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Corporate Immigration Law

The Corporate Immigration Team of Nilan Johnson Lewis offers exceptional immigration law services with a concentration in corporate immigration law and compliance. We have over 30 years of experience enabling diverse businesses worldwide to use U.S. Immigration Laws to enhance their United States workforces. Our clients include small-to-medium-sized regional employers, large international employers with operations throughout the U.S. and the world, as well as individuals. The services we provide our clients include the following:

  • Developing company or institution-specific strategies and practices related to cost-effective and efficient onboarding and retention of foreign national employees with an eye to maintenance for seamless work authorization for the duration of employment;
  • Securing temporary work-authorized statuses on behalf of foreign employees (H, L, O, E, P, R, TN, B-1);
  • Obtaining waivers of inadmissibility, including waivers of the two-year foreign residence requirement on behalf of foreign medical graduates and other J-1 nonimmigrants subject to Section 212(e) of the Immigration and Nationality Act;
  • Navigating the complex path to permanent residency through the preparation of labor certification (PERM) applications, employment-based second and third preference petitions (advance degree professionals, exceptional ability individuals, professionals, and skilled workers), employment-based first preference petitions (outstanding researcher, extraordinary ability, multinational manager or executive), and national interest waivers;
  • Assisting in consular processing of temporary work visas and immigrant visas at U.S. consular posts abroad;
  • Preparing naturalization applications and advising on claims to U.S. citizenship;
  • Advising on compliance issues related to completion and retention of Form I-9, Labor Condition Applications required for H-1B and E-3 processing and labor certification applications, among other processes;
  • Monitoring and tracking expirations and deadlines associated with employment authorization and stay of foreign-born employees in the United States and updating foreign-national employees on the status of their individual case;
  • Providing training and education to ensure employers’ in-house teams stay current on constantly changing statutes, regulations, policies, and procedures associated with U.S. immigration; and
  • Collaborating with congressional offices and local and national immigration advocacy organizations to improve immigration processes and laws on behalf of our clients.

We have achieved many significant accomplishments for our clients on individual cases and at state and national levels. Some highlights are:

We help write and improve laws and regulations to benefit our clients.

  • We helped shape the passage of the Immigration Act of 1990, protecting the H-1B visa status from elimination and increasing immigrant visa quotas for employment-based immigrants. This law continues to be the most comprehensive change in legal immigration since the 1952 Immigration & Nationality Act. We participated in writing comments on, and the text of, many implemented regulations.
  • A member of our team conceptualized the Conrad-20 program (now the Conrad-30 program), allowing state health departments the ability to issue waivers to foreign physicians. With our attorneys editing the bill, Conrad-20 became federal law. It is one of the only ways that under-served communities can supplement their medical doctor pool with qualified foreign medical graduates.
  • We participated in the development of immigration-related aspects of the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement and remain a national authority in this area. We handle complex transfers effectively.
  • We manage all aspects of immigration for many corporate clients during significant mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures, including multiple consecutive acquisitions by large publicly and privately held multinational companies.
  • We are one of the most successful teams in the country in using blanket L petition approvals to decrease cost and delay of transferring key international employees to the United States. One of our clients has used the blanket L approval successfully for more than 500 employees with turnaround from learning of the transfer to visa issuance rarely exceeding two weeks. (Blanket L approvals have saved our clients tens of thousands of dollars in attorney and filing fees and have avoided thousands of hours of processing delays.)
  • We regularly advise clients on how to develop policies, practices, and agreements to manage costs, benefits, and fees related to immigration to create incentives for employees to remain with the client.
  • We have provided strategies to employers regarding rightsizing their workforces in a way that protects the interests of the employer and helps retain key foreign employees, who may still need immigration sponsorship.
  • We prepared more than sixty successful visa petitions, over a 4th of July weekend, for managerial and specialty transferees in anticipation of and during an emergent deadline, to allow our client to provide services to their customers seamlessly.
  • We aggressively represent our clients in government audits.
  • We advised and represented a major research university and several major employers during comprehensive H-1B audits and we have worked with several clients to ensure I-9 compliance.

Work Visas and Employment-Based Permanent Residence Processing
We handle the processing of a wide variety of temporary work and training visas for professional and technical employees, most commonly H-1Bs, H-1B1s, O-1s, Ls, all categories of Es, TNs, and H-3s. In addition, our team works with clients to obtain U.S. permanent residence for their employees, in all preference categories, including PERM green card processing for EB-2 and EB-3 quotas, multinational managers and executives, extraordinary ability workers, outstanding researchers, and persons eligible for national interest waivers.

Advocacy
We regularly engage in legislative and regulatory advocacy for the benefit of our clients. We make periodic trips to Washington, D.C., to meet with federal officials, meet throughout the year with Congressional officials at local offices, and collaborate with in-house government relations personnel. This advocacy is at no cost to our clients.

Flat rates for legal services allow our clients to better project costs and to budget accordingly. For this reason, we use a billing system that provides flat fees within a range for the majority of the immigration services we provide

Associated Professionals

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