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UPDATE FROM THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN IMMIGRATION LAWYERS ASSOCIATION
Nearly 3,000 of the nation’s immigration lawyers gathered in Chicago this past week for the annual meeting of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. The event combines extensive continuing legal education programming with dozens of meetings and events including the election of the organization’s leadership. 
This year, Margaret Catillaz, a lawyer from Rochester, NY, was sworn in as AILA’s newest president. 
The AILA meeting is usually packed with speakers from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, State Department and Labor Department. Major storms that crippled airports in the east and Midwest took their toll on the meeting. A number of government speakers cancelled at the last minute including INS Commissioner Doris Meissner. The INS Commissioner traditionally addresses the group to report on the agency’s progress. 
Meissner’s absence is particularly troubling for many immigration lawyers since the agency is the subject of hearings in Congress to reorganize or even dismantle the agency. Meissner last year predicted that by the end of this summer, citizenship applications would be taking less than six months to process on average around the country. Yet the situation seems no better and many other areas of service seem worse. 
There were some news items that came from the meeting. The US Department of Labor unveiled a number of details on the new labor certification program called PERM. We report in detail on this later in this issue. 
AILA advocacy director Judy Golub urged the organization’s membership to push hard for increases in the H-1B quota, restoration of Section 245i of the Immigration and Nationality Act and an update of the registry for would be immigrants to 1986 from 1972. All three items are seen as having a decent chance of passage this year. 
State Department official Steve Fischel predicted that DV lottery winners for the DV-2000 program should act quickly since it is very likely that numbers for this year will run out early. He also hinted that there could be some changes in the list of countries eligible for the lottery this year. Fischel also apologized to AILA members for the mess that has become the J-1 visa waiver program. The program has been in a state of disarray since it was transferred last year from the USIA to the State Department. He did state, however, that the situation would soon get better with the hiring of three former USIA officials as contract workers.