When Danielle Goldman talks about her father’s immigration law practice, she doesn’t describe a career – she describes a calling.
The early-morning phone call from terrified clients ahead of visa appointments; the pro-bono cases taken because a woman’s abused children were hiding alone in a forest in Cameroon; the lawsuit filed against the U.S. State Department to help ten highly-skilled scientists and developers, stranded outside the U.S. on already-approved visas, finally enter the country.
Most immigration attorneys will go their entire careers without receiving public recognition for work like that. Goldman’s new venture, Build, wants to change that.
Build has announced the launch of The Immies – the first-ever national awards program dedicated exclusively to honoring immigration attorneys.
The inaugural ceremony will take place live at the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) Annual Conference in San Diego on June 17, 2026, with a virtual stream for remote attendees. Nominations are open until May 30, and are welcome from anyone in the immigration community – firms, companies, service providers, and the foreign nationals whose lives have been changed by these attorneys.
The timing is hard to miss. The employment-based immigration system is, in fact, under extraordinary pressure in 2026. H-1B visa demands from technology, healthcare, and financial services companies continue to vastly exceed the annual statutory cap, with lottery selection rates that leave skilled workers in deep uncertainty.
Meanwhile, in January 2026, the administration suspended immigrant visa approvals for nationals of 75 countries – a measure that by some estimates will block about half of all legal immigration to the U.S., and which is currently being challenged in federal court.
The strain on immigration attorneys is palpable. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement held an average of 69,600 people per day in detention in December 2025 – a 78% increase year over year, according to the Vera Institute of Justice – and yet more than half the people in the immigration court system are fighting the government without legal representation.
Since January 2025, the Board of Immigration Appeals has issued a record number of decisions changing the rules for immigrants seeking release from detention, relief from deportation, or permanent status in the country – thousands of which are not readily available to the public.
In this environment, immigration attorneys are doing some of the most consequential legal work in America; and they’re largely doing so invisibly. The Immies aim to fix that.
Spread across ten categories, the program is designed to capture the full breadth of the profession, not just the headline-grabbing victories. There’s The Against All Odds Award for breaking through bureaucratic red tape, and a dedicated Paralegal of the Year, a quiet acknowledgement that the people holding practices together case by case rarely get a mention, for instance.
A People’s Choice Award also lets the broader community, including the foreign nationals whose lives hang on this work, have a direct say in who gets recognized.
The venue for the inaugural ceremony is fitting. AILA’s 2026 annual conference is gathering thousands of immigration attorneys, law professors, paralegals, and advocates in San Diego – a community navigating, in AILA’s own words, “rapid change, uncertainty, and difficult realities.”
Build itself was founded on the success of Build Fellowship by Open Avenues, one of the country’s few nationwide cap-exempt H-1B fellowships, and works with global talent and the U.S. companies that employ them through cap-exempt H-1B and O-1 programs.
Nominations take approximately two minutes and can be submitted at buildfellowship.com/immies-2026
Featured image: Frank Kastle via Unsplash+
Disclosure: This article mentions clients of an Espacio portfolio company.
