America is seen as the land of opportunity to enhance your career. Many executives and professionals relocate and then are overwhelmed with the immigration process. Often, they wonder about how to get a green card in the United States.
Navigating through the different aspects of VISAs, green cards, and other residency statuses is often confusing. In this episode, you will learn more about the basics of immigration.
Our host and CEO Porschia, alongside our guest, Erin Elliott, will share their insight on immigration and how to navigate citizenship.
Erin Elliott is the Founding Attorney of Elliott Immigration Law and has been practicing immigration law for over 15 years. She assists businesses and individuals in navigating this complex field so that her clients may engage top-notch talent for their businesses and reunite with family members.
What you’ll learn:
- An overview of the U.S. immigration process
- What a green card is and how to get a green card in the United States
- The biggest mistakes executives and professionals make during the immigration process
- How a VISA is different than a green card
- Tips on navigating the process of citizenship
- How organizations can improve their internal processes around immigration to better support international employees
As a thank you for listening to this episode of the Career 101 Podcast, we are sharing our FREE master class – Career 911: Solving the Top 5 Challenges Executives and Professionals Have! It’s a training based on solving the common problems our clients have experienced to reach their goals. You can get access to the master class here!
Episode Transcript
Porschia: [00:00:00] Today we are talking about immigration 101, how to get a green card in the United States with Aaron Elliott. Aaron Elliott is the founding attorney of Elliott Immigration Law and has been practicing immigration law for over 15 years. She assists businesses and individuals in navigating this complex field so that her clients may engage top notch talent for their businesses and reunite with family [00:01:00] members.
Her office is located in Atlanta, Georgia, but she specializes in working with startups, entrepreneurs, and investors all over the world. She is a frequent speaker and writer for various technology and business groups, as well as the Georgia Bar Association, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, A.
- L. A. And currently serves on chair of the Georgia Alabama chapter for a I. L. A. Hi, Aaron. How are you today? Great. How are you? I’m doing well. I’m thrilled to have you with us to discuss immigration one Oh one. But first we want to know a little more about you. So tell me about seven year old Aaron.
Erin: It’s, I would say seven year old Aaron was about the same as I am now, because the story I always tell is my favorite game was I had my own [00:02:00] business. Every Christmas I got business supplies and. Yeah, I guess that’s what I always wanted to do. So it’s actually pretty similar to what I’m doing now.
Porschia: That is great. You had that clarity from the beginning. What was your first job,
Erin: Erin? It was at the movie theater when, I feel like people don’t really go as often to the movie theater now, but at that time that was the place to be. So I worked and sold tickets and, worked at the concession.
Porschia: Cool. Cool. Yeah, I think that concession experience is one that I’ve heard a few of our guests have. Really? Yes. Yes. So tell us about some highlights or pivotal moments in your career before you started your own business.
Erin: , when I first started practicing law, I was doing transactional law for a [00:03:00] large firm.
And frankly, one of our pivotal moments was personally deciding. Whether I was going to continue down that area of law, or I had just been offered a position at one of the large banks that was a client of ours in Charlotte and my husband and I had to decide, are we moving to Turkey, or are we moving to Charlotte, and we decided to move to Turkey and that kind of.
Just changed everything as far as where, when we returned to the U. S., that I was ready to start something new and learn a different area of law.
Porschia: Wow. Wow. So what motivated you to start your own business? Because, I’m sure you could have, gone in with another firm at that point in time and learned immigration.
Just what was that driver for
Erin: you? I think a couple of things. One, my husband is an immigrant. So we went through that. He’s from Turkey. We [00:04:00] went through the process with him. So it was really interesting to me. And all of my, I guess my mom and really everyone in my family is an entrepreneur.
So I knew that I was going to do that at some point. And it just ended up being the right timing for that.
Porschia: So you mentioned that your husband is an immigrant. Was that kind of your sole reason to focus on immigration or were there other reasons?
Erin: I think personally, I wanted flexibility and I knew that in the field I was in previously I loved it.
I loved our clients. There’s no flexibility in banking and in even just working like in a large firm like that at the time, there really wasn’t flexibility. So that was a primary reason for me to. Great.
Porschia: Erin, we’ve worked with [00:05:00] many international clients who’ve had a lot of questions about immigration.
Why do you think the immigration process can be confusing?
Erin: I think there’s an expectation that just for being an immigrant, you’re going to know all of this information. And I think there’s That’s just not true. And it’s complex. It’s the law has been changed and reformed many times. And so you have these obscure code, was applicable from an original change.
