Lewis Rice's Immigration Practice Group is committed to meeting each client's dynamic and unique needs. We strive to achieve creative solutions for our clients while minimizing the inconvenience and delay that are often thought to be associated with immigration filings. We are not an immigration "shop" that churns our thousands of filings with no individualized thought or attention. Rather, we take the time to understand each client's needs, which allows us to achieve optimal results. As a testament to the excellent level of service we provide, Global Law Experts named Lewis Rice "Immigration Law Firm of the Year" in Missouri for 2013.

Our Services

We offer a wide range of legal services to businesses and individuals alike. Attorneys in this Practice Group work with each client's specific needs, to prepare petitions and applications for a broad range of immigrant and non-immigrant statuses.

Our attorneys strive to provide a tailored and highly personalized service to meet the unique needs of our clients, while helping them navigate through a myriad of increasingly complex immigration processes, often counseling corporate clients who have no prior experience in sponsoring foreign national employees. We assist with stateside as well as consular processing for nonimmigrant work visa classifications, including, but not limited to H, L, E, TN and R visas; and we also assists with immigrant visa (green card) processing including PERM, EB-1, EB-2, EB-3 applications for permanent residency.

In our representation of corporate clients on workplace compliance and due-diligence issues, our attorneys assist with I-9 matters as well as audits conducted by the Department of Labor or the Department of Homeland Security. We also assist corporate clients involved in mergers and acquisitions to ensure that foreign employees involved in a corporate reorganization maintain their immigration status. Additionally, our attorneys assist with applications for family-based sponsorship, including marital and K-1 filings, as well as naturalization matters, and we have experience with the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), waivers of inadmissibility, asylum, and removal proceeding matters. 

The Immigration team is also conversant in the following languages: Spanish, German, Hindi/Urdu, and Sign Language. Document translation services are available through select vendors.

Indeed, we have successfully counseled clients in the following matters:

  • Employment-Based Permanent Residence (1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th preferences), including the Labor Certification (PERM) process
  • EB-5 Investor Permanent Residence
  • Family-Based Permanent Residence
  • E-1/E-2 Traders/Investors
  • H-1B Professionals
  • H-2A/H-2B Temporary Workers
  • H-3 Trainees
  • J-1 Trainees
  • J-1 Waivers (both physician and non-physician)
  • K-1 Fiancé/K-3 Non-Immigrant Spouse
  • F-1/M-1 Students
  • OPT/CPT Work Authorization
  • B-1/B-2 Visitors
  • TN Visas: Free Trade Professionals from Canada or Mexico
  • L-1A/L-1B Intracompany Transfers
  • R-1 Religious Workers
  • O-1 Extraordinary Ability
  • National Interest Waivers
  • Waivers of Inadmissibility
  • Adjustment of Status
  • Naturalization
  • I-9 Compliance/Audits/Reponses
  • Appellate Advocacy (including motions to reopen, and administrative and judicial appeals of immigration determinations)

Our Clients

Our corporate clients include businesses of all sizes and from a range of industries, including multinational companies (with foreign affiliates), hospitals, medical practices, institutions of higher education, public school districts and private schools, manufacturing entities, engineering companies, startups, IT companies, staffing companies, religious organizations, and other non-profits, to name a few. Likewise, we have provided thoughtful, measured, and specialized advice to foreign nationals and their families as they explore and secure temporary or permanent status for eligible family members in the United States. Additionally, we regularly counsel permanent residents as they apply for citizenship.

Our Approach

Despite our vast clientele, it is our individualized focus that sets us apart. The hallmark of this approach is to listen to the client, so that we can expertly determine the most appropriate and cost-efficient immigration strategy. Our attorneys pride themselves on being highly responsive—we fully understand the sometime emergent nature of immigration law, and we are always available for consultation, literally anytime.

Moreover, all of our senior immigration practitioners practice employment law, which is a unique aspect of our immigration practice. This extensive employment law experience allows us, among other things, the opportunity to expertly and efficiently counsel our employer clients regarding work authorization compliance issues, employment law, I-9 audits, workplace investigations, and planning for the immigration impact of mergers and acquisitions.

We also keep our clients regularly updated and compliant in this rapidly changing legal and regulatory landscape. We are constantly at work to keep our colleagues and our clients abreast of current immigration issues. In fact, members of the Firm participate in national immigration seminars and draft treatises, scholarly articles, and practice guides in this area. Additionally, in an effort to forge a cooperative relationship between immigration lawyers and government services, we participate in consultations with local and regional USCIS and immigration enforcement officials.