Margaret Stock

Margaret Stock received an A.B. (1985), J.D. (1992), and M.P.A. (2001) from Harvard University and an M.S.S. (2006) from the U.S. Army War College. In 2010, she retired as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Military Police, U.S. Army Reserve, after twenty-eight years of service. Currently an attorney with the Anchorage office of Cascadia Cross Border Law, she is the author of Immigration Law and the Military (2012), and her prior affiliations include faculty at the United States Military Academy at West Point (2001–2010) and counsel to the firm Lane Powell (2010–2013). Stock’s experiences serving in the U.S. Army Reserve and teaching at West Point have led her to focus much of her work to date on the impact of immigration law on military personnel and their families. She has spearheaded the development of three groundbreaking programs that creatively adapt existing laws to better the lives of both immigrants and native-born military personnel. Beginning in 2008, she initiated and, in cooperation with the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security, implemented the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest (MAVNI) program, which allows the U.S. armed forces to attract and retain foreign nationals with language, medical, and other skills critical to military readiness and national security by expediting their path to citizenship.