And then, it’s only applies in certain circumstances. So it’s. Immigration reform is definitely still needed but that’s part of it, and I think there are so many errors that can be made that are unforgiving the government is unforgiving, but it makes it difficult. If [00:06:00] this isn’t your specialty or if you aren’t, don’t have maybe an attorney that you’re, that is easily accessible.
Porschia: Yeah. When you said that about unforgiving errors, I could definitely see how maybe if something was wrong, I know it can be a multi year process, how someone could really be affected and that could really throw things off
Erin: for them. Yeah, definitely. I think, what we see a lot are folks that, they think they’re doing everything right and they’re relying a lot on their sponsor, which either, in a lot of the business cases it starts out as the school sponsoring them for a student visa.
They, their understanding is that’s being taken care of by the school and then they’re transitioning to an employer. But in reality, the only person that cares about this the most is the foreign national. And [00:07:00] so I guess, my best advice is that you have to be in control of that at all times because schools make mistakes and the only person that suffers for that typically is the immigrant.
Porschia: Yeah, obtaining a green card is a goal for many people moving to the U. S. For those who don’t know, what is a green card?
Erin: A green card is evidence of permanent resident status. For U. S. immigration, you always have temporary, which is non immigrant, and then permanent, which is immigrant. Immigrant is a green card.
And you have to be in either one of those statuses at all times in the U. S. in general.
Porschia: Can you give us an overview of how an immigrant can get a green card?
Erin: So the way I like to think about it is you have three buckets for sponsorship. [00:08:00] You have family sponsors, which are typically close relatives that have either U.
- citizenship or green card status in the U. S. You have employer sponsorship, which is a U. S. entity that is sponsoring someone to be an employee, or that foreign national is able to actually start their own company here in some cases. And then the third option is like Your everything else, but usually it’s humanitarian.
And then I think this is not a green card, but I always put F1 in there, which is a student visa. That’s a temporary visa, but it often is a starting place for folks that are looking for a path to a green card. I think what’s difficult to understand is that the temporary status, the non immigrant and the green card.
Process are absolutely two different processes. The non immigrant never leads to a green card. It may be [00:09:00] helpful and it may make the green card process less cumbersome, for example, for an employer, but they, it will never directly lead to a green card.
Porschia: That is great to know. That’s great to know. And that definitely I think leads me to the next topic and question I had which is when we’ve had clients who were only interested in getting a work visa in the U.
- And my question was going to be how is that? I guess visa process different than the process for getting a green card.
Erin: So what? It’s there are really just a handful of options for professionals. I guess for everyone, but. Most of the options are for professionals. If you’re looking at a non immigrant visa, which is like your work visa, you’re typically looking at an H 1B, an L 1 maybe an E 2.
These are all[00:10:00] they all have different requirements. But what, when, when we start off with the client, the question 1st is always, what is your short term goal? And what is your long term goal? Because often I think employees, their long term goal is a green card, but they’re hesitant to disclose that for fear of, I don’t know what that means that it means more funding from the employer.
And maybe I’m jumping ahead, but I think in today’s market, my recommendation is always you want to say that up front. Because really it’s something that can actually be included in the employment agreement so that you have some assurance that your green card application will be submitted or applied for or started far ahead of your expiration date for the temporary visa.
Porschia: I was just [00:11:00] thinking as you were talking and. I really appreciate you sharing that because I do see how someone who might be an immigrant could think, Oh, if I don’t, if I share that, I want a green card up front, the company might not hire me or, they might create some scenarios in their head.
Or, maybe they’re listening to other people who are telling them that. So it’s great to hear you say that, they should be upfront with that. With. their attorney and also, with their employer. Okay. Erin, when you think about some of the clients that you’ve worked with, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you’ve seen people make when, trying to get a green card or, you
Erin: know, a visa?
So we have clients that are U. S. employers and also either in the same case or a separate
I think from the U. S. employer side, what I tend to see a lot right now is there’s an intent [00:12:00] to submit a green card at some point for this employee And once action is actually taken, it’s taken a little bit too late because of the processing times right now. Just to give perspective, it used to be, I don’t know, maybe 5, 6 years ago that.
You’ve got an H1B, for example, it’s a total of six years and we would always recommend, you can have someone work for you for three years. And when it’s time to do the renewal, then you can think about a green card. That would give you three years for processing. That’s more than enough time.
