Naturalization for People with Disabilities

This webinar will describe the requirements for the disability waiver for the English/Civics requirement for naturalization, and discuss challenges that persons with disabilities face with USCIS’s processes. Speakers will describe recent developments in USCIS’s policies and give practice tips for successful waivers.

Peggy Gleason, who has dedicated her career to immigrant rights, joined ILRC in 2019 as a senior staff attorney in Washington, D.C.

She worked most recently in the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the Department of Homeland Security, dealing with civil rights complaints concerning U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Earlier, she worked on family and humanitarian immigration policy and legal issues for the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman and on legal access issues for the Department of Justice Executive Office of Immigration Review.

Before her time with the federal government, she was a senior attorney for Catholic Legal Immigration Network’s training and technical support section for 23 years, providing technical assistance and training to CLINIC’s affiliated programs and other nonprofits nationwide. She also represented immigrant clients of Catholic Charities Immigration Legal Services for the Archdiocese of Washington. She began full-time practice of immigration law while working for the Colorado Rural Legal Services Farmworker Program.

She graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a B.A. in Ibero-American Studies and earned her J.D. at Antioch School of Law in Washington, D.C. She is a member of the Colorado Bar.

Peggy is a frequent speaker on immigration law topics and contributor to publications. She speaks Spanish.

Laura Burdick, Field Support Coordinator - CLINIC

Laura Burdick provides training and technical assistance to CLINIC affiliates on immigration program management and capacity building as Field Support Coordinator. Since coming to CLINIC in 1997, she has managed national, state, and local citizenship and integration projects and provided naturalization training, technical assistance, and policy advocacy.

Most recently, she was the Project Coordinator for two national capacity-building grants from the Office of Citizenship and CLINIC’s National Asylee Information and Referral Line, which operated from 2001 to 2012. Other projects have included a national immigrant organizing project in 15 cities and a national project for technical assistance to more than 130 agencies serving elderly refugees in 27 states.

Prior to joining CLINIC, Burdick worked for refugee resettlement agencies in Texas and Virginia. She holds a master’s degree in social work administration, policy, and planning from Virginia Commonwealth University and a bachelor’s degree from Smith College in Massachusetts.