UND Immigration Law Clinic to address statewide labor and attorney shortages
This fall, UND students will be able to enroll in the Immigration Law Clinic to gain hands-on experience with immigration law.
GRAND FORKS – The UND Immigration Law Clinic officially opened this month to help students gain experience in immigration law and to address the labor shortage in North Dakota.
There is both a labor shortage and an attorney shortage in North Dakota. Hoping to address it, the Legislature passed a bill in February forming an immigration law clinic at the University of North Dakota.
“I’m trying to make sure that we’re getting the best of both worlds here in terms of student experience and also jobs in North Dakota,” Erick Resek said, UND professor and the supervisor of the clinic.
As of June, there are only 49 available workers for every 100 jobs in North Dakota. Resek said increases in immigration can boost local economies. A major purpose of the clinic is to address the need in Grand Forks for available workers.
“ … People are coming here to work. They’re coming here to work legally. They’re going to be paying billions in taxes, they’re going to be starting small businesses and they’re going to be contributing to our society,” he said.
The other purpose of the clinic is to train students in immigration law, a sector of the legal field, which Resek said is notoriously complex. The clinic will be offered as a course for credit, and Resek said he expects around eight to 10 students to be involved each semester.
He will focus on giving students a variety of cases and experiences to help them develop their skills so they are better prepared for work after graduation. He hopes to grow students’ abilities in trial experience, issue spotting and client interviewing. A hope for the clinic is that some students will want to stay and practice law in North Dakota.
“If we can train students to have at least the basic skills for being an immigration attorney, then maybe they’ll want to stay here and practice immigration (law),” Resek said.
The clinic’s legal assistance will come at no cost to clients. The state allocated $400,000 over a two-year period for the clinic to operate.
Immigration law is changing at a rapid pace as policies targeting immigrants are at the top of the Trump Administration’s agenda. Resek said the barriers facing those who want to come to the United States are greater than they’ve been before.
“We have delays that are crazy,” he said. “Like nothing we’ve seen in the past.”
These include long wait and processing times, severe government staffing shortages and a misalignment between new policies and existing procedures and infrastructure. Resek said on top of systematic challenges, there are fraudulent services that falsely claim to be able to help immigrants with paperwork, which can lead to mistakes with long-lasting consequences.
He called the current state of immigration law and policy “chaos”.
“Congress doesn’t allocate enough visas and we haven’t had comprehensive immigration reform for nearly 30 years. The laws that are in place and the restrictions and the limits on visas and the caps have not caught up to the reality, which is that we need a lot more,” he said.
Despite Resek’s concern about the current complexity of immigration law, he is passionate about providing students with ample opportunities and experiences in the field. He said he has already heard from multiple students who are excited to enroll in the fall semester.
Resek also said there is a vibrant immigrant community in Grand Forks and that people are drawn to the area for its low cost of living, safety and work opportunities.
“You have a sort of stigma among American citizens (of) ‘who wants to live in North Dakota?’ and you have immigrants who say … ‘if there’s work, if I can get a decent job and I can support my family, I’m going to go wherever I need to go,’ ” he said.
