Your Quick Reference to the National Immigration Legal Services Directory
Immigration Legal Servies: An Overview
Immigration legal services are a crucial resource for immigrants in the United States. These services help immigrants navigate the complexities of U.S. immigration law and procedures, ensuring they have the necessary information to pursue their immigration goals successfully. Immigration legal services typically offer various services, including legal counseling and representation, assisting with visa applications, permanent resident status, and citizenship applications, and providing information on immigration policies and laws. A primary reason to seek immigration legal services is to comply with U.S. immigration laws and regulations. This is essential for maintaining lawful status in the United States and avoiding potential deportation or removal proceedings. Immigration legal services may also be valuable for those who want to bring family members to the United States. Family reunification is often a top priority for newly arrived immigrants , and legal services can provide essential information on how to sponsor family members for immigrant visas or adjustment of status. For non-citizens living in the United States on a temporary or student visa, legal services can help them understand the process of transitioning from non-immigrant to immigrant status. This can be a complicated and time-consuming process, so it is essential to get accurate information from a qualified immigration professional. An immigration attorney or affiliated service may be necessary to take certain actions, such as filing an appeal or challenging a denial with the Board of Immigration Appeals or another entity. An attorney can also provide counsel and representation in court if removal proceedings are initiated. Finally, legal services can help individuals understand their rights as immigrants in the United States, including protections against deportation in specific circumstances, such as asylum seekers fleeing persecution. It will be necessary to obtain advice on options for citizenship or permanent residence when this is the goal.
National Immigration Legal Services Directory Defined
The NILS is an online resource available to the public that provides current information on nearly 500 legal services providers across the nation who offer non-profit representation and/or support. It allows individuals to search for legal services providers based on geographic location, language(s) spoken, and/or types of services offered. An advocate can access up-to-date information by searching by both the geographic location of the intended services and the primary languages spoken by the advocate, as well as searching a distance radius from the provider’s location in miles. The NILS also has a network of 14 local volunteer chapter-based lists that include licensed attorneys and accredited representatives to whom the organization has referred applicants for legal immigration assistance. Legal services providers may be either an "Accredited Organization" or an "Accredited Representative", both of which are designated by the Department of Justice Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA). Approximately 96% of the legal services providers included in the NILS are non-profit organizations, and the remaining 4% are private attorneys.
NILS was launched by the Justice in Motion (formally known as asylumaccess.org) and Immigrant Rights Clinic, UCLA School of Law in 2008 to address the urgent need for legal immigration advice after widespread natural disasters devastated parts of the U.S. and broadened the population of individuals with limited English proficiency. Over the years, many organizations from across the country have worked collaboratively to bring the NILS to the forefront as a national resource and to enhance the resources available to individuals seeking legal services. The National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) at the Heartland Alliance now maintains the NILS along with the Immigration Advocates Network (IAN) which provides a monthly report of updates made to the directory.
Using the National Immigration Services Directory Efficiently
Your Guide to the National Immigration Legal Services Directory is user-friendly, but if you are not familiar with how directories work, or just want clarity to make your search more efficient, use these tips when searching for services.
When you click on the Search Tool link from the homepage of the National Immigration Legal Services Directory, you will be taken to the page where you can enter search criteria. Enter the name of the state you are interested in finding immigration services in and then choose the categories of service that are relevant to your needs. For example, individuals can choose ‘All’ or ‘Legal Services’ only. Legal service providers can choose ‘Legal Services’ and then further subsection if they provide ‘Full-Scope’ or ‘Legal Consultation’ services. Once you hit ‘Search,’ a new page will display the results and the service providers that matched your criteria. Then you can refine your search results by entering in keywords to address specific needs or concerns. This new refined search will display different results, as per your new criteria. If you select the box ‘Display Results in a Map,’ this will display any organization that is available in your desired area as a pin on a map, providing an at-a-glance picture of what is available.
You can also choose to display results by states for a more specific view of the results for that particular location. Once you find the organization you are looking for, you will have access to the information for that organization, including a map and their contact information, while other resources can also be displayed, such as access to their website or social media platforms. The directory is still in its early stages, so additional categories and filters will be added to make this search tool even more specific.
The Advantages of a Central Location
A centralized directory is designed to enhance accessibility to vital resources by user groups in a way that is not dependent on one or two sources only, such as Google or online encyclopedias. The real advantage of the directory is does not depend on capacity of any one search engine or a group of encyclopedias. Rather, it is delivered through a collaborative effort of individual organizations and companies that have an interest in improving the distribution of legal information.
This accessibility of information is only ensured when it is provided through a directory that is designed to be increasingly relevant to users. The directory is more effective than a simple Google search or websites with global user databases because it expands access to legal information based on legal topic areas rather than broad demographic or geographic boundaries.
The alternative means for accessing information about legal services is through nationwide, statewide, or regional databases of service providers. This reliance on a small number of large databases, while easier to create and update, is limited by complexity and cost. A centralized directory of national and regional information provides a more comprehensive range of provider information and more significant cost and time savings.
A Comparative Approach: Assess Your Options and Make an Informed Decision
When it comes to selecting a legal service from the National Immigration Legal Services Directory, start by utilizing the search features to find providers that offer the services you need. Then, consider the following criteria:
Qualifications: Check the provider’s credentials, professional memberships, and any relevant certifications.
Experience: Research how long the provider has been practicing immigration law, and how often they handle cases or provide services similar to yours .
Client Reviews: Look for testimonies from past clients on their website or third-party review sites.
Specific Areas of Expertise: Choose a legal service that specializes in the type of assistance you are seeking, whether that be asylum representation, family reunification, naturalization applications, or employment-based immigration.
Pitfalls to Avoid (and How to Solve Them)
There could be several reasons why you are not seeing the results you’re looking for in the National Immigration Legal Services Directory. For example, if you are a person seeking help, the search function may return results that are less than satisfying for you because of your specific needs. For example, you may be looking for asylum assistance and do not get results that list a provider that provides asylum services. (Some do not specifically categorize asylum as part of their immigration legal services.) On the other hand, some providers may not use the full text available to describe their services, which may limit your ability to find the best match for your needs.
Similarly, if you’re an immigration legal service provider, your organization may have more immigration legal services to offer but did not find an opportunity to add all of them before our launch. There is a way for us to add additional descriptions, so owners of service-provider organizations are encouraged to contact us at [email protected].
Your search may also produce results that don’t match your expectations because you didn’t enter enough location information. We have found through extensive testing that entering a street address yields the best search results. Entering just a city and state sometimes results in unintended search results. A combination of street address and other location criteria is recommended.
Other issues may occur, though, that require a bit more investigation. For those challenges, we recommend using the email address provided on this website to send us a message. For example, if you find a different service provider through our directory than the one you found, tell us how you ran the search and we will provide feedback or instructions to improve your search results.
A Look into the Future of Immigration Legal Directories
The future of national immigration legal services directories holds much promise with advancements in artificial intelligence and new technological developments. However, while the capability of technology will continue to improve, the need for lawyers and firms that specialize in immigration and related areas of practice will increase as well. A national directory of immigration service providers will need to keep pace with the demand for specialized services by expanding services offered through the directory, improving search capabilities, and continually updating content to reflect the latest technology . This means that technological growth of the directory itself will need to keep pace with technological changes in the immigration legal field. For example, we are still waiting for some large state bar associations to migrate their aging immigration directories from cumbersome pdf files and html pages to modern database driven platforms.
As a provider of online immigration legal directories with a wide national reach, our goal is to keep our online directory a step ahead of both the latest technological developments and the latest developments in immigration practice.