Arizona Immigration Laws

I want to talk to you about the EB-11 or Extraordinary Abilities Visa. The EB-11 Visa is available to any immigrant who can demonstrate that they are at the top of the field of endeavor, and have extraordinary abilities in almost any profession or career. There are two ways to prove that you have extraordinary ability.

The first is to demonstrate that you have received a major internationally recognized award in the field such as the Nobel Prize. The second is to provide evidence that meet at least three out of ten criteria set forth by immigration regulations such as having judged the work of others in the field, authored scholarly publications, or produced an original contribution of major significance to the field.  An immigration officer will then conduct a Final Merits Determination where they consider the entire petition and determine whether or not you have achieved national or international acclaim, and that your achievements are recognized in the field.

There are many benefits to this type of immigration Visa classification. For example, EB-11s have the ability to self-petition. Meaning they do not need an employer to sponsor them. They can also bypass the burdensome labor certification process. If you think you might qualify as an individual with extraordinary ability, you should contact an experienced immigration attorney to help with this complex case. The passion of our staff can’t be beat. We share your joy and we share your tears. We understand that immigration practice is more about winning or losing cases. It’s about changing lives.

By: Marisela Marquez

By: Margaret Wong

Hi, my name is Marisela Marquez. I’m an attorney with Margaret Wong & Associates. I have been practicing law for over six years. The last two have been with this firm. We are a full service immigration firm. I handle all types of immigration cases.

Most of my time is spent on removal or deportation cases. That means I represent clients who the U.S. government is actively trying to remove. For that purpose I travel all across the country and appear in all immigration courts. I also specialize in obtaining green cards for individuals with exceptional or extraordinary abilities. What makes our firm unique is that when you hire Margaret Wong & Associates to represent you, you acquire an army of eight experienced immigration attorneys and over (30) support staff that speak (15) different languages all dedicated and fighting on your behalf.

By: Marisela Marquez

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

About Solomon Kanu

Hi. My name is Solomon Kanu. I was born in Nigeria. I have some education in Nigeria. Actually my elementary and secondary education was in Nigeria. I have undergrad and graduate school in India. Then I have law school, which is the juris doctor degree from the United States. That way I know what it is to be born in a third world country, go to school in another continent, come to United States, and be able to succeed here.

Legal Experience

I’ve been practicing law now for (14) years. When I came to United States in 1991, I came as a visitor. By 2001, I had gone form being a visitor to being a permanent resident to becoming a U.S. citizen to being a lawyer, opening my own law firm, and practicing law in Arizona. I know what it takes to get someone from one little place to much bigger place. I’m not an immigration lawyer. I’m the immigrants’ lawyer. The difference between me and a regular immigration lawyer is that sometimes they have to look at the books to do this, but I’ve been through this myself. I’ve been through being a visitor to going through becoming a permanent resident to becoming a U.S. citizen to helping a lot of people get there also.

Visa Experience

I do visas for people from nearly (50) countries of the world. I know people from Asia, from Australia, from Africa, England. I know people from– I’ve done a visa just the other day for someone from Germany. I’ve been around and I know what it takes to get people to where they want to be. Immigration law is very complex. It may look easy at the face, but the more you go the more you find that you need someone that has not only the experience and passion, but also the desire to actually help you get to where you want to get to in United States.

Kanu & Associates

I’m available for private consultation. I’m available on the internet. kanulaw.com is my URL. The phone numbers are listed on my website. I have done consultations by Skype, by phone, in person. I prefer in person, but I realize that I have clients in Germany and France and Australia and Pakistan. I do Skype consultations for people and I’m able to do their work regardless of the location. Immigration law is national, so where you are doesn’t really matter, but if you need to call right away the phone number is (602) 324-5320. Again, (602) 324-5320. Toll free is 1-855-KANU-LAW. 1-855-KANU-LAW.

By: Solomon Kanu

Executive Action

Well, the executive action that we have now is one that’s just been expanded. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was for children that came to United States when they were less than (16), and initially they couldn’t be more than (31) to qualify.

DACA Expansion

Now it’s been expanded to include their parents, people that came to United States, had children here, they’re stuck here. We know who they are, but we’ve refused to give them a transition to work, or refused to give them driver licenses. We haven’t allowed them to integrate. Even though they came here illegally, the country has benefited by all the work that they’ve done. So the president realized that and said, well why don’t we help these people to get their drivers license. That way we document who they are. That way if you get involved in an accident, you know who was driving the car, rather than someone that you didn’t know who wouldn’t even speak the language that you understood.

