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Biography
Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia serves as Deputy Director for Legal Affairs at the National Immigration Forum, where she provides legal expertise and analysis of legislative and regulatory proposals; engages in direct advocacy with Congress and the Administration; leads work groups focused on immigrants’ rights; and educates communities, advocates and government officials about immigration policies.

Ms. Wadhia currently teaches immigration at Howard University School of Law and has also taught asylum and refugee law at the American University Washington College of Law. Formerly, Ms. Wadhia was a practicing attorney at the Washington immigration firm Maggio and Kattar, P.C., successfully litigating deportation matters before the immigration courts of Baltimore and Arlington.

She also represented clients seeking asylum, obtaining family- and employment-based immigration benefits from the Department of Homeland Security (formerly INS). She obtained her Juris Doctorate from Georgetown University Law Center, where she also served as a research assistant to former INS General Counsel T. Alexander Aleinikoff.

Ms. Wadhia is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers’ Guild and holds bar licenses in Maryland and New Jersey. Ms. Wadhia is a recipient of the 2003 Pro Bono Attorney of the Year Award by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the 2006 Leadership Award by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. She speaks and writes frequently on immigration law and policy.