Arizona Immigration Laws

Religious Visas

Religious visas are visas that are carved out exclusively for people that are engaged in religious work. So they could be pastors. They could be rabbis. They could be imams coming from outside of the United States to do religious work here.

Religious Visas for Pastors

We’ve been very successful in doing that for people in the Catholic and Anglican church. We bring pastors and religious workers from all over the place. We insure when they come here and do what they say they’re going to do. It gives me a lot of joy each time I’m able to help a pastor concentrate on their pastoral work, because it’s very very difficult to come in and not know what to do. So we help all these churches. We help some of the dioceses in United States to bring pastors from all over the world, put them where they’re supposed to be. Ensure that the transition from being a religious worker to permanent residence because you do need to stay two years before you can apply for permanent residency when you come in on a religious visa. So we moved in from religious visa to permanent residency and eventually to U.S. citizenship. So it gives me so much joy when we do that.

Religious Visa Lawyer

It is one of the areas that I do sometimes do for less than my normal price because I have a some kind of special interest in helping religious workers, pastors, and other people that do religious work. I would never forget one of the people we helped from Romania that does his chanting in the Orthodox church– in the Romanian Orthodox church. By the time we were done to when my office with flowers just to thank me for what I did. But I said, “Well I charged you money. Why are you paying me?” They said, “You don’t know what you did for us.” Our church would have fallen apart but for this man. So it gives me joy when this churches can stay together because the pastors or the rabbis are there.

By: Solomon Kanu

By: Solomon Kanu

About Solomon Kanu

I was born in Nigeria and I came to the United States in 1991. I became a US citizen in 2000 and I have been in Arizona since 2001. Immigration laws come very natural to me because I’ve been an immigrant but I don’t just do immigration law. I look at the immigrant holistically. They want to go from being a visitor to being a permanent resident to being a US citizen owning businesses. That part is very, very rough. I look at them as people that have to be taken care of from day one to the end.   Where you’re born doesn’t have to be where you live or where you die. The freedom that you get living in the United States is unbelievable. People want to be part of this because once they experience this people want to experience it for their grandchildren. And so I understand why they want to be here. This is such a blessing for me naturally because this is what I think I’ve been called to do.

By: Margaret Wong

By: Margaret Wong

601 Waiver

In the past, we had what we call a 601 waiver. Those are waivers for people that have overstayed in United States, for people that have done some little thing here and there. Those waivers require that the immigrant go back to their home country, apply there, wait for it to be done there before they can come back.

601A Waiver

In 2014, we had a different waiver, which is called the 601A. Very good waiver. It now allows for people to file for this pardon here in United States, get it approved before you go to Mexico or go to your home country. That way the families stay together before the immigrant goes for the visa in their home country. The problem with that waiver was that the hardship was only for people married to U.S. citizens. The new waiver has been– the executive action expanded that waiver such that it’s no longer just people married to United States citizens. People married to United States, family, residents can qualify. People that have children here can qualify. They can also their children to show hardship because this is a waiver that you can get when you can show that if you move back to your country that either your child, your spouse, or your parent will suffer.

Now this waiver that was only for spouses of U.S. citizens has been expanded to include the parents and the children. Again, it’s very welcome. It’s quite expansive. It allows people to kind of pay for the mistakes they’ve made, but have a second life, which is what this country’s all about.

By: Solomon Kanu

Business Immigration

Immigrants that come to the United States are very varied people. Some of them have a lot of skill. Some of them, once they get their permanent residency or they get U.S. citizenship, the next thing they want to do is to start up a business. They want to own homes. They want to buy franchises. They want to be part of this big pie. United States is a wonderful country. People want to be here. People want to tell their story. People want to be part of this dream, and so we help them to start companies, advise them on the best structure that they can use, advise them of how to make sure that they keep the company running and running well, and help them actually to grow. Because one of the things that we find is that when immigrants come here and they get their permanent residency or their U.S. citizenship, the next thing is: I want to be like any other United States citizen. I want to be– I want to get to the top. And so we help them to set up businesses, buy franchises.

Setting Up Businesses

We just bought one for some Canadian resident that came to United States, and we did his immigration work, and we got him a (good) place. We’ve done that for so many other companies. And so, setting up businesses for immigrants is one of the things we do. Like I said, the difference between our law firm and other immigration law firms is that we are the immigrant’s lawyer. We are not the immigration lawyer. We are the lawyer for immigrants, taking care of their immigration needs, their criminal defense issues should the arise, their tax issues if they have tax problems, their business issues. So it’s a shop that helps the immigrants come into United States, stay in United States, succeed in United States, and make a difference in United States.

By: Solomon Kanu

E1 & E2 Visas

The E1, E2 visas are very popular visas for visitors from all around the world. There is a requirement that United States have a treaty with the country where you are applying from, but there are so many countries that United States has a treaty with. You can find that list from my website – www.kanulaw.com. We’ve done E1, E2 for people from Pakistan, from Australia, from Germany. We’ve done E1, E2 for people from Britain and we’ve done E1, E2 for people from so many countries.

Visa Popularity

It’s a very popular visa for people that have money to spend in United States. When they raise these funds, they’re able to create jobs for themselves and create jobs for United States citizens and permanent residents to the extent that their businesses flourish and are doing well. They can stay on that visa for a very long time. There’s actually no end time as long as the business is doing well. It’s a very good visa for people. Canada uses it a lot to come to the United States. Mexico also uses it to come to United States to invest and do their work. It allows people to go back and forth to their home country. It’s a very stable visa for middle income people that have some money to invest in U.S.

By: Solomon Kanu

A lot of people see, whenever we do high profile cases, people say: “Oh, you’re just because they’re so famous. It’s easy.” or, “They’re so rich. It’s easy.” We also represented one of the richest man in Bolivia. You know the situation between Venezuela and Bolivia, the whole block of countries. We represent a lot of people from that part of the world. So it’s really fun and exciting, because when I was representing one of them, we heard the planes up there in the compound, because they all live in compounds. And I needed to get my client out of the country, and the planes were up there trying to arrest him. And I heard it, and it’s really scary. And I couldn’t be with my client, because I’m not there. And I couldn’t get into that soil, the foreign land. But these are all my cases that I really enjoyed, and it comes back and we have fun– now we can talk about it have fun with it. At that time it is scary. Or we have clients who got deported on the plane already. We have to stop the plane to get him out. Because once the plane leaves ground, you lose jurisdiction.

We recently have a client from a more communist-block country that, by the time his plane land into American soil at JFK, three officers from their country’s DC office embassy came to pick him up. And he didn’t have the American soil because he just landed from his country on land. He was picked up by them and luckily he had the smarts to pull the sleeve of the lady who works there, their air hostess, and the lady was smart enough to call the pilot, and the pilot came out and said, “What’s the problem?” So American immigration stopped him from being picked up by his own country national. By then the plane landed, and he was picked up and stopped in immigration jail. I had to fly to his jail and visit him and talk to his country embassy people who drove hours, and they were exhausted. It was midnight, and the American embassy people, to make sure he doesn’t get deported or excluded. So those are our fun cases. It’s scary at that time because, easily he could have been excluded from our soil and back to his home country. He’d probably be executed by now. So that case we won. It was really something. It was fun, yes. It’s great. It’s challenging.

By: Margaret Wong