IMMIGRATION

US immigration: employment, family, and business visas

We represent individuals and companies before USCIS, in the immigration courts, on appeal, and at consulates abroad. The work ranges from EB-1A petitions for people at the top of their field, to moving a manager into a newly opened US office, to defending a client in removal proceedings, to reuniting a family after a refusal.

These cases are decided on the record built before anything is filed. Most of our work happens there — deciding what the evidence actually supports and assembling it properly. We will tell you plainly when a case is not ready, and what would make it ready.

Work is conducted in English, Armenian, and Russian.

Employment-based immigration

EB-1A for people with a record of national or international recognition — competition results, published work, judging, press coverage, membership in selective bodies. EB-2 National Interest Waiver for researchers, engineers, and founders whose work stands on its own merits without an employer sponsor.

O-1: extraordinary ability
without leaving your career on hold

The O-1 is for people who can show sustained acclaim in their field — sciences, business, education, athletics, or the arts — and who have a US employer or agent to petition for them. It is often the right first step for someone who will later qualify for EB-1A, because the same evidence does double duty. The petition turns on the advisory opinion, the itinerary, and how the criteria are documented; we build those before drafting a word of the petition.

These cases are won on evidence, not argument. The decisive question is which criteria you genuinely meet and whether the exhibit record proves it — which is why the petition is often the last thing written, not the first.

Removal defense

Representation in removal proceedings before the immigration courts: bond hearings, cancellation of removal, asylum and withholding, adjustment in proceedings, and motions to terminate.

Someone who has been detained needs a lawyer in front of a judge quickly, and the first hearing sets the shape of everything that follows. We take these cases at any stage, including after another attorney has withdrawn.

Appeals and what to do after a denial

An appeal to the Administrative Appeals Office is filed on Form I-290B within 30 days of the decision, 33 if it was mailed. An appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals uses Form EOIR-26, also 30 days, and that deadline is not forgiving. Motions to reopen and motions to reconsider run on their own schedules and answer different questions — reopen is for new facts, reconsider is for legal error.

Send us the decision itself, not a summary of it. Denials usually turn on a single evidentiary finding, and whether an appeal is worth filing is decided in that one paragraph.

Federal court appeals

When the Board of Immigration Appeals affirms a removal order, the next step is a petition for review in the federal court of appeals, filed within 30 days of the Board’s decision — a deadline the courts treat as jurisdictional, meaning it cannot be extended.

Filing does not automatically stop removal; a separate motion for a stay is needed. We handle petitions for review and the stay motions that go with them, and we will tell you early whether the record contains a legal question worth taking to the court.

Family immigration

Petitions for spouses, children, parents, and siblings. Adjustment of status inside the US and consular processing abroad. Waivers under I-601 and I-601A where a bar applies and a qualifying relative would suffer extreme hardship.

Civil records from the region come in several languages and often from a state that no longer issues documents in the form yours was issued. Establishing a relationship on that kind of record is routine work here.

L-1: moving people inside your own company

L-1A for executives and managers, L-1B for employees with specialized knowledge. The employee must have worked for the related company abroad for one continuous year out of the last three. If you are opening a new US office, the initial approval is limited to one year, and the extension is decided on what you actually built in that year — not on what the business plan promised. We plan for that from the first filing.

E-2: the treaty investor visa

E-2 requires citizenship in a treaty country.

The investment must be substantial in proportion to the business, it must be at risk and already committed rather than sitting in an account, and the business cannot be marginal — it must do more than support you alone. Most refusals we see come from one of those three points, and all three are addressable before you file if someone looks early.