Immigration Insights
Analysis and practical guides on immigration.
20 articles, checklists, and guides on immigration law, written by the attorneys at MC Law. Every piece is general information, not legal advice—for a specific matter, contact the firm.
Birthright Citizenship Around the World
Birthright citizenship—the idea that being born on a country's soil makes you its citizen—is one of the most consequential and least understood rules in the law. This article explains the two organizing principles of nationality, jus soli ("right of the soil") and jus sanguinis ("right of blood"), and shows how nearly every country blends them. It surveys the global map: unrestricted birthright citizenship now clusters in the Americas, while the United Kingdom, Ireland, India, Australia, the Dominican Republic, and others have narrowed or abolished it since 1980. It then examines the United States in detail, where the Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause, the 1898 decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, and the codifying statute at 8 U.S.C. § 1401 have long anchored a broad rule—and where a 2025 executive order seeking to limit that rule remains, as of mid-2026, blocked and unresolved before the Supreme Court. The piece adds worked hypotheticals, primary authority, and a frank account of the policy stakes, while being scrupulous about not overstating where the law currently stands.
Sponsoring a PERM Labor Certification and Employment-Based Green Card
The employment-based green card process for most professional workers runs through a labor market test administered by the Department of Labor, and it is unusual among immigration processes in that the employer, not the worker, is the applicant and the entire exercise is designed to determine whether a qualified United States worker is available. That framing explains every requirement: the wage floor, the specific recruitment steps, the prohibition on tailoring the job to the foreign national, and the obligation to consider every applicant on job-related grounds. This guide walks the process from strategy through permanent residence, covering category selection, the prevailing wage determination, the requirements analysis that most often causes denials, the recruitment sequence and its timing, filing and audit response, and the immigrant petition and adjustment steps that follow. It closes with the employer obligations, the recordkeeping that an audit will test, and a realistic assessment of how long each stage actually takes.
I-9 Compliance and Preparing for an ICE Audit
The Form I-9 is one page, and it generates more employer penalties than any other single document in immigration practice, because the violations are technical, countable, and multiplied across every employee. This guide covers the requirement and the audit. It walks the form section by section with the timing rules and the document rules that generate most errors, then covers reverification, the retention formula employers routinely miscalculate, and the remote examination alternative procedure and its conditions. It addresses E-Verify, where it is required, and the tentative nonconfirmation process that carries its own liability. The second half covers the internal audit, including the correction protocol that cures errors without creating new ones, then the ICE inspection from the notice through the fine notice, the categories of violation and how penalties are computed, and the anti-discrimination provisions that make overcorrection its own offense.
Business Immigration Basics: H-1B, L-1, O-1, and the Employment-Based Green Card Path
Hiring a foreign national is a scheduling problem before it is a legal one, because every category has a queue and most of them are longer than a hiring manager expects. This article maps the system for employers and for the people they hire. It covers the main nonimmigrant work categories, starting with H-1B and the registration lottery that decides most technology hiring, then L-1 for intracompany transfers, O-1 for extraordinary ability, and the treaty and country-specific options that are faster than all of them. It explains the labor condition application and public access file obligations that generate most Department of Labor findings, and the portability rules that let someone change jobs. The second half covers the employment-based green card path: PERM labor certification and its recruitment requirements, the EB-1 through EB-3 preference categories, the national interest waiver, priority dates and the visa bulletin, and the choice between adjustment of status and consular processing, with a worked timeline, a compliance checklist, and an FAQ.
Investor Visas: The E-2 Treaty Investor and the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program
Two very different programs let a foreign national obtain status in the United States through investment, and choosing between them is the first and most consequential decision. The E-2 treaty investor visa is a nonimmigrant status available only to nationals of countries with a qualifying treaty, requiring a substantial investment in a real operating enterprise the investor directs, renewable indefinitely but never leading to permanent residence by itself. EB-5 is an immigrant category leading directly to a green card, requiring a defined capital investment and the creation of ten jobs, with a regional center option that permits passive participation. This guide covers eligibility, the investment and job creation standards, source of funds documentation, the process and timeline for each, and the tax consequences that should be modeled before either is filed.
Business Immigration Toolkit: Visas, PERM, and I-9 Compliance
An employer that hires foreign nationals runs three parallel systems: a nonimmigrant program that determines who may work and for how long, a permanent residence process that takes years and depends on a queue determined by country of birth, and a verification and recordkeeping regime enforced by audit. This toolkit runs all three. It covers selecting the right nonimmigrant category and the compliance obligations each carries, the labor certification and immigrant petition sequence with its unforgiving deadlines, the I-9 and E-Verify process and how an audit actually proceeds, and the internal program—a tracker, a policy, and a set of calendared milestones—that keeps a sponsored population from falling out of status. It closes with the audit posture that ties the three systems together, since the same records support a visa petition, a labor certification file, and an I-9 inspection.
U.S. Citizenship Through Parents
Many people are U.S. citizens without ever knowing it, because citizenship can pass from parent to child by operation of law rather than by application. This guide explains the two main paths a child takes to citizenship through a parent: acquisition at birth abroad under INA sections 301 and 309 (the jus sanguinis rules that turn on the child's date of birth, the parents' marital status, and a U.S. citizen parent's physical presence), and derivation after a parent naturalizes under the Child Citizenship Act of 2000 and INA section 320. It walks through the date-specific physical-presence formulas, the special rules for children born out of wedlock, the Supreme Court's gender-equalization decision in Sessions v. Morales-Santana and its predecessors Miller v. Albright and Nguyen v. INS, adopted children, retention requirements, and the difference between a Consular Report of Birth Abroad, a U.S. passport, and a Certificate of Citizenship (Form N-600). Because the governing law has changed many times and the correct rule depends entirely on the facts and dates of a particular case, the article repeatedly stresses verifying the current statute and consulting qualified counsel. Worked hypotheticals illustrate how the formulas play out in practice.
Removal Proceedings and Humanitarian Relief: Asylum, Withholding, Cancellation, and CAT
Immigration court is an administrative system inside the Department of Justice where the stakes approach those of a criminal case and the procedural protections do not. This article maps removal proceedings from the notice to appear through federal appellate review, explaining what the government must prove, how detention and bond actually work, and the forms of relief that exist and what each requires. It covers asylum and its deadlines and bars, withholding of removal and protection under the Convention Against Torture, cancellation of removal for permanent residents and non-permanent residents, adjustment of status and waivers, and voluntary departure. It closes with the criminal grounds that determine most outcomes and the review that follows an order.