The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) is committed to protecting your privacy and developing technology that gives you the most powerful and safe online experience. This privacy policy applies to information collected by AILA. This includes all subdomains of aila.org (except careers.aila.org), ailalawyer.org, thinkimmigration.org, ailawebcle.org, emails, faxes, and phone inquiries. It will inform you of the following:
- What personally identifiable information is collected from you, how it is used, and with whom it may be shared.
- What choices are available to you regarding the use of your data.
- The security procedures in place to protect against the misuse of your information.
- How you can correct any inaccuracies in the information.
The effective date of the current privacy policy is: January 29, 2021.
Information Collection
AILA is the sole owner of the information collected on this site. We only collect personally identifiable information that you voluntarily give us via email, website form submission (account registration, profile, purchases, liaison inquiries, etc.), or other direct contact from you.
Registration
In order to use the personalization features, attend AILA conferences, join our association, or access restricted content on our websites, a user must first complete the registration form. During registration, a user is required to give certain information (such as name and email address). Optionally, you may also provide certain demographic information (such as gender or age) about yourself, but it is not required.
E-Commerce
In order to purchase products from our store, Agora, you must complete a registration form. In addition to providing basic contact information (i.e., name and address), you must provide financial information (credit card number, expiration date, and security code). AILA never stores full credit card information, encrypted or otherwise; all credit card information is processed via a secure third party. We only store the credit card type—AmEx, Visa, MC—and the last 4 digits in the case of regular payments. For payment plans, we store that same information, plus an electronic payment token and the expiration date. This information is used for billing purposes and to complete your orders. If we have trouble processing an order, we will use this information to contact you.
We use an outside shipping company to ship our publications orders. This company, as well as the shippers themselves (like UPS, USPS, FedEx), do not retain, share, store, or use personally identifiable information for any secondary purposes beyond filling and tracking your order.
Cookies and Analytics
We use cookies on our sites. A cookie is a piece of data stored on a site visitor's computer to help us improve your access to our site and identify repeat visitors to our site. For instance, when we use a cookie to identify you, you would not have to log in or enter a password more than once, thereby saving you time while on our site. Cookies also enable us to track and target the interests of our users, thereby enhancing their experience on our site.
Additionally, we use Google Analytics, MailChimp, and the HubSpot customer relationship management platform to collect and store information about how you interact with our websites so we can provide you with content and information regarding resources based on your interests. Note that you have the ability to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. If you choose to decline cookies, you may not be able to fully experience the member benefits conveyed by certain interactive features of our websites.
Surveys and Form Collections
From time to time, our site requests information via surveys and form collections. Participation is completely voluntary, and you may choose whether or not to participate and therefore disclose the information requested. Information requested may include contact information, demographic information, information required for feedback and planning for conferences and events, scholarships and tuition applications, or examples of client cases. Contact information will be used to follow up on submissions. Survey or form collection information will be used for the purposes indicated on each document.
Listserves and Message Boards
Any information posted to the AILA listserves can be seen by anyone on that list. Items posted to the Message Center can be read by the entire membership and by registered paralegals of current AILA members. While each product has guidelines for use, AILA does not control what other users may do with information posted/emailed.
Social Media
We may also receive information about you from social media platforms including but not limited to when you interact with us on those platforms or access our social media content. The information we may receive is governed by the privacy settings, policies, and/or procedures of the applicable social media platform, and we encourage you to review them.
Usage of Information Collected
AILA collects information about its members and website users in order to:
- Provide services
- Deliver goods
- Analyze legal trends
- Respond to inquiries
- Process Continuing Legal Education Credits
- Plan for and promote conferences and products
- Provide access to vendor services
- Provide relevant news, information, and resources
- Promote diversity
- Analyze digital data
- Engage in the normal business activities of a membership association.
Sharing of Information Collected
Individuals signing up for membership will have their personal information shared with the AILA chapter(s) that they select, and with the American Immigration Council. We also share anonymous aggregated demographic information with our chapters, partners, and advertisers. This anonymous aggregated data is not linked to any personal information that can identify any individual person. Should you choose to share your information, it will be accessible to other members of AILA via the Membership Directories. AILA shares limited personal information (name, city, state, etc.) with partner organizations to determine overlap of our audience. Nonmembers only have access to contact information if you participate in the Immigration Lawyer Referral Service.
