26-02-2025
North Dakota House passes bill establishing immigration law clinic at UND
Feb. 26—GRAND FORKS — A bill establishing an immigration-focused law clinic at the University of North Dakota passed the House on Monday, Feb. 24.
HB 1600 would allocate some $400,000 over the next biennium to a clinic employing one full-time staff attorney offering low-cost immigration legal services.
House lawmakers passed the bill by a vote of 67-25, with one member absent; the bill now heads to the Senate.
The House Appropriations Committee gave the bill a 21-2 "do pass" recommendation Wednesday, Feb. 19, after moving through the House Judiciary Committee without a recommendation.
Supportive lawmakers and attorneys focused on immigration law say the bill would increase access to much-needed legal services for migrant workers and their employers and offer law students a chance to gain experience in a niche and in-demand practice.
"It's not dealing with illegal immigration, it's dealing with legal immigration," asserted Rep. Jeff Hoverson, R-Minot, who brought the bill to the floor.
In committee, opponents had focused on the lack of precedent for establishing a legal clinic via legislation and raised concern about the clinic serving migrants whose legal status fell into a "gray area," like asylum seekers who may have entered the country without legal authorization.
Sue Swanson, an immigration attorney who worked with lead sponsor Rep. Emily O'Brien to craft the bill, says North Dakota needs more immigration lawyers to sustain and grow the state's workforce.
"There's certain job fields that (employers) are not able to fill at all, period, with U.S. workers, and so the only way these will ever get filled is going to be by foreign nationals," Swanson said. "And knowing that, we need to plan for the future."
O'Brien, R-Grand Forks, characterized the bill as a "workforce development solution catered toward employment-based visas" in a Monday afternoon email to the Herald.
Migrant labor is increasingly in demand across the state. According to North Dakota Job Service, the number of employer requests for just temporary agricultural and non-agricultural workers — H-2As and H-2Bs — more than doubled between fiscal year 2021 and FY 2024, from 2,144 to 4,321 and from 1,012 to 2,924, respectively.
In Feb. 19 testimony before the House appropriations committee, O'Brien cited the need for more energy and agricultural workers and nurses in the state.
The number of immigration attorneys, however, remains stagnant.
Several estimates given by O'Brien and UND Law Dean Brian Pappas count only three North Dakota attorneys specializing in employment-based immigration, including Swanson, who practices law in North Dakota and Minnesota as well as lecturing at UND's law school.
"An H2-A worker, which is an ag worker, is very different than an H-1B worker," said Dustin Hillebrand, workforce center manager at North Dakota Job Service. "The requirements for those visas are very different. The quotas that are set by the government are very different. And so it truly takes someone with a lot of knowledge to be able to help somebody through that."
Multiple lawmakers in Wednesday's appropriations hearing said they'd personally struggled to find reliable legal services to facilitate bringing in new labor or helping some laborers establish residency.
Swanson says HB 1600 would expand the pool of qualified attorneys by exposing UND law students to the discipline.
"Immigration law is complicated. You don't just come out of law school, open up your own practice and get started up," said Swanson, who worked as an administrator for UND focused on immigration for years before becoming a lawyer. "You've got to have mentoring, and you've got to learn."
Right now, students have few options to clerk for an immigration-focused law practice in North Dakota, and those who do seek out the discipline out-of-state are unlikely to return, she said.
"You're always going to have immigration, and you're always going to have employment-based immigration," Swanson said. "Why not keep as much business in the state as we possibly can, and why not train the next generation of attorneys?"
The bill comes at a time of increased hostility toward immigrants in North Dakota and across the United States.
A bill seeking to dismantle the state Office of Legal Immigration failed a floor vote in the House last week; another bill expanding a ban on sanctuary cities in North Dakota is set for a floor vote sometime this week.
