At the Annual Conference of the American Immigration Lawyers Association in Orlando, Ron Klasko was awarded the Bar Association’s highest award, The Founders Award. Presented to the person or organization “who has had the most substantial impact on the field of immigration law or policy”, the honor has only been awarded three times in the last decade. AILA has bestowed this award upon a member of the association on only five occasions, and Ron becomes the first person in the history of the organization to be twice honored with this award. Previous recipients of the award include President Truman, Supreme Court Justice Douglas, Senator Kennedy and Congressman Rodino.

Ron was chosen for this award in recognition for leading AILA’s newly-formed Administrative Litigation Task Force. As a result of the efforts of Ron and the Task Force, successful litigation challenging unprecedentedly restrictive immigration policies, legal interpretations and unreasonable delays in adjudications, has increased exponentially across the country. In addition, Ron served as co-counsel for the federal court litigation challenging a USCIS memorandum that purported to reverse 21-years of consistent USCIS policy by imposing 3- or 10-year bars to admission to the U.S. for many foreign students and scholars. The litigation resulted in the issuance of a nationwide preliminary injunction that forced USCIS to withdraw its policy. Upon accepting the award, Ron noted the fact that he first won the Founder’s Award in 1999 for his work as AILA General Counsel in negotiating the very policies that USCIS is seeking to overturn in 2018 and 2019.

For more than three decades, Ron has blazed many trails in immigration law, litigating precedent-setting immigration cases and developing a number of pioneering legal strategies that have earned him a reputation for finding innovative solutions to seemingly impossible cases.

As a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Klasko has previously served as National President of the AILA, as General Counsel for three Presidents and has been a member of its Board of Governors since 1980. He has served as National Chair of AILA’s U.S. Department of Labor Liaison Committee, Business Immigration Committee, INS General Counsel Liaison Committee and the National Task Forces on Labor Certifications, H-1 visas, L-1 visas and Employer Sanctions, and five terms as National Chair of AILA’s EB-5 Committee.

As a founding member and managing partner of Klasko Immigration Law Partners, LLP, Ron currently leads the firm’s E-2 and EB-5 practice, which includes some of the most experienced and renowned investor visa lawyers in the U.S. He was the lead attorney on the famous Matters of Walsh and Pollard, which established the key precedent for treaty investor visas. Ron is the North American Regional Representative of the Investment Migration Council. His leadership and legacy of excellence is reflected in the success of his firm, which has been chosen by Chambers Global as one of the top five immigration law firms in the United States. Ron himself has been recognized as being in Band 1 of immigration lawyers. In addition, he has been included in the highly-regarded Best Lawyers in America for over two decades and has also been selected in Lawdragon’s/Human Resource Executive’s list of The Most Powerful Employment Attorneys Guide’s Hall of Fame. Who’s Who Legal in Corporate Immigration named him as the most highly regarded immigration lawyer in the world.

Source: digitaljournal.com
Published: 20 June 2019