American Immigration Council Announces Honorees for 2024 Immigration Impact Awards

"We’re thrilled to honor Eréndira Rendón for tireless advocacy to protect immigrant rights, including her leading role in campaigns that helped secure driver’s licenses, healthcare, and legal support for immigrants in Illinois. Similarly, it is a great privilege to honor Paul Zulkie, founder of Zulkie Partners and a nationally recognized expert in immigration law, who has decades of leadership in advancing the fight for a more fair and just immigration system,” said Jeremy Robbins, executive director of the American Immigration Council. “We are profoundly grateful for their ongoing work.”

The honorees of the American Immigration Council’s 2024 Immigration Impact Award are:

• Paul Zulkie, Founder and Managing Principle of Zulkie Partners LLC. With over 40 years of immigration law experience, Zulkie has become a leader of the profession. He is the former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), and the former president and chairman of the Board of Directors of the American Immigration Council. He has testified before U.S. Congress and his expertise has been called upon by several leading news organizations, including CNN, MSNBC, and NPR. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, Zulkie served on a small AILA task force that was asked by members of Congress to draft provisions that allowed the immediate relatives of foreign national victims to remain in the United States. Many of these provisions were later enacted as part of the Patriot Act. As president of AILA, Zulkie championed the launch of the National Center for Refugee and Immigrant Children, established to provide pro bono legal and social services to unaccompanied minor children as they navigate through US immigration courts.

• Activist Eréndira (Ere) Rendón: Rendón, a DACAmented immigrant from Oaxaca, Mexico, has dedicated her entire career to advancing justice for immigrants. For more than a decade, she served as the Vice President of Immigrant Justice at The Resurrection Project (TRP) where she created TRP’s Immigrant Justice Department and serves as the organization’s lead strategist on campaigns impacting the lives of immigrants. Rendón has played a leading role in the creation and successful passage of pro-immigrant legislation and programs in Illinois, including driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants, healthcare for undocumented seniors and adults, the Chicago Legal Protection Fund, the Immigration Division of the Cook County Public Defender’s Office, and Illinois Access to Justice (A2J), a now $25 million line item for legal services. Rendón’s work and personal story have been featured in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and Crain’s Chicago Business, among many other publications. Rendón is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, an alumna of the Civic Leadership Academy at the University of Chicago, and a Leadership Greater Chicago Fellow.

In years past, the American Immigration Council has recognized the achievements of other outstanding immigrants and their advocates, including Carlos Santana, General Colin Powell, the Ballet Hispánico, Edwidge Danticat, Gerda Weissmann Klein, the law firm Arnold & Porter, and others.

Learn more about the 2024 Immigration Impact Awards here.