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Immigration attorney
practices from experience
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I entered the United States as a foreign student. Having had to go through getting the application from the school and having had to go to the embassy and having to apply for a student visa, changing my status to a specialty occupation worker and then going onward to getting my green card and citizenship, my personal experience was pretty positive. Because obviously I didn't do this all at one time ... in doing so I got to know a lot of the examiners. Even when I was submitting my application for naturalization, the people at the counter said, "Oh, this is you." The examiner knew who I was and knew I would have no problems. My experience was not a bad one. One thing that was interesting was when I went for my naturalization ceremony, having to say the oath, having to renounce my allegiance to any other country, that was the very difficult point for me personally.
What's a typical business immigration matter like?
My typical day-to-day can be any one of two different things. It can either be assisting a foreign investor in entering the United States, in getting a visa. One thing about Goodsill is we do every single business aspect for our clients. ... Another side is working with employees, say a U.S. company wants to hire a foreign national. I would work with the employee to make sure the job is adequately described so they meet the qualification.
What nationalities do you mainly work with?
At Goodsill our primary foreign investor clients are Japanese. More recently I have seen more clients who are from Europe, for example, foreign students who are here. I think Hawaii Pacific University is starting to recruit more from Europe. When they look for jobs I assist them in their work authorization documents. And just the other day I spoke to someone from Iran.
I notice you help "extraordinary ability" clients. What are those?
Extraordinary ability clients are my favorite types of applications. They can be the scientists. One of my clients was a cancer researcher. He was doing research on different types of marine life and how it can help with cancer, and what I see my role as, I interpret what they do so ... the immigration examiner can understand the importance of what they are doing for the economy. One of the extraordinary clients ... I looked at his resume and told my boss we have this extraordinary visa, and he was actually a very well-known architect and he had designed this incredible ... playground equipment and it's really high-tech, but he couldn't bring that equipment to the United States. But he was also an architect for buildings, using the same concept. And I was really successful in that case. Unfortunately it's those kinds of cases that I don't do so much these days.
Why not?
I think it's mostly because there are agencies who for a minimal fee will come up with something which the clients would use to show they are an extraordinary ability person. Sometimes they want to do it themselves.
I never know what the outcome of it is in those situations. Plus, my focus is more on the investors in the United States.
What is the immigrant investor program?
Several years ago, it was one of the very popular visas and would have been very helpful to the Hawaii economy. People would get an investor visa if they would invest at least $1 million or $500,000 into the U.S. and hire at least 10 U.S. employees on a full-time basis. The state of Hawaii positioned itself as a pilot program to try make it easy for these investors to meet the 10-employee rule. There has been a kind of hiatus on this program for a couple years because there was a lot of fraud. A lot of mainland organizations were trying to bring in these investors, and they were not putting down the whole $500,000 fund. However, what we're seeing now is this program is starting to pick up again. I recently filed a case where a client invested over $2 million into the U.S. into Hawaii, and we have shown he has hired 10 people, has created 10 positions, and we're waiting to see what the result is.
What changes in immigration process have you seen since 9/11?
Well, I think the changes have been more subtle on the business immigration side. There have been a lot more delays in the processing of the applications. There's consular processing delays. Every single person is required to appear at the embassy to get the visa now. That didn't use to be the requirement. ... What I've seen is there seems to be a prejudice ... against smaller companies, where they are processing petitions from smaller companies, they are trying to second-guess employer's needs. They are going to ask you, "Do you really need a person with a college degree?" ... We had to show even though this was a five-person company, they need a person with a college degree to be a director of operations. In a larger company, there really would not have been that question. The regulations have not changed. It's more the interpretation of the regulations. What I've seen is a culture to deny. They're looking for reasons to deny the case. Before 9/11, they would give you the benefit of the doubt. Now they're looking at it and saying no, we want you to make the investment before you get the visa. People are going to look at it and say if a U.S. immigration attorney cannot guarantee or give us a high success rate, we're going to invest someplace else. I think it's going to hurt. These are the types of companies that create jobs for U.S. workers. ... I feel that immigration feels everyone is trying to pull a fast one. I don't know if it's a good point to go back to how it was before. Even before 9/11 there were problems, but it was emphasized after 9/11. It has to be an improvement, but in regards to petitions, if they were to follow regulations, I think that they would have good reasons to approve the cases.
The culture needs to lighten up?
Definitely the immigration culture needs to lighten up.
