Staff Attorney, Immigration

Staff Attorney, Immigration

UFW Foundation

Department: Immigration Legal Services

Reports to: Supervising Attorney, Immigration

Location: California preferred; open to candidates based anywhere in the continental U.S., with preference given to candidates near a major metropolitan airport hub to support occasional travel.

Travel Expectations: This role may require periodic travel (approximately quarterly to biannually) for in-person meetings, trainings, or court appearances. UFW Foundation covers travel costs for out-of-state hires when in-person attendance is required. Remote appearances are common in immigration court and will be used where possible to minimize travel.

Salary Range: $70,404–$83,500 annually, depending on experience

The Opportunity

Right now, families are being separated faster than the courts can hear their cases. This is where you show up for them. You'll carry a full caseload of affirmative relief and removal defense: cases that decide whether a mother stays with her children, whether a family reunites or doesn't. Part of your work is direct representation, casework that keeps a family's case moving through USCIS or immigration court. Part of it is community lawyering: campus outreach, group processing events, and Know Your Rights workshops that reach someone before they ever need a courtroom. Both are the job. Neither is the add-on.

About UFW Foundation

For 20 years, the UFW Foundation has worked to ensure that every farm worker and immigrant has the opportunity to live and work with dignity, safety, and respect. We've mobilized farm workers and their organizations across the country to advocate for more equitable policies, such as immigration reform, pesticide protections, heat standards, hazard pay, and other worker protections. That legal work now spans two fronts. On one front, we run one of the largest federally accredited immigration legal services programs in California, standing between families and a system that’s separating them faster than courts can hear their cases. On the other front, we’re building a Workers’ Rights program to confront wage theft, unsafe heat, and retaliation head-on. Farm workers are 35 times more likely to die from heat-related illness than the rest of the U.S. workforce. That is exactly the kind of gap we exist to close. Both programs are growing right now to meet a moment that demands it, from active litigation challenging a federal wage cut in court to public testimony documenting the human cost of immigration enforcement. Across California, Georgia, Michigan, and Washington, that’s what a farm worker or immigrant family can expect from us: dignity, safety, and respect, backed by lawyers who show up.

How We Work

• Hybrid: 2–3 days onsite at your regional office, remote the rest. Free parking at every location. Evening and weekend availability is needed at times for community events.
• Travel: Regular travel to court hearings, community college campuses, and trainings within your region.
• Team: You report to a Supervising Attorney and work closely with your Directing Attorney.

What You'll Do

What follows are the core responsibilities of this role, the work that will fill most of your week. It isn't meant to be a complete list. Casework shifts with client need, court schedules, and whatever the organization needs most in a given season, and no list this short could capture all of that. This gives you a general picture of the role, not a complete list of everything it could include.

Direct Legal Services & Casework

• Manage a caseload across affirmative relief and removal defense: naturalization, DACA renewal, family-based petitions, adjustment of status, asylum, withholding, and CAT relief, VAWA, U and T visas, SIJS, and Cancellation of Removal.
• Represent adults, families, and children, including unaccompanied children, before USCIS, EOIR, California state courts, and federal District Courts, including bond hearings and full removal defense.

• Conduct client intake, draft pleadings and applications for relief, and maintain timely, accurate case records.
• Review criminal dispositions and analyze their immigration consequences.

Community Lawyering & Outreach

• Conduct outreach at your assigned community college campus.
• Assist with naturalization and DACA renewal group processing events.
• Deliver Know Your Rights presentations and other sessions on affirmative immigration relief in the community.
• Support the UFW Foundation's Community Advancement Services department with application workshops and related events, as assigned.

Internal Collaboration & Training

• Attend scheduled "triage" meetings to help screen potential clients.
• Work closely with your Directing Attorney to coordinate strategy and maximize case output.
• Provide training and technical assistance to UFW Foundation staff, interns, fellows, volunteers, and partner organizations.
• Recruit and coordinate pro bono and low-bono attorney support.
• Identify trends in DHS practice and community needs, and help translate them into advocacy priorities.

What You Bring

• Licensed attorney in good standing in any U.S. state, or a J.D. with bar results pending (California bar preferred, not required).
• Functional bilingual proficiency in Spanish and English, sufficient to conduct a client intake or explain legal options directly without an interpreter.
• Valid driver's license and reliable vehicle access for regional travel.

Nice to Have

• Working knowledge of core immigration relief categories: naturalization, DACA, family-based petitions, adjustment of status, SIJS, VAWA, U/T visas, TPS, asylum/withholding/CAT, and removal defense.

• Direct representation or clinical/externship experience appearing before USCIS, EOIR, or state courts.
• Experience delivering Know Your Rights presentations or other community legal education.
• Additional language ability, including indigenous languages.

UFW Foundation weighs lived experience, being an immigrant, farmworker, or low-wage worker, or growing up in a mixed-status household, alongside professional legal experience. If that is part of how you found your way to this work, we want to hear about it.

Compensation & Benefits

• Salary: $70,404–$83,500 annually, depending on experience, with yearly increases tied to individual, team, and organizational performance.
• Health coverage: medical, dental, and vision, with the majority of premiums paid by the UFW Foundation and pre-taxed.
• Retirement: the Juan de la Cruz Pension Plan (automatic enrollment, guaranteed 6.5% interest), a 403(b) with a 2% dollar-for-dollar match after 90 days, providing employees contribute a minimum of 2% of their annual salary, and a Fidelity 401(k) available from your date of hire.
• Time off: 2–4 weeks of vacation depending on tenure, 16 paid holidays including a floating personal day, 6 paid sick days, 1 mental health day, and 5 days of bereavement leave per immediate family member.
• Support: a no-cost Employee Assistance Program, free access to thousands of professional development courses, and a 20% discount on immigration services for you and your family.

Equal Opportunity

The UFW Foundation is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We believe a strong commitment to equal employment opportunity is more than a legal and moral obligation – it is also a sound business practice to realize the potential of every individual. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive work environment for all! In order to provide equal employment and advancement opportunities to all individuals, employment decisions at the UFW Foundation will be based on merit, qualifications, and abilities. Except where required or permitted by law, employment practices will not be influenced or affected by an applicant’s or employee’s race, color, religion, sex/gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, military or veteran status, national origin, ancestry, disability, genetic information, age, or any characteristic protected by law.

We encourage all qualified applicants to apply for a position fighting for farm worker and immigrant communities! The UFW Foundation believes in second chances. As an organization, we will rely on individualized assessments in the hiring of those with past criminal convictions. The UFW Foundation will make reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with qualified disabilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act unless doing so would result in an undue hardship. Persons of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, persons with disabilities, persons who have lived in poverty, formerly incarcerated, persons 40 years old or older, and people fluent in more than one language are strongly encouraged to apply for open positions with the UFW Foundation. 

This policy governs all aspects of employment, including selection, job assignment, compensation, counseling, discipline, termination, access to benefits and training. Our commitment to equal opportunity employment applies to all persons involved in our operations and prohibits unlawful discrimination by any employee, including supervisors and co-workers.

This search is being conducted by QuantumPath on behalf of the UFW Foundation. If you need an accommodation during the application process, contact kim @ quantumpath.us.