Immigration legal services, including adjustment of status, asylum, naturalization, immigration court, and appeals.
Michael Purcell began practicing immigration law in 1994, and it is now approximately 95% of his practice. Michael works regularly in the immigration courts, and has taken on many appeals to the Board of Immigration Appeals and to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. He assists clients with family-based immigration, naturalization, U-visas, and consular processing.
Michael has successfully sought asylum protection for people the following countries: Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Columbia, and Guatemala. As of February 2018, he has a number of cases pending from some of these countries, as well as Mexico, Yemen and Palestine.
Michael has had extensive experience in criminal cases in Oregon as well as Washington state. Michael advises clients and criminal defense lawyers works in the area of immigration consequences of criminal convictions. Michael has given presentations to other lawyers about this topic. Michael has been qualified to testify before a jury as an expert witness in immigration law.
Michael has sued the federal government approximately 50 times to compel the government to adjudicate long-delayed naturalization applications, and in so doing was able to recover from the government approximately $100,000 in legal fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act. Michael has also brought numbers actions for habeas corpus against the immigration agencies.
Michael volunteers frequently to assist non-profit associations, such as Sponsors Organized to Assist Refugees (“SOAR”) and Catholic Charities at events to help pro bono immigrants, such as Refugee Adjustment Day (helping refugees qualify for green cards) Citizenship Day (put on by SOAR) and, in October 2017, DACA day at the Mexican Consulate in Portland, Oregon.
Michael was a volunteer lawyer mentor from 2012 to 2017 for the Oregon State Bar’s New Lawyer Mentoring Program, where he helped lawyers newly admitted to the bar establish their own law practices.
In October 2017, Michael received the Gerald Robinson Award for Excellence in Immigration Advocacy from the Oregon chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
Michael graduated from Whitman College in 1982 with a degree in political science. He graduated magna cum laude from Lewis and Clark Law School in 1985, and became a member of the Oregon State Bar in the same year. He was admitted to the Washington State Bar in 1991.
Michael worked as a deputy district attorney from 1986 to 1988, and later entered the private practice of law, working as an associate for a law firm in Portland, Oregon, and then in 1991 going into his own practice. From 1992 to 1994 he was member of the Oregon State Bar Uniform Criminal Jury Instruction Committee, serving as chairman of that committee from 1993 to 1994.
