Immigration and Compliance
Snell & Wilmer’s immigration and compliance practice represents businesses, organizations, and individuals from around the world on a wide range of U.S. immigration matters and visa needs. We react quickly to urgent immigration concerns, including workplace enforcement actions, and help employers devise and implement strategies in a cost-effective manner.
- Nonimmigrant Visa/Status Petitions: We can help you obtain nonimmigrant visas for employees, including professionals, athletes, individuals with extraordinary ability or achievement (sciences, education, business, athletics, or motion picture/television), intra-company transferees, research scholars, traders and investors, trainees, and agricultural workers.
- Employment-Based Immigrant Petitions (Green Card): We assist employers with sponsoring employees for permanent residence from start to finish, including detailed planning to ensure continuity of operations throughout the process, PERM labor certification, and the filing of the immigrant petition through adjustment of status or immigrant visa processing at a U.S. consulate or embassy. We also have extensive experience with national interest waiver cases and extraordinary ability petitions.
- EB-5 Immigrant Investor Petitions (Green Card): We have experience representing high-wealth individuals who want to obtain a green a card either through investing in a regional center or in a stand-alone business through the EB-5 process.
- Family-Based Immigrant Petitions (Green Card): We provide comprehensive assistance to individuals seeking to bring family members to the United States, including drafting detailed petitions, accompanying clients to government interviews, and assisting with navigating the consular processing requirements.
- Worksite Compliance: We assist companies with understanding their immigration-related hiring and employment verification processes (Form I-9, E-Verify), including providing training and counsel regarding compliance, conducting audits, establishing written policies and procedures, implementing best practices, and addressing “no-match” letters (or similar information) from federal and state government agencies. We also assist with due diligence concerning immigration practices in the context of mergers and acquisitions and represent businesses in connection with contractor compliance issues.
- Government Audits, Investigations, and Enforcement Actions: Our immigration group regularly represents our clients in audit and worksite enforcement matters involving government agencies, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Justice Immigrant and Employee Rights (IER), Department of Labor, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate. In addition to federal court practice, we also handle administrative matters including appeals before the Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer (OCAHO), the Administrative Appeals Office (AAO) and the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR).
Snell & Wilmer’s immigration and compliance practice serves a diverse group of clients ranging from multinational and Fortune 500 publicly traded corporations to small emerging businesses and individuals. Our team has experience in a wide range of industries, including education, hospitality, construction, food services, information technology, gaming, biotechnology, security, telecommunications, manufacturing, retail, banking, and healthcare.
Our immigration attorneys and paralegals understand that today’s businesses demand and deserve more from their outside immigration counsel.
- Efficient Case Management: Our cloud-based immigration case management platform provides a central digital location for all case documents and facilitates a seamless workflow. This keeps costs down by eliminating redundancy while simultaneously ensuring that work is timely and accurately managed. The system is accessible online 24 hours a day for client access.
- Comprehensive Approach: Our immigration group often works with members of the firm’s labor and employment, government relations, international, tax, corporate, business reorganization, healthcare, and litigation groups when issues arise and require diverse legal skills.
- Experienced Team of Professionals: Our immigration attorneys are regularly recognized by their peers for their quality of service and dedication to their clients. Several of our immigration attorneys are listed in Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business®; Ranking Arizona: The Best of Arizona Attorneys; and Southwest Super Lawyers® in immigration law. Our attorneys have proven skills, in-depth knowledge and talents that enable clients to receive comprehensive, strategic, and effective representation. Our team of paralegals have decades of experience and are familiar with the entire immigration process from the very first non-immigrant visa through the green card process and eventual naturalization.