Immigration Practice Group at Brouse McDowell

This time of the year is always a busy one for an immigration attorney, as the de facto filing deadline of April 1 for H-1B visas approaches. Brouse McDowell, LPA is no exception, as we are busily working on applications for the coveted visas, which are one of the principal ways that graduating foreign students stay in the U.S. to work after completing their studies. Projections, unfortunately, are for another “lottery”: the annual quota for new H-1B visas for FY 2016-2017 is once again expected to be reached during the first five business days of April, resulting in a random selection among properly filed applications received during those days to see who gets a visa, and who does not.

We are busier than normal this year, since we have recently expanded our immigration practice group by adding a new chair, Jeffrey Moeller. Jeff comes to us with 20 years of immigration experience, most recently from the Cleveland firm of Hermann, Cahn & Schneider, where he was the head of the immigration practice group for the past 13 years. Prior to that, Jeff practiced immigration law at the firm of Stock & Moeller in Anchorage, AK with Margaret Stock, a nationally recognized expert in immigration (and current U.S. Senate candidate in Alaska). Jeff is based out of the Cleveland office, and joins Isabelle Bibet-Kalinyak who is based out of the Akron office.

Jeff handles both business and family immigration matters, covering the entire range of the field. Past clients have included numerous manufacturing concerns, professional practices (including law firms, accounting practices, medical practices, and architectural/engineering firms), universities, non-profit institutions, software companies, school districts, and investment management companies. He is past Vice Chair of the Cleveland Municipal Bar Association’s Immigration Section; has spoken at the American Immigration Lawyers’ Association annual conference; and frequently writes on immigration and related employment topics for the Ohio State Bar Association.

Jeff’s practice includes:

• Extensive experience with PERM labor certifications, I-140 and H-1B applications.

• Extensive experience with L-1As, L-1Bs, O-1s, EB-11 and EB-12s, and multinational executive green cards.

• Corporate formation and subsidiary formation with a view toward qualifying business owners or key technical personnel for appropriate visa categories.

• Start-to-finish E visa business plans for large and small business owners and investors, including entity selection, formation, business plan drafting and support, and visa applications.

• Extensive experience in all types of employer-side immigration matters, including hiring practices investigations and troubleshooting visa difficulties for critical foreign employees.

• Successful and creative problem solving with respect to the immigration issues affecting scientific researchers, university faculty, engineers, software professionals, physicians, highly skilled but non-degreed technical personnel, entrepreneurs, religious workers and musical groups.

• Drafting personnel policies and procedures to comply with immigration laws and regulations respecting the hiring, retention and termination of employees.

• Representation in difficult naturalization cases, including administrative appeals and Federal court challenges to citizenship denials or revocations.

• Analysis of potential immigration consequences of criminal proceedings for employees, in conjunction with criminal defense counsel.

• Waivers of J visa foreign residency requirements, including based on persecution, hardship, no objection, and interested government agency requests.

• Assisting with mergers and acquisitions, and related due diligence inquiries, when acquiring businesses with temporary foreign workers.

• I-130s, I-751s, N-400s, N-600s, N-600Ks, and other family-based petitions, including consular post representation.

Jeff will be authoring periodic bulletins about immigration topics of interest to the Northeastern Ohio business community; his first one will concern a creative approach for certain students or foreign workers who end up on the short end of the H-1B lottery.