Third-Party Vendors
AILA partners with third-party vendors to provide some of the services described in this policy and may share names and other contact information as necessary for the third party to provide these services. These parties are not allowed to use personally identifiable information except for the purpose of providing these services. Encrypted usernames are also shared with third-party service providers to provide a seamless login process between the sites.
Mailing Lists
We do sell the names and postal addresses of members to reputable advertisers, who must be screened and approved by AILA. The information is limited in format to either physical mailing labels or a one-time-use electronic file sent to a verified third-party mail house. We do not share any phone numbers or email addresses.
Additional Disclosures
Links
This web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the content or privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of any other site that collects personally identifiable information.
Lawful Disclosures
AILA will disclose your personal information, without notice, only if required to do so by law or in the good-faith belief that such action is necessary to: (a) conform to the edicts of the law or comply with legal process served on AILA; (b) protect and defend the rights or property of AILA; or, (c) act under exigent circumstances to protect the personal safety of our website users or the public. Should AILA go out of business, no personal data will be considered an asset for sale. Unless legally obligated to retain the information, personal data records will be destroyed.
Conference and Education Services
Registration, attendance, and participation in AILA conferences, events, and services constitute an agreement by the registrant to the use and distribution of the registrant's image or voice in photographs, videos, webcasts, electronic reproductions and audio recordings of such events by AILA. Biographical information submitted by speakers will be published and may be shared to chapters and third-party vendors purchasing the conference materials. Conference and online course attendance lists are shared with all attendees and exhibitors and may be shared via a third-party app. Email addresses and other service-specific information may be required to access the conference app, webcast, and CLE processing services. Information may be collected and shared with hotels and vendors to assist in ADA preparations, audit of rooming lists and/or other special assistance planning. Attendance tracking systems may be used by AILA and/or its vendors to gather attendance and demographic data to facilitate future planning.
GDPR Disclosures
Some of the recipients of your personal information may be located outside of your home country. In particular, but not exclusively, users in the European Union should be aware that their data will be transferred to the United States and that the European Commission has not found United States law to adequately protect the rights of data subjects. Users in the European Union have the right to lodge a complaint under the General Data Protection Regulation with their Member State's supervisory authority.
Your Access to and Control Over Information
View and Update
You have the right to change/correct any information that we have about you. You may also request to see what additional data AILA has about you, if any. You can change or update your information online at: http://www.aila.org/myaila or you may contact us via email at membership@aila.org or via phone at 202-507-7600.
Data Retention and the Right to Be Forgotten
AILA collects personal data from members and nonmembers who wish to create an account and stores it for the period necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy, unless a longer retention period is required or allowed by law. You may request that we delete any personal contact information we have about you, with the exception of financial transaction history within the past seven years. You can change or update your information online at: http://www.aila.org/myaila or you may contact us via email at membership@aila.org or via phone at 202-507-7600.
Right to Opt-Out
You may opt out of any future mail or email contact from us or our third-party partners at any time. You can do so by changing your communication preferences at: http://www.aila.org/MyAila/Account/ContactSettings or by contacting us via email at membership@aila.org or via phone at 202-507-7600. Additionally, all promotional emails will contain information on how to unsubscribe or change your preferences.
Security Procedures
AILA uses administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to protect the information that we collect. This includes, when required or when appropriate and feasible, obtaining written assurances from third parties that may access your data that they will provide a level of protection equivalent to AILA's. However, no information system can be 100 percent secure, so we cannot guarantee the absolute security of your information. Moreover, we are not responsible for the security of information you transmit to us over networks that we do not control, including the Internet and wireless networks.
We take additional security measures with regard to credit card information. When you submit credit card data, that information is encrypted and transmitted to us in a secure way using SSL methods. You can verify this by looking for a closed lock icon at the bottom of your web browser, or by looking for "https" at the beginning of the web page address. While we use encryption to protect sensitive information transmitted online, we also protect your information offline. We do not store credit card numbers in our database. We only store the type of card, its expiration date, and the last 4 digits.
Direct access to our membership database is limited to AILA National office staff and our third-party programmers. The computers/servers in which we store personally identifiable information are kept in a secure hosting environment that requires biometric access and access is limited to our third-party hosting contractors. Information stored in our member database is viewable only by AILA staff through their computers.
Policy Updates, Questions, and Concerns
Our Privacy Policy may change from time to time and all updates will be posted on this page and distributed via the Recent Postings Alert.
If you feel that we are not abiding by this privacy policy, you should contact us immediately via email at membership@aila.org or via phone at 202-507-7600.