Articles Posted in Immigration Law

The designation has run out. If you are reading this in the first days after September 9, you are probably somewhere between paperwork and panic, and I want to be useful rather than reassuring. Losing a status you held for 20 years is a real loss, and it is not the same thing as losing…

When a fiancé or spouse visa case is refused abroad, the message home is almost always the same. They said no. It is over. After years of waiting and one short interview, that reaction is completely understandable, and in most cases it is not accurate. You cannot appeal to a judge Start with a hard…

If someone you love has been detained, the first thing you want to know is how to get them out. I am sorry you are reading this at all, and I will not pretend the current landscape is simple. The answer in 2026 begins with a question that has nothing to do with how sympathetic…

Students on OPT ask me some version of this constantly. Can I trade stocks? Can I run an automated trading strategy? Can I put money into crypto? What if I build the tool myself? The worry is understandable, and the answer is more permissive than most students expect. Trading your own money is not employment…

When a university researcher or instructor on H-1B loses a position, the advice they usually get is straightforward. You have 60 days of grace. Find a new employer, have them file, and you are fine. Losing a lab or a teaching line is disorienting enough without discovering that the standard advice does not apply to…

Automatic visa revalidation is one of the more generous provisions in the regulations, and it is also one of the most commonly misunderstood. Used correctly, it lets you take a short trip to Canada or Mexico with an expired visa in your passport and come back. Used carelessly, it strands you outside the country. If…

This one causes real damage, and it comes from an understandable assumption. You have an I-485 on file. You are waiting. Surely that means you are allowed to be here and allowed to work. Nobody should need three regulations to learn whether they may accept their own paycheck. What the pending application does give you…

Almost everyone who calls about a pending work visa extension is counting from the wrong day. The rule itself is simple. The date it runs from is not the one most people assume. Watching the wrong calendar while trying to work normally is a miserable way to spend a year. Where the clock actually starts…

There is a provision in the immigration statute that most people have never heard of, that closed to new filings a generation ago, and that still quietly rescues cases today. It is INA § 245(i). The question that unlocks it is simple. Did anyone ever file a visa petition or a labor certification for you…

This is one of the most painful conversations I have. A parent has been in the country for 15 or 20 years. Their children are U.S. citizens, grown, working, sometimes serving in the military. Someone tells them that because they have a citizen child, they can file the I-130, apply for the provisional waiver, go…