Juan Carlos Benitez on Blogger: September 2023

Sunday, September 10, 2023

AILA-GMS Annual Global Migration Forum

Juan Carlos Benitez has held various legal and executive positions in different institutions over the past 30 years. Currently, he serves as the alternate director at the Guam Chamber of Commerce and as the president of Washington Pacific Economic Development in Hagatna. Juan Carlos Benitez is also a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA).

Established in 1946, AILA is a non-profit bar association comprised of attorneys and law professors specializing in immigration law. The association offers its members continuing legal education, professional services, information, and expertise. It also advocates for the immigration-related interests of its clients and society. Each year, AILA and its Global Migration Section (GMS) organize а global migration forum at various locations in the United States.

The AILA/GMS Global Migration Forum addresses different aspects of global migration, covering topics like the current state of migration, global corporate transactions, managing migration practices, ethical considerations, the impact of technology on migration, and ways practitioners can improve their global citizenship. It also allows attendees and immigration practitioners to meet and connect with peers and form new networks.

Moreover, the forum offers tuition assistance for continuing legal education programs to employed and unemployed attorneys and law students. Assistance is granted based on need and availability, with priority given to first-time applicants.

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Over the course of his career, Mr. Benitez has served in Federal and state government positions as well as in the private sector; first as an employee and later as an entrepreneur. His experience as a labor attorney at Fiddler Gonzales and Rodriguez laid the groundwork for Mr. Benitez's successful tenure working to resolve issues of immigration discrimination in the workplace as Special Counsel for Immigration Related Unfair Employment Practice in the Civil Rights Division at the US Department of Justice. Mr. Benitez has also developed an area of expertise in the US territories and their legal relationship with the US.

Since 2003, he has served as founder and president of the Hagatna, Guam-based Washington Pacific Economic Development Group. Mr. Benitez believes in a collaborative approach to problem solving and could not find any firms that had a business model to work on policy issues the way a law firm does: hiring field experts on a case-by-base basis. Rather than contracting one firm to handle all issues with the same employees, WPEDG was founded with the idea of building a curated group of experts based on the criteria of each project. This model is geared toward returning results to the client most efficiently and scaled to their budget. Within the past four years, he has undertaken additional leading administrative positions with local firms in the areas of affordable housing development and has advocated from a pro-military / pro-island position for the deployment of Marines in the Marianas. He has also served in a volunteer capacity as board member of the Latte Training Academy, a certification program for high school students in the fields of tourism and nursing.

Juan Carlos Benitez is a native or Puerto Rico and holds a bachelor of arts in judicial systems from the Universidad del Sagrado Corazon in Santurce and a Juris Doctor from the Inter-American University of Puerto Rico School of Law in Hato Rey. He is an active member of the Puerto Rico Bar and is licensed to practice before a number of US courts, including the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico and the Supreme Court of the United States. Juan Carlos Benitez is fluent in both English and Spanish. including the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration and the US Department of Justice.