AILA Law Journal authors Gabriela Pinto Vega and Andrew Wellisch shared some insights in these short videos in which they describe a bit about the process of writing for the Law Journal, the topic of digital evidence, and how AILA members and others can hopefully use the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and similar laws on behalf of clients in the immigration context. Watch the videos below or read the transcripts directly under the videos, and check out their article in the journal!
My name is Gabriela Pinto Vega, I’m an immigration attorney with offices in Miami, Florida, in Northridge, California. Together with my good friend Andrew Wellisch, we’ve written the article titled “Acquiring and Presenting Digital Evidence in Immigration Practice,” published in the October edition of AILA Law Journal.
Two takeaways from this article are 1): you will get an introduction to the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, currently in effect, and 2): how you as an immigration practitioner can utilize state privacy laws to acquire digital evidence on behalf of your client from third-party businesses that you can utilize to prove your case, such as evidence in the cancellation of removal context concerning physical presence and evidence in the context of the I-130 petitions and I-751 petitions when trying to prove a bona fide marriage.
The intent of this article is to provide you the immigration practitioner with yet another tool in your toolbox that you can use in order to effectively represent and be the fearless advocate that you can be on behalf of your clients.
I want to thank my good friend Andrew for his wealth of information in data privacy law as well as the whole entire AILA editorial team for their support. I hope you enjoy reading this article as much as Andrew and I had fun writing it. And finally, please continue to be the fearless advocate that you are on behalf of your clients, and always remember not to give up, because in numbers there is strength.
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Hi, my name is Andrew Wellisch. I’m grateful to Gabriela Pinto Vega and the AILA Law Journal team. It’s a blessing to simply be here today with you. This article, like many good things in life, began with two friends meeting together over dinner while at a sushi restaurant. It felt nourishing to share with my friend Gabby about the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA) and the data privacy rights that I was learning about while studying at a fantastic LLM program at Loyola Law School. Gabby graciously listened to me go on and on about the CCPA, and about three California rolls into the meal, Gabby mentioned the idea of applying the right to request to know personal information from the CCPA into the immigration context.
It was an inspiring moment. We later met again at a church and agreed to write this article together. This piece connects immigration law with data privacy law. Our intention was to raise awareness about the right to request to know personal information from the CCPA to help immigrants today. We hope that it helps keep families together. Thank you.
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AILA members – the full law journal is available to you free for download.