Immigration Reform in 2025

Amy Nice has been an immigration lawyer for 35 years, with a broad range of experience in both private practice and government. From June 2021 to January 2023, Ms. Nice served as an assistant director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, responsible for leading efforts on STEM talent policy. She also worked at the Office of the General Counsel at DHS headquarters and was executive director of immigration policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for almost five years.

Charles Kamasaki is former executive vice president at UnidosUS (formerly the National Council of La Raza), the nation’s largest Latino civil rights organization. He also is a fellow at the Migration Policy Institute and has written a book about immigration policy called Immigration Reform: The Corpse That Will Not Die. Mr. Kamasaki is currently a Distinguished Visiting Immigration Scholar at Cornell Law School.

Marielena Hincapié is a Distinguished Immigration Fellow and Visiting Scholar at Cornell Law School’s Immigration Law and Policy Program. She served as the executive director of the Los Angeles-based National Immigration Law Center (NILC) and the NILC Immigrant Justice Fund (IJF) until November 2022. Ms. Hincapié began her tenure at NILC in 2000 as a staff attorney leading the organization’s labor and employment program. During that time, she successfully litigated law reform and impact-litigation cases dealing with the intersection of immigration laws and employment/labor laws. 

As an immigrant from Colombia, Ms. Hincapié brings a bilingual and bicultural perspective to her work advancing equity, justice, and democracy. She serves as a member of the Board of Trustees for The David and Lucile Packard Foundation and is the author of a forthcoming book, Becoming America: A Personal History of A Nation’s Immigration Wars (Flatiron 2026).

Randy Johnson has worked on employment and immigration law and policy issues for over 25 years, bringing a broad perspective from working in the executive agencies, on Capitol Hill, and in the private sector. Deeply involved in past efforts on comprehensive immigration reform, including testifying in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, Mr. Johnson’s experience includes working as the senior vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, labor counsel to the House Education and Labor Committee, and special assistant to the Solicitor of Labor at the U.S. Department of Labor.

Stephen Yale-Loehr is a retired immigration law professor at Cornell Law School and co-author of “Immigration Law and Procedure,” the leading 21-volume treatise on U.S. immigration law. Before he retired, Professor Yale-Loehr also taught immigration and asylum law at Cornell Law School and was of counsel at Miller Mayer in Ithaca, New York.

Theresa Cardinal Brown is a nonresident fellow in Cornell Law School’s Migration and Human Rights Program. Her career spans three decades in bipartisan federal immigration law and policy, including law firms, government service, policy advocacy, and consulting. Theresa has worked at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and in senior advisory positions within the Department of Homeland Security under both the Bush and Obama administrations.