Jeff Du

IM 6- 11AP
10/15/18
Summary Journal: Quarter 1

Quarterly Review:

This quarter was primarily focused on learning the basics of immigration law, including the
history of immigration statutes across the U.S’s brief existence, the functions of each executive
department in regards to processing and regulating immigration, and an overview of the various types of
methods (visas, TPS, asylum, EWI) of entering the U.S. In addition, my fellow intern and I also observed
Mr. Greene prepare for one of his court hearings, watching how he formulated his brief to the magistrate
as well as his documentation. Although I have not had the opportunity to apply my knowledge to real
world situations, I hope that once I become fully accustomed and experienced in all the various
subcategories of immigration law, I will be able to assist my mentor and gain valuable experience.

In terms of the actual Intern Mentor class, first quarter was generally focused on administrative
duties, such as setting up the internship, turning in all the required paperwork, and getting accustomed to
going on-site and conferencing with Mrs. Sasser. In addition, I began to narrow my research interests this
quarter with the help of weekly annotations and critical readings. These readings helped build my
growing compiled annotations list and made determining a specific research question easier to
accomplish.

Obstacles:

I generally have a tough time in first quarter of getting accustomed to school again and managing
my time efficiently. As a result, I initially struggled to balance on site visits with schoolwork and other
activities outside of school. However, after a period of time, I was able to balance my schedule and
effectively complete all the assignments and research for both my internship and for the Intern Mentor
class. In general, the literature and knowledge required for working in immigration law is tedious and
extensive, so I had to devote substantial amounts of time to reading and learning background
fundamentals in order to comprehend the material.

Goals:

My overarching goal throughout the year is just to learn more about immigration law, whether it
be the important regulations and statutes that govern it or seeing how immigration lawyers defend and
help their clients. However, in the following quarters I hope to begin observing real world cases to learn
how they are structured and prepared for. I want to make sure that I possess the prerequisite knowledge by
that point so that I could actually contribute to the case.
 Jeff Du
IM 6- 11AP
10/15/18
Summary Journal: Quarter 2
​Quarterly Review:
This quarter I started to work on tasks with real life applications, such as researching information and
court cases for a petitioner’s brief, learning about the situation and laws in places such as El Salvador,
Romania, and more, and finding documents pertinent to my mentor’s efforts. On top of this, I also
continued learning more about immigration law through various lectures given by Mr. Greene, and
through doing research on my own for not only on-site purposes, but also for my research paper. Finally, I
also received the opportunity to go to court and watch master hearing procedures, where I was able to
observe my mentor and other immigration lawyers interact with the judge and the government attorney,
learning how they attempted to advocate for their clients.

For the actual Intern Mentor class, I began my research towards narrowing down my topic and thesis. I
presented my research and experiences to various classrooms around River Hill and also to other mentor
students at the Smart Speaking Conference and the Countywide Presentations. Through critical reads and
annotations, I was able to gain a better understanding of the public charge law and the impacts it brought.
Finally, I compiled all my research and feedback into a preliminary sentence outline on my topic, which
received feedback from many of my peers. I look to expand upon this outline, adding more sources and
details as well as focusing my controls.

Obstacles:
The biggest obstacle this quarter was definitely balancing the Intern Mentor school with my
extracurricular activities, namely track. However, I feel I was able to eventually overcome this obstacle
by managing my time efficiently, making up my track requirements after going on site. Besides that,
understanding information was a somewhat difficult at times, due to my relative lack of experience in the
field. However, as the quarter progressed and I read more high quality sources, I found that my
knowledge rapidly increased.

