law firms can help assist. We address the current status, future outlook, and any challenges found along the way.