Teaching

Hi Vancouver Immigration Blog Readers:

I’ve had a busy couple of weeks. Been asked to step in on advocacy a little these last two weeks which is a change. The City of Vancouver committee that I currently chair has been asked to be part of a few City initiatives involving poverty reduction and immigration – both issues with a heavy cultural lens. I’ve also had the opportunity to be a part of a CBC piece on international students and some of the mental health issues they’ve been dealing with that may be triggered by immigration (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/crying-your-guts-out-some-international-students-fear-seeking-help-for-burnout-1.4295700) and as well as a Vancouver Sun piece on international students leaving Canada after their graduation and their challenges getting qualifying employment (http://vancouversun.com/feature/how-international-students-are-filling-funding-shortfalls/chapter-4) [see esp: embedded video].

One thing I’ve learned quickly I feel as a young lawyer is the concept of balance. For this I owe a lot of peopler recent credit – Steven Meurrens (my colleague and mentor), Jeena Cho (author and meditation teacher), Andrew Verwey, Jenn Lau, and Dave Namkung just to name a few.  There were so many others (my colleagues and seniors) who have been teaching me and helping me at every corner. I always say it, but the one thing I’m grateful to God for is putting good people in my life – not for giving me any particular skills otherwise.

On that very positive note, I am pleased and humbled to announce my next major venture.

Teaching (just for a little history) runs in the Tao genetics. My great grandfather was a teacher (I’m still trying to learn more about him). His most famous pupil was the badass feminist Qiu Jin. My grandfather was a teacher. He taught second-language (English I believe it was) acquisition and wrote several books on the topic. My father was a teacher as well (student-teaching in China, UVic, and UBC – if I’m not mistaken).

In my first two and a half years of practice I’ve had the opportunity (thanks to LR, IMEDA, etc.) to get in a lot of lectures, talks, and presentations. I love it. I love sharing my passion with others.

I am going to be teaching consultants during a time of some turmoil in the consulting industry. I’ve decided I want to be part of the solution.

It is well-documented in the media that consultants have gone through some smudging and will soon (I understand) go through a bit of a wash as they discuss how to fix up the issues. Regardless of the internal conflicts that I am not privy too,  my understanding is everyone involved wants to have better, competent services provided to immigration clients and less fraud that negatively impacts all immigrants.

I am joining Ashton College because I believe in the vision that Ron and his team have put out to train immigration consultants the right way. I respectfully disagree with some of my esteemed colleagues (many of them wiser and more learned than I will ever be), who want consultants entirely removed from the immigration practice. I believe that there should be a space carved out for the competent, thoughtful, multilingual consultant who want to serve others and their communities for the interests of promoting access to justice.

As a young lawyer I can provide that passion in my classrooms so that young practitioners can see immigration law as not a business of profit, but rather one where people always come first.

I have already decided I will be a tough but fair instructor. Fighting my tendencies to be a nice guy I will make sure students come ready to learn and engage with the class materials. I am also humbled enough by my experiences so far to know I’ve only scratched the surface of immigration law and that the fact we are all learning, adapting to change, and developing our own interpretations and best practices makes our professions dynamic and awesome.  I’m excited and I’m grateful. For those interested the program is here.

Ashton – let’s do this! See you in November 🙂