Program areas at AILA
Advocacy, liaison, and Immigration policy:in keeping with its mission to promote justice and advocate for fair and reasonable Immigration law and policy, aila advocated for legislative changes, congressional oversight, and administrative changes on a wide range of Immigration issues, including due process in all procedures affecting people's Immigration status, improved case processing times, Immigration court reform, reductions in the use of detention and unnecessary enforcement measures, and ensuring a fair, humane and equitable legal Immigration system. Aila provided written responses to new regulations and form changes and filed federal court complaints against the administration. Aila organized a wide variety of advocacy actions for our members to participate in, including a national day of action lobby day, letters to congress campaigns, and model comment campaigns for regulatory and policy changes. In addition, aila continued to push policy and legal positions on a variety of substantive and procedural issues through our aila member volunteer committees, ngo working groups and partnerships, and formal and informal agency liaison. Aila also continued to provide mentoring and practice guidance on inquiries from members.
Practice and professionalism tools and resources:aila develops various resources to help members maintain professional values and follow mandated professional conduct rules. One such resource is the aila ethics compendium developed by the ethics committee to help Immigration Lawyers navigate ethics rules and ethical dilemmas that arise in Immigration practice. In addition, the ethics committee continued to publish a series of shorter articles entitled "bite-sized ethics", covering commonly asked questions and providing ethical guidance for members. Aila continued to build on the future of Immigration law practice report to educate members about the most important changes occurring in the legal marketplace and how those changes influence the way Immigration Lawyers deliver legal services. In 2022, our professionalism staff produced over 100 practice alerts/tips for its membership and appeared virtually in dozens of roundtables and webinars for aila chapters around the country.
Educational resources:aila's focus continued to be on enhancing the quality and value of our members' learning experience, while also evaluating program effectiveness and expanding access to essential materials. Aila is a major legal publisher dedicated solely to Immigration law and practice, with over 37 publications to guide members through this ever-changing field of law. This includes the aila law journal, a member benefit that is produced in partnership with full court press and that was accessed by members over 4,450 times in 2022. Aila's in-person and virtual conferences and networking events, audio and web seminars, webcasts, and video roundtables provide members with a diversified portfolio of learning options led by experienced Immigration law practitioners.aila university launched in late 2019 to provide members with e-learning opportunities in the form of online courses, video tutorials, and webinars and continued to grow in 2022. Some learning options provide unique opportunities to hear from representatives of various government agencies that regulate Immigration law and policy. The offerings for 2022 provided a plethora of continuing legal education (cle)-eligible programming in an easily accessible virtual format, including the annual conference, which offered a comprehensive fundamentals track as well as family, business, and litigation and removal tracks covering the main areas of Immigration. Aila also provided a wealth of online education resources. Aila's website, aila.org, contains over 40,000 immigration-related documents in the infonet research library, making it one of the primary benefits of aila membership. Ailalink is aila's subscription-based Immigration law research database, with fully searchable access to the resources essential for practicing Immigration law. In addition, all aila members received complimentary access to the fastcase research library, a searchable database of federal court, state court, and board of Immigration appeals decisions. Aila's flagship daily e-newsletter, aila8, allows readers to peruse the top 8 Immigration news items of the day in 8 minutes or less. In 2022, aila delivered nearly 100 education events in various formats and published 12 new publications, in both print and digital formats