Temporary Relief

So the executive action has expanded the scope of what we can do to give people work authorization, driver license, and Social Security numbers. Now this is not amnesty. Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA) or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) does not lead to permanent residency. It’s a temporary relief. This is a country of second chances. We give people relief to be able to move them to the next level. So it’s not amnesty. It’s just something that helps them to identify with us, move around, and work legally, and pay taxes. So actually, we benefit by this executive action. This is going to start– for the first one in February, 2014. Then the second one starts in May, and that’s the bigger one for the parents. We have children here that their parents have been in the United States for (25) years, and they still can drive. They can move around. Not only are we helping those parents, We’re also helping their children. whom they cannot take to work, take to school, take the doctor, take to the grocery store. So it’s a very welcome development.

By: Solomon Kanu

Naturalization

Unless you were born in the United States, if you want to become a citizen, most ways would be through naturalization. So, you can naturalize after five years of permanent residency. There are a few exceptions where you are naturalized after three years: if you were married to a U.S. citizen, you got your permanent residency through a U.S. citizen, and you’ve been married to that U.S. citizen for three years. So, in a way we reward you for being consistent in your marriage. People that have served in the armed forces also get that grace to apply for citizenship in three years. But, the biggest hurdle people have in citizenship, is that some people don’t realize that when you have permanent residency in U.S., you’re actually on probation for five years. You can’t do anything. You can’t make any mistakes. You can’t commit crimes. So, when people commit crimes within those years, they run a risk of their permanent residency being taken away. If that doesn’t happen, when they come for citizenship, that is when all those things come out.

Preparing for Citizenship

We want to know who you are, how you’ve behaved, whether your moral character is good enough for us to make you a U.S. citizen. All these issues come up at the time of citizenship. There are questions to be answered. We prep people for that. When people pass my test, they always pass at the immigration level, because I’m very thorough. I want to make sure that you do well, while you’re in my office. I go with people to the interviews. Whether it is a permanent residency interview, or the citizenship interview, I always go with my clients, because I have a stake in what they are looking for. I want to make sure that they do well. I feel happy when they succeed. That way, the money they paid me has value for them, beyond just paying for a lawyer.

Receiving United States Citizenship

So, naturalization is one thing that gives people so much joy. When you look at the last words of our national anthem, it said that this is the land of the free, but is a home for the brave. If you’re going to live in this country, you’re going to have to become brave. That’s why I take people to citizenship interviews, to teach them how important it is to become naturalized citizens. Get to vote, get to be voted for, and do federal government work, live anywhere in the world without any fear of coming back to United States. It is such a glorious step to be a U.S. citizen.

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

We have nationality traits. Like the Russians, the Ukrainians, they’re very different from the Philipinos because of the high and the different fraud level. The level of fraud is different. Nigerians is very different from Sudan, very different from South Africans, and it’s very different from Kenyans, Afghanistans, Pakistans. So it’s all different.  Like the fall of the Shah in the 80s and 70s. A lot of Iranians come to America. So with that, we did a lot of cases. But then the Marriage Fraud Act came in in 1984, and in ’86, IRCA came in. So all these are new changes, 1990 IMMACT 90, three strikes you’re out, by President Clinton that affected. So we have a lot of new things going in the past 35 years.  I’m also lucky because of the history I’ve been doing. Because once I started out in this practice, we used to have no secretary and one desk, and that’s me.

So I would run to Immigration, run back, because there’s no Xerox machine there. So I would run back to the office, make some Xerox, and run back. But now, immigration is growing. In those days, it’s a very small department of DOJ. In the olden, olden days, it’s with the Labor Department, then with DOJ. Now it’s with DHS, which is Homeland Security.  So some of the interesting cases we have done? We did Tony Pena, Jose Mesa. We did a lot of great tennis players. We did a lot of high-profile. But my pride and joy is really working with the everyday cases.

Each country– in the olden days, it’s quota. It’s priority-based. Now it’s still quota and priority-based– actually, in the olden, olden days, it’s hemisphere: eastern hemisphere, western hemisphere. But in ’94, the Civil Rights Act came in. ’95, the Quota Act came in, both by President Johnson. So people like us– I came in 1969. Actually, Taiwan kids came in ’66, ’65, ’67. And then Hong Kong kids came. And then the PRC came en masse in the past three or four years, because Hillary Clinton, before she resigned or retired from the State Department, really make more tourists and students come from overseas to enjoy our education system, to enjoy our touring, because our country– one of the increasing trade from our country should be from tourism and from education – foreign students – because foreign students pay three-times the school tuition than the in-state pay. Because foreign students have a F1 level, and then the general admission, and then the in-state tuition, which is lower than the general admission in all public schools.

So in the past few years, you see a lot more different countries coming to America on F1s. But about in the ’60s and ’70s, because Nixon and Kissinger did not open up the Far East until ’72 visit, ’78 visit, so en masse, all the Chinese came after ’78. But the Koreans came a lot earlier, because of the Korean War – ’51-’53, the Korean War – so Korea and the Philippines of course. In the Second World War, Philippines is a strong ally of America. That’s why in order to be a great immigration lawyer, you really need to know the world. Read the newspapers. Know the history.

By: Margaret Wong