This advanced webinar will address how to identify criminal convictions that are relatively harmless to a naturalization applicant, as well as ones that may have the most severe consequences including denial of the application and removal. We will discuss how crimes involving moral turpitude, aggravated felonies and drug offenses can affect naturalization applications.
Presenters
Kathy Brady, Senior Staff Attorney - ILRC
Kathy has served with the ILRC since 1987 and has contributed to numerous ILRC projects. Kathy graduated from Stanford University and Boalt Hall School of Law. She taught immigration law as an adjunct professor at Santa Clara University and New College School of Law, and supervised students at the Stanford University Law School Immigration Clinic. Her expertise includes the immigration consequences of criminal convictions; issues affecting immigrant children and mixed families; immigration consultant and consumer fraud; naturalization; family immigration; legal status for immigrant victims of domestic violence through the Violence Against Women Act provisions (VAWA); and trial skills. She is the primary author of Defending Immigrants in the Ninth Circuit, which in its current form and as the former California Criminal Law and Immigration has been a publication since 1990. With Norton Tooby, she is the co-author of the 2014 CEB publication California Criminal Defense of Immigrants, and for many years was co-author of the section on defending noncitizens in the CEB manual California Criminal Law: Procedure and Practice. She also is a co-author of the ILRC's Special Immigrant Juvenile Status and the Immigration Benchbook for Juvenile and Family Courts. She has helped found coalitions and projects to address these issues, including serving as a co-founder of the Defending Immigrants Partnership and the Immigrant Justice Network. She authored briefs in key Ninth Circuit cases on immigration and crimes. In 2007, she received the Carol King award for advocacy from the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, and she served as a Commissioner to the ABA Commission on Immigration from 2009-2012. Prior to working at the ILRC, Kathy was in private practice with the immigration firm of Park and Associates. She is conversant in Spanish.
Eric Cohen, Executive Director - ILRC
Eric has been with the ILRC since 1988 and has extensive experience training attorneys, paralegals, community advocates, and organizers on a variety of immigration law, immigrants’ rights, and leadership development topics. Eric is a national expert on naturalization and citizenship law and is the primary author of the ILRC’s manual entitled, Naturalization and U.S. Citizenship: The Essential Legal Guide for Legal Practitioners. Eric has served as a liaison between community groups and CIS (Citizenship and Immigration Services) officials for the San Francisco Bay Area since 1994. Additionally, Eric helped develop ILRC's community model for effectively processing naturalization applications in groups and trained both legal workers and lay advocates in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, and works with community organizers and others on voter education for naturalized citizens. Prior to working at the ILRC, Eric worked with the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, Labor Immigrant Assistance Project where he worked on legalization and union organizing campaigns. He is conversant in Spanish.