This chapter is a guide for three key steps defense attorneys can take to effectively represent a noncitizen client:

Step One:  Determine your client's immigration status;

Step Two:  Define defense goals for your noncitizen client based upon his/her immigration status, current criminal charges, and prior convictions;

Step Three:  Analyze crime-related immigration provisions and alternative strategies to achieve defense goals for your noncitizen client. 

In addition, there are three tools in this manual that the reader can flag for easy reference. 

Follow the Flow Chart.  The flow chart on the next page provides an initial framework to how to analyze the immigration consequences of criminal offenses and steps defenders can take to protect their noncitizen clients. 

Consult the Quick Reference Chart.  The Quick Reference Chart located in Part II of this manual, details which Washington offenses may make a non-citizen subject to removal by rendering him deportable or an aggravated felon under the provisions of the immigration statutes.  This section also discusses how criminal defense counsel can use this information to establish defense goals for individual noncitizen clients. 

Complete the Immigration Intake Questionnaire.  The starting point for analyzing defense goals and the immigration consequences facing your client is to complete the brief Immigration Intake Questionnaire located at the end of these materials.[1]  The information obtained from the questionnaire is critical to undertake the analysis outlined by this manual. 

To make an adequate analysis of a noncitizen’s defense priorities and immigration consequences, the defense counsel must have a complete record of all past convictions as well as key information about immigration status and possibilities.  Counsel should photocopy all immigration documents.