Legal Practitioner Resources


IRAP helps legal practitioners better represent refugees and displaced persons through a variety of resources. IRAP’s resources collect knowledge and best practices developed from over a decade of representing clients, as well as insights from reviewing thousands of government records about immigration processing obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Below, you can access the variety of resources that IRAP has created, organized by the type of resource. We have also included ways for practitioners to contact IRAP for technical assistance, to request trainings, and to sign up for legal practice updates. Further below we have organized our resources related to IRAP’s key issue areas– Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) for Afghans and Iraqis, the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), Family Reunification, and Humanitarian Parole. You can also view a full list of IRAP’s legal practitioner resources here (in chronological order, with most recent publications first).

These in-depth guides cover a legal pathway or areas of the law in detail, with tips for practitioners, hypothetical scenarios, and tools for legal practitioners like template submissions:

IRAP updates practice guides on a recurring basis to reflect changes in law, and in order to ensure that only the most up-to-date version of the guide is publicly available, IRAP’s practice guides are view-only. Attorneys and law students working on IRAP pro bono cases can log into our attorney-student resource webpage for downloadable versions.

These concise advisories, blogs, and tools cover new legal developments and provide practitioners with tools to address specific legal challenges:

These recorded trainings, webinars, and online courses provide viewers with an introduction to key legal pathways and issues:

If you are a legal aid organization and would like to ask about booking a free training by an IRAP expert, please use IRAP’s Speaker Request form here.

IRAP has created searchable archives of thousands of government documents obtained through freedom of information laws, litigation, and research:

IRAP’s has created a technical assistance portal where legal practitioners working on specific case types (only available for SIV cases at this time) can ask IRAP’s legal experts questions:

Sign up here for an email list sharing information about new and updated IRAP resources for legal practitioners.

Special Immigrant Visas

Use the links below to access IRAP’s SIV resources:

U.S. Refugee Admissions Program

Use the links below to access IRAP’s USRAP resources:

A teenage boy and a young man with deep black skin and closely cropped black hair (brothers who have just been reunited after years separated by harsh immigration policies) stand with a white woman with wavy, shoulder-length brown hair in an airport arrivals corridor. The woman is holding a hand-written poster that says "Welcome" with an American flag. The young man and the woman have big smiles on their faces, and the teenage boy has a stoic look on his face. The teenage boy is wearing a black zip-up FILA hoodie, the young man wears a plum colored button-down shirt, and the woman wears a white blouse with teal and gray swirly patterns on it.

Family Reunification

Use the links below to access IRAP’s Family Reunification resources:

Humanitarian Parole

Use the links below to access IRAP’s Humanitarian Parole resources:

A child runs in a hallway. He is mid-air at the time of the photo, and other children and adults are visible in the background.