Immigration Slavery in America

Saket Soni is founder and director of Resilience Force, the voice of the rising workforce rebuilding America after climate disasters. He is also the author of The Great Escape: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America. Mr. Soni is a recognized national expert on the intersection of climate, workforce, and racial justice issues. He was profiled as an “architect of the next labor movement” in USA Today, chosen as a 2022-23 Aspen Institute Fellow, and named one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business for 2022. Mr. Soni’s work was the subject of a major New Yorker feature story in November 2021.

Sarah Stillman is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she covers criminal justice, immigration, climate change, and more. She teaches investigative reporting at Yale University and is a MacArthur Fellow.

Ms. Stillman joined The New Yorker in 2012; that same year, her piece about labor abuses on United States military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, “The Invisible Army,” received the National Magazine Award for public interest and the Hillman Prize for magazine journalism. In 2019, she received another National Magazine Award for public interest, for her 2018 New Yorker piece, “No Refuge,” which documented how deportation can become a death sentence for asylum seekers and other immigrants. 

A contributor to the best-selling anthology All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, Ms. Stillman is currently reporting on the ways that climate change, migration, and labor intersect. Her investigation into the labor abuses faced by migrant disaster-recovery workers — and their efforts to push back, amidst the accelerating climate crisis — won a 2022 George Polk Award, and her related New Yorker Radio Hour piece featuring Resilience Force won an Edward R. Murrow Award.

Steve Yale-Loehr has practiced immigration law for over 35 years. He is co-author of Immigration Law and Procedure, a leading 21-volume treatise on U.S. immigration law. He also teaches immigration and asylum law at Cornell Law School as Professor of Immigration Law Practice and is of counsel at Miller Mayer in Ithaca, New York. He also founded and was the original executive director of Invest In the USA, a trade association of EB-5 immigrant investor regional centers. Professor Yale-Loehr received his B.A. degree from Cornell University in 1977 and his J.D. cum laude from Cornell Law School in 1981. He was editor-in-chief of the Cornell International Law Journal. After graduation, Professor Yale-Loehr clerked for the chief judge of the Northern District of New York.

From 1982 to 1986, Professor Yale-Loehr practiced international trade and immigration law at a large law firm in Washington, D.C. From 1986 to 1994 he was managing editor of Interpreter Releases and executive editor of Immigration Briefings, two leading immigration law publications.

Professor Yale-Loehr is the co-author or editor of many books, including Green Card Stories; America’s Challenge: Domestic Security, Civil Liberties and National Unity After September 11; Balancing Interests: Rethinking the Selection of Skilled Immigrants; Global Business Immigration Practice Guide; J Visa Guidebook; Understanding the Immigration Act of 1990; and Understanding the 1986 Immigration Law, as well as numerous law review articles.

Professor Yale-Loehr is a member of the New York Bar and the U.S. Supreme Court. He is a member of the asylum committee and the administrative litigation task force of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA). He is also a founding member of the Alliance of Business Immigration Lawyers, a global consortium of top business immigration attorneys.

Professor Yale-Loehr is annually listed in Chambers Global, Chambers USA, and An International Who’s Who of Corporate Immigration Lawyers as one of the best immigration lawyers in the world. He is listed in Who’s Who in America. He is frequently quoted in the press on immigration issues and has often testified before Congress. He is the 2001 recipient of AILA’s Elmer Fried Award for excellence in teaching and the 2004 recipient of AILA’s Edith Lowenstein Award for excellence in advancing the practice of immigration law. He is also a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and a non-resident fellow at the Migration Policy Institute.