Immigration

Why should you consider Quarles & Brady for your organization’s immigration law needs?

Experience. Quarles & Brady Immigration Team members have extensive experience in assisting public and private companies in many different sectors including professional services, healthcare, banking and finance, manufacturing, education, aerospace and information technology across the United States and world with their immigration law needs. Our representation with respect to U.S. immigration issues includes:

• Nonimmigrant employment visa petitions, including Canadian and Mexican TN (NAFTA) workers, H-1B (professionals), O-1 (aliens of exceptional ability), H-2 (seasonal workers), H-3 (trainees), L-1A/B (intracompany transferees), E-1 (treaty traders), E-2 (treaty investors), B-1 (business visitors) and J-1 (exchange visitors), among others.
  
  
• Permanent resident processes in the EB-1 areas of Multinational Managers/Executives, Outstanding Researchers, and Extraordinary Ability.
  
  
• Permanent resident processes through EB-2 and EB-3 using the PERM Labor Certification system (and also Exceptional Ability and National Interest Waiver) and Schedule A (physical therapists and nurses) filings.
  
  
• Complete international mobility with a Blanket L-1 authorization program.
  
  
• Family sponsored permanent resident status processes for employees who can qualify through this method instead of employment-based.
  
  
• Diversity Visa permanent resident processing.
  
  
• Consular Processing of Immigrant visas and Nonimmigrant visas.
  
  
• Post-permanent resident processes such as Reentry Permits and preservation of permanent resident status for naturalization purposes.
  
  
• Compliance services related to employment verification (I-9) and E-Verify, Department of Labor investigations of H-1B programs and I-9 files, and discrimination charges in recruiting and hiring, and other compliance and enforcement actions.

Ability to Partner. As members of a large corporate national law firm, Quarles Immigration Team lawyers are able to not only assist clients with complex immigration laws and regulations, but also add value to this knowledge by understanding the business, financial, and human resource needs and challenges faced employers. By teaming with and participating in training with employment & labor lawyers, litigators, benefits lawyers, tax attorneys, and corporate lawyers, our immigration lawyers can help employers anticipate issues beyond immigration and that implicate immigration.

Industry Knowledge. Whether it is working with a CEO, systems analyst, supply chain analyst, engineer, teacher, physician, accountant, or scientist, the Immigration Team has most likely already worked with securing immigration benefits for a foreign worker in that position in a setting similar to that presented by your organization. Our deep understanding of structure allows us to quickly and effectively address your organization’s particular foreign worker recruiting, hiring and retention issue(s).

Involvement. Quarles immigration lawyers not only help interpret, understand and utilize immigration laws and regulations, we are also involved in working to help get new or enhanced favorable immigration legislation or regulations. We are actively and personally involved in both state and national advocacy efforts to enact laws that enhance and expand your organization’s ability to effectively and efficiently hire and retain foreign workers in health care fields.

Education. Quarles uses many different standard methods of delivering development and learning opportunities to our corporate clients. (1) First, we provide in-house seminars to human resources and legal department staffs when major changes occur or just when the client thinks it is necessary. (2) We provide training and seminars to client staff and employees through web-hosted seminars and teleconferences. Because we work in many offices around the country we appreciate the efficiency and ease of attending seminars at one's own desk. (3) We provide regular seminars at our various office locations around the country and sometimes in locations where we don't have an office but have significant client presence. (4) We deliver Immigration Client Alerts on issues of immediate importance to employers and their employees by email. These alerts are also posted on our website.

Infrastructure. Quarles has more than 425 attorneys in seven offices around the U.S. (Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, Phoenix, Tucson, Tampa and Naples). We are very proactive in the development and management of a company’s immigration program. It is essential that a company look at the entire system instead of approaching individual applications as they arise. Applications and petitions must be filed well in advance and worked very thoroughly. With the current climate in the country and Washington, it is imperative that filed cases leave nothing to chance. Since our lawyers are always involved in each case, no matter how small, we have a great practical approach with making a program work instead of only considering the legal aspects. It also allows us to ensure follow-through from both the company side and our own side. We are able to spend more lawyer hours on program management and case preparation because we are in lower cost geographic areas.

Immigration Web Portal

We are concerned with providing information in a timely and efficient for your employees and HR staff and controlling client costs. Our Immigration Web Portal tool is one way to accomplish that and we have directed extensive resources toward developing it. Our secured website allows client human resources staff and employees access at any time, and in many different forms. We use a cutting edge case management software system that includes sophisticated tasking, calendaring, communicating, and case preparation technologies. By cataloging all immigration issues within your organization we can proactively inform you of required steps next week or years down the road. This incredibly efficient system gives our clients the confidence to know that we are constantly ahead of the next issue to insure it does not become a problem. Internally, for our clients, the main benefit of the web portal is that HR can look at the status of cases at any time or create reports that show groups of employees. Technology allows us to prepare forms and other documents in a format that allows us to send them (and file some) electronically, saving time and expense. The tools also include checklists for employees, information regarding how to contact the client service team members, global report creation for employee group tracking, and employee-specific information for the employees in a completely private, secure way. We use the Web Portal to send email updates and links directly to employees to provide secure access and information for their own immigration processes, including filing dates and status, access to government sites, and direct online updating of personal and travel information. The real-time system saves HR significant time since employees may look up their own information instead of calling, emailing and visiting HR.

Summary and Pricing

Sophisticated organizations must be able to hire and place human resources where and when they need them with confidence. Employees demand and deserve excellent service and confidence in their employer’s choice of immigration services providers because these issues affect their jobs, career development and their family members. Quarles provides a unique personal service standard with very competitive flat-fee and hourly rate service since we have offices in lower-cost areas. We can discuss a variety of flexible pricing strategies and how they have helped our clients in different scenarios. We would like to help manage your immigration issues so you have the broad, nationwide and international resources of a multioffice firm. You will also have the confidence of knowing that we are able to address all legal and practical issues with regards to your foreign national employees.

For more information on how our Immigration Group can plan a strategy for you, please contact Grant S. Sovern at (608) 283-2668 /  or your local Quarles & Brady attorney.