The Law Offices of Lea McDermid, LLC merged with Shaftel Delman Kaufman on May 1, 2018, where Lea McDermid McKenna continues to practice immigration law, as well as representing clients in all aspects of estate planning.
Lea has extensive experience in the following areas:
Family-Based Immigration Issues
- Adjustment to permanent resident status
- Visa petitions
- Affidavit of Support issues
- Waivers for fraud, unlawful presence, and medical grounds of inadmissibility
- Provisional unlawful presence waivers from within the U.S.
- Consular processing
- Derivative citizenship for children of United States citizens
- Form I-751 Petition to Remove Conditions on Residence
- K visas for spouses and fiancés of U.S. citizens and their children
Domestic Violence Immigration Issues
- Battered spouse and children cases
- Crime victim (U visas) and trafficking victim (T visas) cases
- Removal of conditional status for marriage-based green cards including waivers based on domestic violence or divorce
Employment-Based Immigration
- Nonimmigrant visas (e.g. TN, H1-B visas)
- Labor Certification
- Employment-Based Adjustment of Status to obtain lawful permanent resident status (green card)
Removal and deportation defense
- Waivers for criminal grounds of removal
- Cancellation of removal
- Adjustment of Status
- Fraud waivers
- Asylum
- Termination of proceedings
- Motions to reopen and motions to reconsider final orders of removal and administrative denials of certain immigration applications
Immigration Custody and Bond Issues
- Release from immigration custody
- Requests for reduced bond
- Bond redetermination hearings
Other Immigration Issues
- Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
- Diversity visa lottery
- Naturalization
- Asylum
- NACARA
- Temporary Protected Status
Lea McDermid McKenna is fluent in Spanish. Prior to going into private practice, she worked as the Domestic Violence Staff Attorney in the Immigration and Refugee Services Program at Catholic Social Services in Anchorage, Alaska. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law (now called Berkeley Law). She has also practiced immigration law in San Francisco and she clerked for Chief Justice Dana Fabe of the Alaska Supreme Court. As an undergraduate, she attended the University of California at Santa Cruz, where she graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology with honors.
She is a member of the Alaska Bar Association and the California Bar Association. She is authorized to practice immigration law before the Department of Homeland Security, immigration court, and the Board of Immigration Appeals. She has also been admitted to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and has done oral argument before the Ninth Circuit. For many years she was the chair of the immigration section of the Alaska Bar Association and she is now an executive committee member. She has worked with the Mexican Consulate and the University of Alaska Anchorage. She has done many presentations to the Alaska Bar Association on immigration topics and has been interviewed many times by the media on issues relating to immigration reform, DACA, and legal immigration. She was the legal director of a naturalization clinic she organized with Catholic Social Services. She has ben a volunteer attorney with the ACLU of Alaska on issues relating to local law enforcement's enforcement of federal immigration law. She has volunteered extensively with Coalition of Alaskans for Immigrants' Rights, an interagency group that includes members from the Anchorage Mayor's office, the Anchorage School District, and several non-profit agencies.
She studied Spanish in Mexico and Guatemala and worked in the fields of social services and criminal justice for six years in San Francisco and Santa Barbara, California before going to law school. Lea is passionate about traveling and she has traveled extensively in Mexico, Central America, Europe, and Southeast Asia. In her free time she keeps busy hiking, running, skiing, rock climbing, cycling, kayaking, and pack rafting.
For additional information, please visit our website: www.leamcdermid.com