We Make America: Past AILA President, Charles Kuck on the Calling of Immigration Lawyers
15th September 2025
Date
Interviewee
Charles Kuck
It started with a judge who knew his name and a client who needed a lifeline. A young law graduate, not yet sworn in, walked into immigration court carrying a pro bono asylum case for a Guatemalan farmer. The judge granted relief. The lawyer walked out thinking, this is the greatest job in the world.
That moment set the course for Charles “Chuck” Kuck’s career. He did not go to law school to be an immigration lawyer. He expected a life in big law and litigation. Instead, he found a vocation that mixed courtroom improvisation with deep human stakes. Decades later, the former President of the American Immigration Lawyers Association looks back on that first win as the hinge on which everything turned.
Growing Up In An Immigrant Household
Kuck’s empathy has roots at home. He grew up with grandparents who immigrated from Germany in 1929 and 1930. The family’s language was a secret code he did not speak. He knew the cadence of their stories and the gravity of their decisions even without the words. He also spent two years in Peru on an LDS mission during a turbulent era, an experience that sharpened his Spanish and his sense of the region’s political realities. When a colleague asked if he spoke Spanish and could help with asylum cases, he said yes. He had not yet passed the bar. He learned quickly.
The early cases were raw and personal. Friendly House, a community group, helped him prepare. The courts ran on compressed timelines. He showed up, told the truth, and advocated as if each case might be his last. He won half a dozen in short order, an outcome that reinforced the idea that immigration law offered something rare in the profession: immediate, life changing impact.
Apprenticeship With Icons
Kuck’s education came in rooms most lawyers never see. In Arizona, he worked alongside Roxy Bacon and Nancy Jo Merritt, widely regarded as giants in the field. He watched them argue at counters in the old INS building when you could still fix a problem by walking paperwork across the hall and making your case. He learned that immigration practice demanded stamina, improvisation, and conviction.
Big law had its appeal. It also had its ceiling. After several years in national firms and a partnership track, Kuck chose independence. He built a practice in Atlanta that today includes about 50 people and 10 lawyers, with a database of tens of thousands of matters that spans removal, humanitarian, family, and business immigration. He jokes that he has worked in big law three times and found them all the same. He prefers flat fees over six minute increments and believes billing models shape mental health as much as revenue.
Charging What The Work Is Worth
The counsel is blunt. Immigration lawyers undervalue themselves. If you want a sustainable practice and a life you can live, charge fees that reflect the value of transforming a client’s future. Kuck likes to quote a friend who says a green card case should be priced at the value of a good used car. The math is simple. If you are always undercharging, you will never buy back your time. If you are always overpromising, you will burn out.
He connects pricing to wellness. Exhaustion leads to mistakes. Solos with heavy removal dockets feel trapped because immigration courts do not behave like real courts. Vacations look impossible. The antidote is boundaries and honest pricing. Learn to say no. Take Fridays off if you can. Pick your pro bono matters; do not let them pick you. If you need help, ask for it, and use bar resources before you break.
On Trump, Policy Cycles, And The Long View
Kuck does not sugarcoat the political climate. He reached AILA’s presidency in 2007 and 2008, the last years of the Bush administration, and says the echoes of that era are loud today. Backlogs, enforcement surges, and regulatory punishment cycles are familiar patterns. He believes policy choices since 1996 embedded punishment into the law, then layered complexity on top. His reform agenda is precise: eliminate the permanent bar in section 212(a)(9)(C) and update the registry date on a rolling basis. Those two changes, he argues, would regularize millions, reduce pressure on the system, and align enforcement with economic reality.
He is candid about the politics. He does not expect Congress to fix immigration in the near term. He warns of demographic and economic consequences if the country chooses to shrink its working population. The analysis is pragmatic rather than partisan. Fewer contributors means more stress on Social Security and slower growth. Population policy is economic policy.
Advice For Immigrants
First, hire your own lawyer. If your company retains big law, remember that their client is the employer, not you. Paying for a personal consultation is an investment in clarity. Second, understand the system rather than myths. Learn the H 1B lottery rules, the basics of PERM, the meaning of the visa bulletin, the implications of an arrest, and what an FDNS audit is. Do not take legal advice from friends. Use reviews and simple internet checks to filter counsel. Search a lawyer’s name with words like fraud or malpractice to smoke out bad actors. Then pick a professional who handles your type of case. Removal is not H -1Bs and U visas are not EB-1s.
Advice For Lawyers
Immigration law is intense, but it is also the best job in the profession. Nothing matches the moment you hand a client a green card after twenty years or win an asylum claim that keeps a family intact. Remember the mission when the docket feels relentless. Price for value. Protect your time. Pick pro bono with intention. Ask for help when you need it. You make America every day. Act like the work is as valuable as it truly is.
Kuck still laughs easily. He still talks like a trial lawyer who loves the fight. He still believes immigrants and their advocates are on the right side of history. The first asylum win gave him a glimpse of what a career could be when measured in lives changed rather than hours billed. The lesson stuck.
America, he tells new arrivals, is still a great country. The roads are paved with hard work, patience, education, and faith. For the lawyers who choose this path, the reward is the chance to change a future in real time. In his telling, immigration lawyers might even get a special place in heaven. The work certainly aims high enough to deserve it.
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