Now it’s really not. If you start too late, you’re then really You know, up against the clock, things are changing. There are other circumstances that can create that timeline to grow. If there’s an audit, if there’s a retrogression in the visa bulletin. So there’s, I guess the worst case scenario is [00:13:00] you’ve got someone that has to leave the U.
- while they’re finishing that green card process. From an employer’s perspective, that’s not ideal from the foreign national standpoint. I think the biggest thing I see is what I mentioned initially, which is there’s this assumption that. The sponsor is managing this, or, that there’s just really not a lot of knowledge about their current status and what is required to maintain that.
And, as I said, the most important thing is that you are up to date on what is required to maintain your status. It is no one else’s priority, to be frank, as much as it is yours. So it’s really important that you don’t have a time where you’re working without authorization, even if it’s unintended, unintentional.
You don’t have a time [00:14:00] where you’re out of status on. There are some times where that can be waived, but it’s not often, especially in the employer sponsor context.
Porschia: Wow. I have a few follow up questions there, Aaron. To go back to the employers first, you mentioned that, in the past, they could maybe wait three years during the process.
And[00:15:00] when someone’s on a visa and then start working towards the green card. But you said that, with The way things are going now, in terms of current, processing times and procedures, that action might be taken too late. When should a company, that employer, really begin the green card process?
Erin: What I would like and what I’ve recommended to my clients, and I think, I know some of them have actually implemented this, is Like, what if we just think about it totally differently? What if we don’t as an employer, what if we don’t, not that, this is the thinking behind every employer, but I feel like it’s always been in the past, like we’re going to hold this, something we can do for you, but you really have to prove yourself in order to get this.
What I mean, given the market right now, especially in the technology field, I know it’s hard to find people. What if the employer says. [00:16:00] Hey, we are unlike these other companies because we are invested in sponsorship for you. We want to have foreign nationals. We’re not afraid of that process. And that is something we’re willing to discuss at the time of hiring.
It doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily like submitting the application on day one, but I don’t think. It doesn’t mean you, you could wait a year and that’s typically enough time. But but I think it, it’s something that, that an employer should consider at the very forefront. Great,
Porschia: great.
And then on the side of the immigrant, when you mentioned, sometimes they just have this belief that someone else is taking care of the process for them. We’ve had quite a few clients who were immigrants and they were master’s degree students or PhD students. And then they were trying to, I guess they had a student visa.
Right. And then they were [00:17:00] looking for. A company that would either, and I don’t know the exact process, so please correct me if I’m wrong, but they were looking for another company that would continue the process with the visa, and then some of them knew that they wanted a green card, and they were just talking to us as they were trying to go through this career transition, but looking for a specific company and things were just getting really convoluted for them and they were getting very like frustrated and stressed out.
From let’s say a student’s perspective like that, how can they I guess be more proactive with the process?
Erin: I think depending on the school, you’ve got some schools that it’s called a DSO, they’re which is basically the immigration office. That office, in some cases, is great. They’re very informative, they freely speak with the students, and that’s where I would start.
If you’re not getting enough [00:18:00] information, I think it’s worth the time, even just to schedule a consultation with an attorney, just to talk through. These are your plans. These are your, this is your current status. This is how much time you have. What are the next steps? What are out of the box ideas?
I guess just from a practical perspective. If I were recommending something for like a family member, I would say you need to go into a STEM field science, technology, engineering, math, because in that case, as a student, you’re going to get three years of work authorization and otherwise you’re only going to get one year and that’s really tough to find.
An employer that is willing and actually that you’re eligible to have a work visa within a year. That’s really tough to do right now. You typically have to apply at least two or three times for H 1B cap. [00:19:00]
Porschia: Wow. Yeah. That, that, all of that is great to know. And I appreciate you sharing timelines with us, Aaron, because I will.
Never forget, I had a gentleman reach out to me and he was in that kind of student situation that I explained and I think he had like a month left on his visa before he was going to have to leave and he was like, yeah, I need to get a job, but they need to be able to help me with my visa and I want to get a green card and I, just sitting there thinking, sir, I think this is way too late.
And I, advised him to reach out, to an attorney. But yeah, it sounds like my assumption there was a bit, it was accurate. Sometimes I have seen people wait and they’re like a month away from the deadline that they have.
Erin: Yeah. Yeah. And I think, the other thing I try to do is.
For just this is typically who I’m working with, but a professional, which is someone with a bachelor’s degree or [00:20:00] equivalent. You need to have a plan A, B, and C always and, there just aren’t many options. There’s a lot of applicants and I think last time we did the H1B cap, it was like a 25 percent chance of being selected.
