Tomorrow, November 19, at 2:00 p.m., I will be on a lawyers’ panel at the Baltimore Immigration Summit, discussing identifying, handling, minimizing, and neutralizing immigration minefields from criminal cases and convictions.

Many of my criminal defense clients are not United States citizens, which requires me to be mindful of possibly adverse immigration consequences from their criminal cases. Years before Padilla v. Kentucky, 559 U. S. ___ (2010), was ever penned, I included full attention to my criminal defense clients’ immigration situation.

Fortunately, for ten years, my criminal defense clients and I had a great immigration law advisor in the next office to mine, that being my former law partner Jay Marks, who now has an office only three blocks from me, in addition to an office in Arlington, Virginia. The very much quickened my learning curve in working to minimize adverse immigration consequences from my clients’ criminal cases.

Jay and I will be among several lawyers on this panel. The Summit is closed for registration, having reached capacity.

The location of the event sounds like an interesting one: The American Visionary Art Museum, with visionary art being produced by self-taught artists “whose works arise from an innate personal vision that revels foremost in the creative act itself.”

The online information about a current installation at the museum called “What Makes Us Smile?” includes an Alfred E. Neumann image. Alfred E. Neumann for years has been the symbol of Mad Magazine which held my attention and obsession for many years. Baltimore’s being the land of John Waters, Frank Zappa, and Cafe Hon, it seems a fitting place to have such a museum.