AILA's National Day of Action 2020

Our Managing Partner, Fiona McEntee, was in Washington D.C. last week for the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s National Day of Action on March 5th 2020. With over 400 of the fiercest immigration lawyers in the country lobbying on Capitol Hill, Fiona and her colleagues met with Senators and Congresspeople to talk about how this Administration’s immigration policies are really hurting our clients.

These included:

• the Dreamers with their lives hanging in the balance
• US citizens who have to wait unacceptable periods of time to bring their spouses to this country
• US businesses who desperately need skilled workers and are facing roadblock after roadblock
• foreign companies and investors who have to climb sometimes insurmountable hurdles in order to bring their businesses here to grow and hire US workers
• foreign students who pay top dollar to attend US universities and bring their diverse and brilliant minds here

Advocacy matters and it makes a difference!

Last year, after AILA's Day of Action, “more than 80 Democratic members of Congress asked the Government Accountability Office to conduct an investigation into the ‘record-breaking’ backlog of immigration cases pending under the Trump administration.”

Citing AILA’s recent policy brief on the issue directly, the net backlog in USCIS cases was over 2.3 million last Fall. Our direct advocacy and AILA’s in-depth analysis helped result in Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.) and 81 other lawmakers writing a letter to Comptroller General Gene Dodaro to investigate the crisis-level delays that are “hurting families and businesses that depend on timely adjudications.”

Fiona wrote a detailed blog posting for AILA on this last year and you can read it here.

We hope for the same, or better still greater, response from our lawmakers and government officials following this year’s Day of Action.