So there are potentially other options, but you need to think about what those are at the beginning so that if there’s something else you need to do to be eligible for it, you can start that process.
Porschia: Wow. That is so valuable. Thank you, Aaron. I know already that some of our clients in our community are going to get so much from, what you just shared.
So we’ve also seen a lot of clients that decide that they want to become U. S. citizens. What are some tips or recommendations you would share with people to help them prepare for the process of pursuing
Erin: citizenship? It’s a great time to do it now, because we [00:21:00] are before an election. I think.
There, there are a number of requirements, but I think the ones that kind of trip people up are typically the travel. So there’s 2 travel requirements. 1 is that you’ve spent more days inside the U. S. than outside in your statutory period, which is typically 5 years as a green card holder. And then the 2nd requirement is that you haven’t taken a trip for 6 months or longer at one time outside of the U.
- So if you those are pretty strict requirements, there are some ways around it. If you’ve taken a trip for 6 months or longer, but the day requirement, that 1st 1 is absolutely strict. There’s no way around that. So you want to look at your travel. You’re eligible to apply 90 days before. I would.
Submit as early as you can and there’s other requirements but essentially, [00:22:00] those are the main ones I see, outside of like criminal issues or that sort of thing.
Porschia: Great. Great. Now I want to go back to the angle of the company, right? So assessing immigration from the angle of, some of our business clients who are, the actual companies and organizations.
So I’ve seen this quite a bit where an organization might have some type of compliance issue with their international employees. How can an organization improve their internal processes with immigration?
Erin: I think at a minimum, depending on the size of the organization when you’re looking at compliance, typically we’re looking at I 9 compliance and E Verify. Every U. S. employer has the I 9 compliance requirement. Whoever is performing those tasks needs to be trained. And I think that [00:23:00] often goes to someone, from someone else that doesn’t know how to do it to someone else that doesn’t know how to do it.
And there are violations there. If there’s ever an audit those, that’s when you’ll see those violations. But, it’s not, it’s not a difficult thing, but there are very strict rules about the I 9 compliance, what documents you can request from the, from a foreign national, from any employee, and from, from the other side, what I often see is an employee come back, come to me and say, my USCIS,
Produces a manual for I 9 for employers. It’s very helpful and, you don’t have to read it front to back, but it’s helpful to have that information on hand and to, at a minimum, know when you need to request the documents and what documents. you can request for the I 9. E Verify I think maybe one [00:24:00] change that is not understood by some employers is the new STEM OPT requirement.
Some employers that aren’t required to use E Verify because of the size. If you do hire someone who’s on a student visa completing their internship which is called OPT and you’re in the STEM part of it, which is the two year extension. You are as an employer required to use E Verify.
I don’t know if that answers.
Porschia: Yeah, no, that’s great. That’s great. That’s great to know. Great to know. All right, Erin. So tell us more about Elliott Immigration
Erin: Law. So we are, we’re based in Atlanta. We do family employment naturalization I’ve been in the practice for, as you said, over 15 years, and then I have a partner that joined a couple years ago, Carrie Toth, she’s been [00:25:00] practicing longer than me and she has a lot of background in the family side, waivers and so she’s primarily working on that side, and then I work with the employers and foreign nationals that are looking at work sponsorship.
Porschia: Great. So we’ll be providing a link to your website and other social channels in our show notes so that people can find you online. But what is the best way for someone to get in touch with you?
Erin: Email, definitely email. You can… Email our office at info at Aaron Elliot. Yes. Q dot com and that will go to everyone.
We have something on our website that says, ask a question. We try to answer those. But if we feel like you need to come in for a consult, we would send you a response just. Suggesting that
Porschia: right. So my last question that I like to ask every guests. [00:26:00] You’ve had a very interesting career in law.
I want to know, how do you think executives or professionals can get a positive edge in their
Erin: career?
I know that’s not a tough question, but for me, my generation, it meant to get there early and stay late. I think yeah. I don’t know that it means that anymore, but I do think it means, ownership for what you’re doing and show that you care about what you’re doing. And if you don’t care, then look at that and figure out how to change and do something you do care about.
Porschia: Erin, you have shared a lot of wisdom with us today, and I’m sure that our listeners can use it to be more confident when it comes to the whole immigration process, we appreciate you being with us.
Erin: Thank you so much. I appreciate it. [00:27:00]
