From immigrant to legal professional: Valley woman turns adversity into achievement

For additional than 20 years Phoenix-spot buses have integrated advertisements on exterior panels, but for the initially time ever, a female of shade is being highlighted.

Very last month Lelia Adams, Esq., a Valley legal professional who specializes in immigration legislation, grew to become the initially black female to be pictured on a Valley Metro bus, thanks to a collaboration with Lamar Transit of Arizona.

“It is primarily impactful for minority communities who make use of community transportation in the Valley to see somebody who looks like them and delivers substantially required authorized providers,” mentioned Renee duPlessis, Lamar Marketing representative.

When Adams was a child in Nigeria, Africa, she walked additional than three miles a working day to obtain thoroughly clean consuming water. In no way did she imagine she would have her facial area on the facet of a Valley Metro bus in Phoenix.

“My dad hated idleness,” Adams claimed. “Even when going to fetch drinking water, I was anticipated to be researching. He would purchase a newspaper and convey to me to summarize it. It was very frustrating, but that skill serves me very well in my specialist lifetime now.”

Today, as an legal professional at Essien Regulation Firm in Phoenix, Adams specializes in immigration, household-dependent petitions and household reunification, nonimmigrant visas for learners/exchange site visitors, expense-dependent immigration, as nicely as employment-based immigration, deportation and removing and asylum.

Her enthusiasm to enable individuals trying to find immigration comes from a extremely individual place. When she was 16, Adams and her family members came to the U.S. by means of an immigration method recognized as the “Green Card Lottery.”

Officially recognized as the Range Immigrant Visa Application, the plan presents up to 50,000 immigrant visas yearly. Only people from international locations with small premiums of immigration to the U.S. are suitable to sign-up and winners are picked randomly. Adams’ father was between them. 

Having said that, her mother was deported right after a critical misunderstanding of 1 part of the immigration procedure. Seeing her mother get deported was the driving drive at the rear of Adams’ drive to go after a vocation in legislation with a concentrate on immigration. 

“After my mom was deported, I had one particular solitary aim – to bring her back again to the U.S. no make any difference what,” Adams explained. “The day I obtained my license to observe law, I got all the documents I could for my mom and began petitioning to get her again. Just after my mother’s software was acknowledged, I cried my eyes out. While I experienced formally graduated and handed the bar, this particular achievement manufactured it come to feel like I experienced at last done law school.” 

When the bus with Adams’ image was unveiled, her getting old mother and father were being on hand to see the screen.

“The working day I observed the bus for the initially time, I held pinching myself. I hardly ever imagined that I would one particular day go away my village and make the journey to The us, permit on your own have my photo on a bus,” Adams explained. “The plan of owning an advertisement for my regulation business enterprise on American streets is anything the minor girl who grew up with no electrical power in a little African village could have by no means dreamed of. Often I can’t consider this is my lifestyle.” 

Lelia Adams is an immigration lawyer and immigrant who has been by means of the United States immigration process. She is a member of the State Bar of Missouri and the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) with an exclusive concentrate on immigration legislation. Essien Regulation Team has two places of work in Phoenix, 3101 N. Central Ave. and 20 E. Thomas Highway.