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Yulia is from Eastern Europe, but she’s been living in Portugal for several years. Yulia provides IT services for a Chicago-based company that invited her to the US for a business meeting. Yulia and her affiliate company in the US contacted Keith at Southam Law to help Yulia get a B1 visa (a business visitor). Yulia was worried that she would have trouble getting a visa to the US since she is not living in her country of citizenship.

Jamal moved to the United States with his family several years ago. In 2016, Jamal and Sana married, and they began the process of helping Sana move to the US to be with Jamal. At that time, Jamal was a US permanent resident, so it meant that Sana had to spend time on a waiting list before she could move permanently to the US. Sana was still a student in her home country during this time, but she had traveled to the US for a temporary visit to see Jamal and to take an examination in connection with her studies.

Merjem came to the US for graduate study at a major university. At school, she met Adam, a fellow student in her department. The two started spending more and more time together, and realized that they were a couple in love. They started hanging out with each other’s friends and family. Adam even traveled to Merjem’s home country to meet her family. Adam eventually accepted a job in Chicago, and the two had to live separately for a while.

Natalia and Daniel grew up in Venezuela. Like many people in their country, they watched in horror as Hugo Chavez and then Nicolas Maduro took step after step to turn the country into a dictatorship. Natalia’s family had always been politically active, and she worked to oppose the Chavez/Maduro regime. Natalia protested in opposition demonstrations and volunteered for an opposition party, encouraging others to vote and monitoring polling places. Pro-regime forces noticed and were not pleased.

Valeria came to the United States with a tourist visa to improve her English and see the United States. After her arrival, she decided to stay and enroll in English school with the hope of going to graduate school. She contacted Keith Southam at Southam Law to help with a change to student status. Keith advised her that she would have to send two applications: one to extend tourist status and another to change to student status.

Victoria and her family have worked with Keith Southam in the past for immigration needs. This time, Victoria asked Keith to help after immigration denied her application for a green card. The denial reason was ostensibly due only to a missed fingerprint appointment. However, just a few weeks before the denial, immigration itself told Victoria she needn’t go to the fingerprint appointment. Clearly, someone at immigration made a mistake. Keith helped Victoria file a motion to reconsider and also informally contacted the local immigration office.