Immigration Law Professionals
The Capitol Immigration Law Group PLLC is a boutique law firm based in Washington, DC specializing exclusively in U.S. immigration and nationality law. We serve corporate and individual clients throughout the U.S. and internationally. We are proud to be able to offer practical, prompt and professional immigration and employment compliance legal advice to our clients.
Because of our focus on business immigration law, we are able to handle competently all of our individual and corporate clients’ needs in this area. Our ability to provide quality and practical legal advice lies not only in our devotion and competency in immigration law, but also in our efforts to understand our clients’ business and to act as immigration-related business advisors.
We take great pride in the quality of our work, in our professionalism and in our expertise. We provide regular client updates on important developments in immigration and compliance law and are often invited speakers to relevant business community and other labor and immigration events.
We offer free and confidential initial evaluations and we offer competitive flat fee rates for our services. Our goal is to provide stability to our clients’ immigration and compliance needs by ensuring a combination of high level of service and predictable and transparent billing arrangements.
Our typical clients are small and mid-size companies doing business in a variety of sectors, non-profit organizations, universities and foreign investors. We consider our size an asset allowing us to provide loyal, intimate and personal legal services. In addition to corporate clients, we also represent foreign nationals from over 40 countries on individual employment-related immigration matters.
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News and Recent Articles
DHS OIG Report on the L-1 Visa Highlights Issues and Recommends Changes to the L-1 Visa Program
The Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) Office of Inspector General (“OIG”) has released a report on the L-1 visa program after a thorough analysis of the program, its weaknesses and opportunities for improvement. The report makes a number of recommendations to DHS on how to strengthen the L-1 visa program by making more robust review of a number of aspects, but also, importantly, calls for a better definition and training to officers with respect to “specialized knowledge” standard, which has been one of the main issues in the L-1 program recently.
Brief Background of the L-1 Program
The L-1 visa program […]
OCAHO Reduces I-9 Penalties for Small Employers
Recently published cases appear to demonstrate a distinct trend at the Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer (“OCAHO”)* in drastically reducing ICE’s penalty assessments, particularly when the employer is a small business and acted in good faith. One commonality we see in decisions is the consistent cite to, “Penalties approaching the maximum permissible should be reserved for egregious violations.
These OCAHO decisions seem to reflect a trend towards reducing fines from those sought against employers by ICE. Moreover, these OCAHO decisions seem to show a “well-entrenched” preference, in the absence of egregious violations, for a “middle-of-the-road” approach when it comes […]
DOS Rolls Out DS-260 Online Immigrant Visa Application to Most Applicants
The Department of State (“DOS”) has reported that they are transitioning to an online immigrant visa application as of September 3, 2013. Immigrant visa applicants who are processing their immigrant visas (green cards) through the National Visa Center (NVC)/U.S. Consulate will now need to complete the DS-260 form online (Application for Immigrant Visa and Alien Registration). Similarly, the Form DS-261 (Choice of Address and Agent) form will be online as well.
The online DS-260 form was, until now, used only for immigrant visa applicants for a few selected consulates. With the upcoming transition, after September 3, 2013, DOS will require […]
USCIS Clarifies Eligibility and Timelines for Filing I-485 for Diversity Visa Lottery Selectees
In a memorandum dated August 9, 2013, USCIS has released guidance and clarifications pertaining to the options and timelines for Diversity Visa (DV) selectees who choose to process their green card from within the U.S. by filing I-485, Application to Adjust Status. The memo seeks to provide clarification to those DV selectees who choose to file I-485 from within the US and, specifically, to indicate that I-485 can be filed when the advance notification number becomes current. This is done to ensure that I-485 applications can be filed earlier in anticipation of a visa number being current by the […]