Zool Suleman has heard many stories of human suffering during his career
as an immigration lawyer. Although each of those stories is unique to the
person who tells it, one common element binds them all together -- the desire
to escape a violent environment and to start a new, better life.
And Suleman can relate to those desires well. He was only nine years old
when he and his family left Uganda in 1972.
"There was a great deal of turmoil there, and a great deal of fear on the
street, people getting killed," says Suleman. "And it was just not very safe.
The country was clearly heading into civil war, and that is what did happen."
Suleman says there was no direct relationship between his experience as
a refugee and his decision to become an immigration lawyer.
"But having that experience makes me better at my job," he says.
His interest in immigration law began when he articled in the appeals division
of a federal court. It reviewed immigration board decisions. His work as a
clerk exposed him to hundreds of different cases and gave him an inside perspective
into all aspects and sides of immigration law.
"Being in the middle from the judicial point of view was great," says Suleman,
who clerked for a judge. "I got to see the department's perspective as well
as the perspective of [the lawyers] and the people."
But immigration law was not Suleman's first choice when he passed the bar
exam. He wanted to be an entertainment lawyer, and he practiced in that area
for a while. But his interest in immigration law remained strong, and he eventually
changed his practice.
For the first five years, he worked mostly on the cases of refugees --
people like him who had to leave their home countries because they had been
victims of political violence, or because they did not feel safe there anymore.
One of his cases featured a woman from El Salvador who came to North America
after right-wing soldiers broke her legs. But an immigration board refused
her application for refugee status, and she would have been deported had it
not been for Suleman and his team.
"We nurtured that case for a good three [or] four years," he says. "We
even got her special shoes so that she could work. And after a few years,
we were successful in showing that there had been some mistakes made at her
original [hearing]. And her life changed forever."
At one time, immigration issues dominated nightly newscasts in the United
States, thanks to a little boy from Cuba named Elian Gonzalez. He became the
cause of a nasty political and legal battle between his relatives in Miami
who wanted custody of him, his natural father, Cuba and the United States.
The case turned immigration law scholars into media personalities, and
gave the public a sense of how complicated immigration law can be.
Kathleen Walker knows all about that. She has been recognized in Best Lawyers
in America for immigration law every year since it started recognizing the
practice area. Consider a recent case of hers.
A man from a foreign country wants to live and work in the United States.
As Walker goes through his paperwork, she makes an interesting discovery.
"He had no idea that he was already a U.S. citizen," she says. How? He had
citizenship through his great-grandparents.
The next step was to tell this to immigration officials, and they had their
suspicions about the whole thing. But in the end, Walker won. "It was challenging
work proving that he had citizenship through [his] great-grandparents," she
says. "It was so wonderful to [document] his status as a U.S. citizen."
Suleman also gets a kick out of fighting his way through the
maze of rules and regulation. "I like to help people navigate their way through...the
government, which sometimes can be very confusing," he says.
But that is not the main reason for why he became an immigration lawyer.
"You help people start new lives because they are coming from a bad situation,"
he says. "You are helping people start their lives fresh. That's always a
nice kind of feeling."