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Immigration

Overview

Parker Poe’s Immigration Team has decades of experience helping clients navigate the constantly changing landscape of immigration laws, policies, and procedures. Clients appreciate how we share their sense of urgency, develop a deep understanding of their business, and provide a personal touch informed by our own experiences living around the world.

Our team is responsive and accessible in working with clients to obtain temporary work visas, U.S. permanent residence status (green cards), and U.S. citizenship for their key personnel and family members. We strive to respond rapidly and creatively to a broad array of immigration challenges or opportunities, to distill complex regulations into digestible counsel, and to enable our clients to continue operating at a fast pace wherever they do business.

We have represented international and domestic companies, universities, and nonprofits before the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (including U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services or USCIS), the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Labor, and the U.S. Department of Justice. Our team members bring perspective from working previously for the U.S. Department of Labor and in-house at universities. We also work with immigration consulting firms and foreign law firms with respect to outbound immigration needs for domestic employers.

We consider ourselves partners on our clients’ immigration journeys. We know what it’s like to adjust to life in a new country, as our attorneys and paralegals have lived in Germany, Spain, France, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Venezuela, Panama, Ecuador, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, and other countries. We have team members who speak German, Spanish, French, and conversational Chinese (Mandarin and Taiwanese). We also have team members who have experienced the benefits of immigration themselves or through their spouses. Our team leader, Elizabeth Gibbes, regularly represents the interests of immigrants outside of work as honorary consul of Germany for South Carolina and Georgia.

We invest the time to understand not just our clients’ immigration needs but also their overall legal needs and overarching business goals. We constantly collaborate with other practice groups across our 275-attorney firm to advance those goals, whether they involve mergers and acquisitions, employer compliance with hiring practices, compensation, and benefit plans. The strength of our team and broader firm enables us to increase efficiencies for clients as we provide legal and business solutions.

Representative Experience

Working with a dedicated and experienced paralegal staff, our immigration attorneys have successfully handled a variety of legal needs that include:

Temporary Work Visas

  • L-1A and L-1B executive, manager and specialized knowledge intracompany transferee visas
  • Blanket L petitions
  • E-1 and E-2 treaty trader and treaty investor corporate registrations and visas for executive, manager and essential skilled employees for companies from countries such as Germany, France, the U.K., Sweden, Denmark, Mexico, Canada and Japan
  • E-3 Australian temporary work visas
  • H-1B temporary professional work visas, for businesses, nonprofits, educational institutions, hospitals and medical providers
  • H1-B1 temporary professional work visas under the U.S./Chile trade agreement and the U.S./Singapore trade agreement
  • TN temporary NAFTA professionals from Canada and Mexico
  • O extraordinary alien visas for professors, researchers, scientists, entertainers and athletes
  • P athletes or entertainers coming with a group
  • H-3 employee training visas
  • J-1 exchange aliens coming for training or business exchange
  • B-1 business visitors coming for meetings, training or employment, when employed by foreign entity

Permanent Residence Cases

  • EB-1 immigrant petitions/applications for intracompany managers and executives
  • EB-1 immigrant petitions/applications for outstanding researchers and professors at companies, nonprofits and universities
  • EB-1 immigrant petitions/applications for extraordinary aliens in business, science, education and the arts (both sponsored and self-sponsored)
  • EB-2 immigrant petitions/applications for advanced degree professionals in the U.S. national interest (both sponsored and self-sponsored), including physicians
  • EB-2 immigrant petitions/applications for advanced degree professionals through labor certification (both pre- and post-PERM)
  • EB-3 professional and skilled workers through labor certification (both pre- and post-PERM)
  • EB-2 and 3 professional registered nurses (RNs) and physical therapists (PTs) through Schedule A Blanket labor certification
  • EB-5 immigrant investors
  • DV Diversity Lottery winners
  • Family immigrant visas through marriage, as fiancés/fiancées (K-1 or K-3), parents and other family categories

Other Matters

  • U.S. citizenship (naturalization), including for spouses of U.S. citizens and spouses of U.S. citizens employed abroad
  • Preservation of residence for citizenship purposes for employees of U.S. companies assigned abroad
  • Reentry permits to preserve U.S. permanent resident status
  • Waivers of the two-year (J-1) home country requirement
  • Appeals to the USCIS Administrative Appeals Office (AAO), the Board of Alien Labor Certification Appeals (BALCA) and the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA)
  • Representation regarding I-9 (employment verification documentation) audits, unauthorized employment investigations and immigration discrimination cases before the DOJ Office of Special Counsel

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