Joanne Lin

Guest Author

Joanne Lin (@JoanneLinDC) directs Amnesty International USA’s Advocacy and Government Affairs Department. She has over 14 years of experience advocating for the rights of immigrants and refugees before Congress and the U.S. government, and over seven years of experience representing immigrants in family law and immigration proceedings.

At Amnesty International USA, Lin leads the development and implementation of strategies to advance the organization’s human rights priorities before Congress and the U.S. government. She leads a team of advocacy directors dedicating to protecting the human rights of refugees, asylum seekers, displaced peoples, prisoners of conscience, and gun violence victims. She has overseen advocacy initiatives aimed at protecting Rohingya refugees fleeing mass burnings and rape at the hands of the Myanmar military, ending U.S. arms sales to the Saudi-Emirati coalition committing war crimes against Yemeni civilians, and requiring universal background checks on all gun sales in the U.S.

Prior to joining Amnesty International, Lin worked at the American Civil Liberties Union for over a decade, leading the federal immigration policy advocacy program. She spearheaded national campaigns to protect immigration detainees from sexual assault, to limit the use of solitary confinement of immigration detainees, to end immigration enforcement at courthouses, to curb profiteering in immigration detention, and to end the national registry targeting Muslim and Arab males.

Prior to that, Lin worked at Legal Momentum’s Immigrant Women Program where she was a principal drafter and negotiator of the immigration title of the Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act of 2005.

Lin has been recognized by The Hill as one of the top lobbyists for grassroots organizations.  She has been a regular commentator on human rights through media outlets including CNN, MSNBC, NPR, Washington Post, New York Times, Foreign Policy, USA Today, Politico, Washington Examiner, The Guardian, and others.

Lin is a graduate of Stanford University, Stanford School of Education, and New York University School of Law.  She clerked for Shirley Abrahamson, former Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.