After eight years of teaching law at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Hiroshi Motomura woke up one morning inspired to work on something new.
Few people before him had written about immigration law, a topic he held a deep interest in. Motomura decided to make immigration the focus of his research.
“People weren’t discussing immigration in law schools (at the time),” he said. “If it was taught, it was taught by practitioners, not by law faculty. … The subject was just getting off the ground.”
Born in Japan, Motomura immigrated to the United States with his family at the age of 3 . His family’s immigrant background fueled his interest in the topic, which he has been researching for the past 20 years.
Motomura will be giving a talk today, titled “Immigration Policy from D.C. to Arizona and Back: A Guide to a New American Dilemma”, in the Public Affairs Building at 12:15 p.m.
According to Motomura, the lecture will serve as a preview for his current work in progress, “Immigration Outside the Law,” and will address the various issues surrounding immigration law and citizenship rights.
Motomura, a professor at the UCLA School of Law, attended UC Berkeley for law school and practiced law for three years before beginning his teaching career.
In 1993, while he was working in Boulder, Colo., Motomura and his friend founded the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network.
The nonprofit project provides immigrants with volunteer lawyers to represent them in court, Motomura said. The project was officially recognized as an organization in 2000 and represents people in an immigration detention facility who are unable to afford a lawyer.
Motomura began teaching at the UCLA School of Law in 2008. He said UCLA is an excellent place to work and study at because immigration issues are central to life in Los Angeles.
Motomura has been involved in immigration-related litigation and worked on court cases that have played an important role in expanding the rights of non-citizens, said law Professor Ingrid Eagly.
She said his book “Americans in Waiting: The Lost Story of Immigration and Citizenship in the United States” has been important in transforming how scholars understand citizenship.
Motomura was invited by the UCLA Department of Social Welfare to serve as the first speaker in a series of five events, said Michelle Johnson, an assistant professor in the department of social welfare at the School of Public Affairs and a coordinator of the events. The talks will cover a range of topics that graduate students in the School of Public Affairs indicated they were interested in through a survey administered by the department.
Many of the graduate students have internships that require them to work with low-income clients who come from immigrant families, Johnson said. Currently,there are no courses at UCLA that directly address immigration policy.
“Through this series we are seeking to build content (that) will help students in their practice,” Johnson said.
Motomura, who has 35 speaking engagements scheduled for this year, said he hopes his work has put ideas out there that have shaped the way people think about immigrants.
“I’m giving a talk because I’m assuming someone in the audience will be influenced by it and find it interesting,” he said. “The only reason to give a talk is so someone may find it helpful in the work that they do.”