Among Goodman Law’s more dynamic practice areas is its business immigration law practice, which focuses on assisting businesses and entrepreneurs to develop and protect their foreign national employees from adverse regulatory actions and to establish themselves in the U.S. marketplace.
Because of the broad range of practice areas in which Goodman Law is active, it brings to the table a range of experience in dealing with immigration matters often from a multidisciplinary perspective. The following touches on the range of services that Goodman Law can provide in this area:
Business and Investor Visas
Goodman Law has experience in obtaining for businesses and entrepreneurs all manner of business visas, including B-1, H-1B, L, E and O visas. Goodman Law works with business clients closely to understand how their businesses work and how best to achieve their immigration goals. As part of this process, the firm makes it a point of identifying high risk applications and developing strategies to overcome potential legal challenges to them. Finally, Goodman Law’s work does not end with the filing of a petition, or the obtaining of an approval, but continues with keeping a client involved and educated about the visa petitioning process and advising that client about long-term strategies to maintain or change an immigration status. For Goodman Law, the opportunity to work with a client on an immigration matter is not considered a one-shot event, but the beginning of a relationship where the firm can provide ongoing counsel and advice to clients, not only about existing regulations, but about regulations coming over the horizon. As Goodman Law also has longstanding experience in the employment law and corporate litigation fields, it comes to its work as immigration counsel with the understanding of how immigration law and many other legal areas intersect and how they can impact upon one another over the long term.
Corporate Immigration Law
In addition to helping employers bring skilled employees into the U.S., Goodman Law also counsels employers concerning the workforces they already have, with the objective of minimizing their risk of violating the array of increasingly severe regulations prohibiting employers from knowingly hiring undocumented labor. Whether it is helping a small business understand its I-9 form obligations or addressing an employer’s concerns about its obligations in connection with a government agency audit, Goodman Law can provide comprehensive advice designed to manage, if not, eliminate employer sanction related risks.
Immigration Processing In addition to helping businesses bring in skilled workers on a temporary basis, Goodman Law also represents employers and their employees pursuing permanent residency. Employment-based permanent residency can entail a lengthy multi-step process that can involve up to three or more U.S. government agencies. Goodman Law has over a decade experience in obtaining permanent residency for employees, including priority and exceptional workers, and navigating the myriad of regulations governing this complex process.
Immigration for Investors
Investors who want to use investing in the United States as the vehicle for obtaining permanent residency will find in Goodman Law not only a counselor with comprehensive knowledge concerning immigrant investor regulations, but one that has longstanding experience in counseling start up and established small to midsized businesses in a variety of areas, including in the setting up of financial and legal controls, devising and implementing risk management and intellectual property protection plans, and addressing employment law, contract law, international commercial law, and litigation issues. In addition to its own experience as legal counselor, Goodman Law also has resources in many other fields that could be critical to investors, including contacts in the marketing, real estate, financial, tax and insurance fields. In this respect, Goodman Law can make accessible to qualified investors a comprehensive and integrated array of services running across a wide range of disciplines critical to making investments both legally sound and economically successful.
Consular Processing
While one part of the immigration process is preparing petitions for review by the Department of Homeland Security’s United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, very often the other part of the process is preparing visa applications to U.S Department of State consular offices abroad. Because of its emphasis on preparation, making strong written presentations, and comprehensively preparing applicants for their consular interviews, Goodman Law has proven that it has the wherewithal to assist clients even at a distance. One recent example involved Goodman Law’s helping a European client successfully apply for a long-term business visitor visa, which enabled the foreign client to service important U.S. clients without having to expend significant resources on opening up a subsidiary or establishing an agency in the U.S. Even so, for high risk applications, in addition to its own resources, Goodman Law has relationships with American immigration counsel all over the world who have insight into the procedures and practices of the American consular offices in their respective local areas.
Student and School Services
Foreign nationals studying in the United States and their schools can confront an array of unique short-term and long-term immigration issues. Goodman Law has provided advice and long-range planning services to students who become interested in working in the United States. For schools, hosting foreign nationals can involve having to navigate a host of regulatory and reporting requirements with which our firm is quite familiar.
Family Unification
As employers often have retained Goodman Law to advise their employees with pending applications for permanent residency on the basis of family relationships, or to help develop legalization programs for employees, the firm is very familiar with family- based immigration, including marriage-based legalization. Although Goodman Law is familiar with deportation and removal law, because it chooses to focus on business immigration law, its practice, generally, is to refer qualified cases to practitioners who concentrate on the deportation and removal areas.