Alison Brandell-Douglas

Alison Brandell-Douglas has worked in immigration law since 2013. At Grell Feist, Alison manages many of our temporary worker visa petitions including L-1, H-1B, and E-2 among other employment-based petitions. She works extensively with the H-1B cap lottery every year. Alison also handles O-1 petitions for aliens of extraordinary abilities and EB-1 (permanent residency cases) for multinational managers and people of extraordinary abilities. In addition to these cases, Alison works with families completing the immigration process for their spouses, children, and fiancés as well as individuals applying for naturalization.

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Before joining Grell Feist, Alison managed her own boutique immigration law firm where she worked in the areas of naturalization, family-based immigration, waivers, U visas, and various employment-based visas. Alison has also worked at two different private law firms in the Twin Cities metro area working on family, removal, and employment-based immigration cases. She also completed a two-year clerkship at the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR/immigration court), where she drafted decisions and completed research for multiple immigration judges.

 

Alison also served as an adjunct professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis, MN teaching in the immigration law clinic. She has been involved in the Minnesota Detention Project and the response efforts to the unprecedented ICE raid in Postville, Iowa in 2008. Alison currently does pro bono U visa work through the Immigrant Law Center for victims of crime and domestic abuse.

 

Prior to working in immigration law, Alison worked in refugee resettlement where she helped refugees from all over the world including Bhutan, Somalia, Burma, and Iraq begin their lives here in the United States. She welcomed them at the airport, took them to their first apartment, and connected them with their new community including school registration, English classes, and doctor’s visits.

 

Alison studied Spanish and Chemistry at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. She attended law school at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, Minnesota and completed computational chemistry research at Boston University. She grew up in the small town of Storm Lake, Iowa, surrounded by a diverse community of families from Mexico, Central America, southeast Asia, and eastern Africa. Alison has lived in Cuenca, Ecuador and Lima, Peru and speaks fluent Spanish. She currently lives in Minneapolis with her husband and two children.