Richard Jurgens: Commencing a Career in Immigration Law.

Having come to Miami with ambitions of one day practicing immigration law, Richard Jurgens was thrilled when the Bureau of Immigration and Citizenship offered him a position that would keep him in Miami indefinitely. Formerly Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), it was renamed in March when the INS merged into the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Richard will be a trial attorney at the Miami District Counsel's Office, representing the government in various immigration proceedings. "My work will range from deportation to asylum hearings as well as granting relief to aliens that merit it. I've loved living in Miami and I really wasn't ready to leave. There's just no place like it anywhere in the United States."

Richard interned last summer with the INS in Washington, D.C., researching immigration matters for the Enforcements and National Security Divisions and non-immigration matters for the Commercial Division. Through Miami Law's Clinical Placement Program, Richard started a second internship with the INS regional office in Miami when he returned to law school in the fall.

As an entering student, Richard was designated a Miami Scholar, an $18,000 award that targets students who plan to practice in the public interest. While the scholarship is obviously a great feature of the Miami Scholars Program, Richard says that the mentoring provided by the program has been particularly valuable. "Professor Rose has the older students match up with the younger students and once a month the 1Ls get together with their mentors to talk about career options and opportunities that exist in public interest law." Richard is also a member of the University of Miami's International and Comparative Law Review, the Society of Bar and Gavel, the Honor Council, the Moot Court Board, the International Moot Court, and the Student Ambassador Program.

Richard earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. As a language major at Hamline, Richard studied abroad in France and Nicaragua. During his last semester of college, he volunteered at Centro Legal, an organization that assists Hondurans applying for Temporary Protection Status with the INS. He took a year off between undergraduate and law school for a research fellowship with the Fulbright Program in Morocco. In addition to studying Arabic, as a Fulbright Fellow, Richard conducted field research on the career options for educated women in Moroccan society.

After graduation, Richard will begin studying for the Florida Bar in July. He is not scheduled to start at his new position until September and is planning on using the time between the Bar and the new job to travel. Richard's mother is an immigrant from China and in August, Richard and his family are traveling to China to visit his grandmother.