Selected as a "Rising Star" by Super Lawyers magazine for the past two years, Philadelphia immigration lawyer, Tom Griffin, specializes in complex immigration matters in which individuals and families are in difficult situations.

Tom is unique among immigration attorneys in Philadelphia in that he speaks Spanish and Haitian Creole. Taking a personal interest in his cases, Tom’s clients know he will guide them through the maze of immigration and fight for their rights. A litigator at heart, Tom thrives in the courtroom, in appeals before the USCIS and the Board of Immigration Appeals, and in the federal courts. He takes on all matters including detention, criminal deportation, family immigration, business and employment visas, and asylum law.

Tom believes that being a great Philadelphia immigration attorney includes understanding the places and cultures from which his clients come. He is a well-known human rights investigator and advocate who has appeared before Congress as an expert on Haiti. Tom is on the Board of Directors of the Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians, which provides job training to immigrants and connects them to employers. Tom also regularly provides pro bono services at the Irish Immigration Center in Upper Darby, PA.

Tom co-founded and led the Lamp for Haiti Foundation, whose centerpiece is a health clinic in the massive slum of Cite Soleil, in Port-au-Prince Haiti, and has been an professor of Human Rights at Drexel University Law School. Most recently, Tom served as an international election observer in El Salvador in March 2014, where he monitored the tight presidential run-off election in the capital of San Salvador. Tom frequently appears on both Spanish and Haitian radio where he provides up-to-date immigration advice to Philadelphia’s diverse community.

Before joining his law partners in the Philadelphia immigration law firm, Tom was a white-collar crime and trusts and estates litigator at a prestigious Boston law firm. His additional volunteering in political asylum cases in Boston earned him the honor of Massachusetts pro bono "attorney of the year." Prior to becoming an immigration lawyer in Philadelphia, Tom earned a Master’s Degree in Forensic Psychology, spent 10 years in the federal courts as a probation and parole officer, and was a schoolteacher in New York City.

Tom received his law degree, magna cum laude, from Suffolk University Law School in Boston in 1999. He was the Associate Executive Editor of the Suffolk University Law Review, and his article was selected to represent the school in the national Scribes competition. In 1989, Tom received a Master’s Degree in Forensic Psychology from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. The faculty awarded Tom the Robert Morrow Prize as the Outstanding Student in the Master’s Program, and in 1985 he received his bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University, majoring in Sociology.