Goals:
I think my goals for next semester are similar to what they were in the first; learning more about
immigration law, and contributing to real-life application work. I have already made progress on these
goals, but more experience would always help. I think a really important goal that I have by the end of the
year is to experience a real life immigration court case, not just a master calendar hearing. I know that it
would not necessarily occur due to scheduling and availability, but if I receive the opportunity to, it would
be very insightful to experience a full court hearing and get a taste what it’s like to defend and fight for a
client.
 Jeff Du
3/19/19
IM 6-11AP
Summary Journal: Quarter 3
​Quarterly Review:

This quarter I’ve continued a lot of similar work that I had been doing the past few quarters. I’ve
frequently had to research court cases that either the government or our brief has cited, and determine
whether or not the citation was used accurately. I’ve also had to research the conditions in which our
potential clients arrived from, as to build an overall case to help our client. Examples include researching
education prospects for American born children living in Mexico, finding what constituted a legal
marriage and analyzing the ensuing derivative nonimmigrant visas, and parsing through data of immigrant
eligibility and overcome rates as sorted by application type. I’ve become much more accustomed to
quickly finding legal research through online databases and having a concrete understanding of the
material that these cases and research discuss. I look forward to continue doing similar research
throughout Quarter 4.

In the Intern Mentor class, this quarter I finished writing my research paper on the economic effects of the
proposed public charge law in regards to the American government and employers, and had multiple
peers review it. I begun implementing my data collection, which will be a meta-cognitive analysis on
potential solutions to the fundamental issue of government dependency, as well as a discussion of the
problem itself. I’ve outlined my goals for my data collection and my project through a timeline and a
project proposal, and also have started developing a website that will showcase my work

Obstacles:
The biggest obstacle this quarter was completing my paper amidst the other commitments and endeavors
that I had going on. Writing the paper itself was not particularly difficult due to me already completing a
sentence outline and multiple intermediate steps along the way. However, finding the time to actually sit
down for a few hours and work on the paper was challenging. Then, I had to listen to my fellow peers as
well as Mrs. Sasser’s feedback in order to improve on parts of my paper, which took additional time.
However, through Quarter 3 I was able to slowly but eventually finish it.
Goals:
The goal for Quarter 4 is just to wrap up my intern mentor experience and complete my final project. I
hope that my final research will have tangible purpose in helping other people understand immigration
law further. In addition, I would like to continue doing similar work on-site in terms of researching and
learning more about immigration status and changes. If possible, I would like to present my work at either
student conferences or in a high school journal, but I know that is dependent on a lot of outside factors.

Mentor Signature Date

 Jeff Du
IM 6- 11AP
5/31/19

Summary Journal: Quarter 4

​Quarterly Review:

This quarter, I continued to do similar tasks that I have done all year, such as various research
tasks and also basic officework. For example, my fellow intern and I worked on researching court case
citations for a large government respondent's brief, reading and analyzing around 20 different cases in
total. Although I wasn’t able to go on site that often due to my rather busy schedule in May, I did
additional research from home to supplement the times in which I couldn’t go on site.

For the actual class, I’ve been focused on preparing my final product and overall wrapping the
course up. I finished my data collection, a meta cognitive analysis on the issue of government dependency
as well as an analysis of work requirements, and also created a presentation that I presented for multiple
classrooms in River Hill. My goal was to educate people on the potential dangers of the public charge law
and inform them of other immigration policies that were of importance under the current administration. I
also gave a speech of appreciation towards my mentor at mentor appreciation night, created an abstract
that described the details of my project, and built my website to include all the different types of work and
products that I’ve created this year.

Obstacles:

The biggest obstacle this quarter was definitely balancing my schedule among all the different
tests that occur during the months of April and May, like SAT and AP testing. It was difficult to schedule
visits on site because I had so many other things going on at the same time. Thankfully, I had a few hours
banked which allowed me to miss a few on site meetings.

Goals:

The goal from now until the end of the school year is just to wrap the program up and prepare for
interning over the summer. I need to make sure that I have everything turned in, that my website is
completely updated, and that I end the program on a good note by sending a thank-you letter and
completing all necessary paperwork. My goal this summer is to continue learning and experiencing new
tasks and information that will stimulate my curiosity for immigration law even further.

Mentor Signature Date