This webinar is intended for legal service providers who are new to the area of family-based immigration and will focus on the basics of the family visa petition. We will cover which relatives can qualify for family-based immigration and how they fit and move around the preference categories with events such as marriage, divorce, or the naturalization of the petitioner. After reviewing the role of the visa bulletin, we will explain how priority dates are established, lost, and recaptured, as well as what happens to widows and other beneficiaries when the qualifying relative dies. The discussion will include an overview of the Child Status Protection Act.
Presenters:
Allison Davenport, ILRC Staff Attorney
Allison Davenport joined the ILRC in 2015 as a staff attorney based in California’s Central Valley, where she was born and raised. Prior to joining the ILRC, she was a clinical instructor with the International Human Rights Law Clinic at UC Berkeley School of Law. At the clinic she directed the establishment of the Legal Support Program for undocumented students, the documentation of human rights abuses against LGBTI individuals in El Salvador, and the promotion of equal access to clean water in California. Allison practiced immigration law, first in private practice and then as founder of the immigration legal services program at Centro Legal de la Raza. Allison also formerly worked as a staff attorney with the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at UC Hastings. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a JD and an MA in Latin American Studies. Allison speaks Spanish.
Alison Kamhi, ILRC Staff Attorney
Alison is a dedicated immigrant advocate who brings significant experience in immigration law to the ILRC. Prior to the ILRC, Alison worked as a Clinical Teaching Fellow at the Stanford Law School Immigrants' Rights Clinic, where she supervised removal defense cases and immigrants' rights advocacy projects. Before Stanford, she represented abandoned and abused immigrant youth as a Skadden Fellow at Bay Area Legal Aid and at Catholic Charities Community Services in New York. While in law school, Alison worked at the UNHCR, the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project, and Greater Boston Legal Services Immigration Unit. After law school, she clerked for the Honorable Julia Gibbons in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Alison enjoys playing the piano and traveling. Before law school, she received a Fulbright Scholarship to study the rise of neo-Nazism and anti-immigrant sentiment in former East Germany. She has also lived in Russia, France, Cambodia, and Madagascar. Alison received her J.D. from Harvard Law School and her B.A. from Stanford University.