Amy Nice

Amy M. Nice has been an immigration lawyer for thirty-five years, with a broad range of experience in the private practice of immigration law (for more than twenty years) and in the policy realm (since 2010), primarily focused on employment-based immigration. She is a thought leader concerning STEM immigration and is relied upon for her creative, elegant, and practical solutions as well as deep, data-based research on all angles and perspectives of the immigration policy problems she tackles.

From June 2021 to January 2023, Nice served as an assistant director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, responsible for leading efforts on STEM talent policy. Her policy efforts have also encompassed supporting coalitions between academia and industry concerning high-skilled immigration during the Trump administration; serving during the last sixteenth months of the Obama administration at the Office of the General Counsel at DHS headquarters where she contributed to notice and comment rulemaking on such topics as STEM optional practical training; and before that, working as the executive director of immigration policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for almost five years where she primarily pushed legislative reforms, including involvement on S. 744, the bipartisan immigration reform bill that passed the U.S. Senate.

From October 1989 to December 2010, Nice practiced immigration law at the Washington, D.C., firm of Dickstein Shapiro, where she managed the immigration practice beginning in 1997. Nice is a Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude graduate of Tulane University, where she studied Medieval History, including one year studying abroad in England. She earned her law degree at George Washington University.

The American Immigration Lawyers Association recognized Nice’s accomplishments and status as a thought leader with the Edith Lowenstein Memorial Award in 2023 for advancing the practice of immigration law. Although her work primarily focuses on employment-based immigration, while in private practice she received the Maryland Legal Services Corporation Herbert S. Garten Public Citizen Award in 2010 for assisting Catholic Charities and the Montgomery County (Maryland) Sheriff’s Office in developing a domestic violence screening program at the Montgomery County Family Justice Center. Nice also received the Immigrant Legal Resource Center Philip Burton Award in 2000 for pro bono assistance in naturalization policy.