The Fedtrade® podcast recently interviewed Andrew Greenfield, Senior Counsel at Fragomen. With more than 6,000 immigration-focused professionals and staff spanning more than 60 offices worldwide, immigration has been Fragomen’s sole focus for 70 years.
Learn more about Fragomen on their website or follow them on LinkedIn. Connect with Andrew on LinkedIn.
Key Takeaways:
- Fragomen specializes in global immigration needs for employers and serves a wide range of clients from startups to multinationals.
- Immigration adjudications can be inconsistent based on administration.
- Work permits can typically be approved in 6 to 10 weeks.
- Fragomen collaborates with other service providers for client success.
Hello, welcome to Fedtrade®. I’m James Hastings of Rothwell Figg. Joining us is Andrew Greenfield, Senior Counsel of Fragomen, a U.S. immigration law firm that helps innovative companies and their people go to market in the United States. Andrew, welcome to Fedtrade®.
Thank you, James. Thank you for having me.
Andrew, what is Fragomen and its mission?
So Fragomen is a pretty unique firm, actually. We’ve been around for close to 70 years, and we are a large global law firm and consultancy that specializes in assisting employers with their worldwide immigration needs. That could mean different things because we assist clients into 170 countries, including, of course, the United States, where I am based and where we are headquartered. But we assist employers of all kinds, from startup companies to Fortune 100 multinationals to colleges and universities. Any kind of employer that seeks to hire foreign nationals in the country of destination where that foreign national may not be a citizen or resident.
Your practice area sounds like a highly specialized field.
It is, it is. I would say the closest thing by analogy would be tax law. And it’s quite unusual for such a large global firm to be so specialized, but that’s sort of how we have made our mark in the industry. And we’ve stayed pretty close to home for the duration.
What types of entities does Fragomen serve in terms of their size?
With respect to the SelectUSA audience and my practice, and I’ll get to the larger firm in a moment, but I personally work with a lot of non-U.S. based companies, mainly European, but it could be anywhere in the world, that are looking to establish a U.S. presence, invest in the United States, and move employees from the foreign headquarters to the United States or perhaps hire people in the United States that may not be U.S. citizens or residents. So we have a huge focus on AI companies and other foreign-based companies that either are burgeoning into the U.S. or in the process of raising money and investing in the U.S. But as a firm, we really do represent the full gamut of employers, from the largest multinational companies in the world, again, to startup companies that may just have a couple of co-founders raising money or technical founders.
Does the expanse of clients that you serve who are seeking to go to market in the United States, span sectors or industries?
It’s across verticals. I mean, in terms of what I call startup work that I do, I’m noticing over the last couple of years, it’s very, very AI, very artificial intelligence-focused. But even of course, within AI, AI transcends so many different industries. So I would say that the general answer to your question is no, we do not focus on a particular industry. But deal with them all.
In your experience over the years, what are some of the greatest challenges that companies who are seeking to go to market in the United States experience?
So from an immigration perspective, we partner with other service providers to sort of fill the immigration piece. Companies need to establish legal entities in the U.S., they need to raise money, they need to make sure that they’re squared away on housing and schools for their employees, they need to make sure that they’re abiding by all the tax rules, and then of course they need to get work permits for individuals that are going to work for the company. And on that work permit or immigration sphere, I think one of the hardest things is dealing with the vagaries of government adjudications, which is interestingly in large part set at the top. So when we have a presidential administration as we have now, that’s a little bit more suspect of the immigration realm, although I’m not so sure that suspicion goes to business immigration as much, but what we sometimes find is inconsistency in adjudication. So, you know, we could do a type of work permit application a couple of years ago or a couple of months ago that sails through without any questions from the government. And then we file a very, very similar case for the same organization and all of a sudden we have a litany of questions from the government to help them understand the bona fides of the corporate entity and the qualifications that the individual has for the particular visa. And so we have to stay nimble as immigration lawyers and understand that we can never rest on our laurels. We can never just assume because we did this type of case for this company in the past that it’s gonna sail through unquestioned. And we really do take the time every single case, even if it’s for the same corporate employer, to fully understand how this individual’s job in the United States fits into the larger context of their business and how it will support the business plan of that company so that the government can understand why this is an approvable case.
With regard to the timeline for immigration law and approvals for a company seeking to bring their employees to the United States, is there an average span for planning purposes that they should be aware of?
Yeah, it’s a great question. I mean, it does depend on the visa category, but I would say as a general matter, once we’re engaged by an employer, we can usually have a work permit approved in the six to ten week timeframe. And sometimes have people in the United States working within that six to ten weeks. One of the things that makes that a little bit hard to gauge is that once we get approval for the work permit, the individual does still have to go into a U.S. consulate or embassy in their home country and submit their passport and get that passport stamped. And depending on how busy consulates are at the given time of year or where the person happens to be a national, it could take shorter or longer to actually get that passport stamped. But we usually tell clients we can get a work permit approved in about six to ten weeks.
Without getting into an exhaustive discussion here, what are some of the visa categories that often arise with companies who are seeking to bring their employees to the United States?
Yeah, so I mean, we have probably close to 30 categories, but there are two main categories that I see come up most often within the context of SelectUSA, which tend to be, you know, foreign based, non-U.S. based companies who are seeking to bring their founders or technical founders or key technical staff to the United States to get a new U.S. business off the ground. The two main categories are the L1 intra-company transferee, where a parent company is seeking to employ an executive manager or key technical person in the United States for a wholly owned subsidiary or perhaps an affiliated company with common ownership, and that’s called the L1. And then what a lot of people don’t know is that the United States has treaties with about 70 or 80 countries that facilitates something called an E2 visa, which allows citizens of those countries to work in the United States to direct and manage a U.S. enterprise or provide key skills to that enterprise, provided we can show that the U.S. business is at least 50% owned by citizens of the country with which the United States has a treaty. So for example, we have a treaty with Germany, we have a treaty with the UK. So our treaty with Germany allows German citizens to work in the United States for U.S. businesses that are at least 50% owned by citizens of Germany. And you pick the country and the rules are the same.
You had mentioned that Fragomen works with other U.S. professional service providers to help facilitate clients‘ U.S. market entry efforts. Can you provide a couple of examples?
Yeah, I’m happy to. So I’ll give you sort of a really important example. There’s a law firm that’s very well known in Silicon Valley and we work closely with a man in their UK office who specializes in all the component parts for companies that are looking to establish a U.S. business and raise money in the United States. And so we partner with him a lot where he will help the company get the legal entity established and get them set up with different rounds of investment that they might need in the United States. And then once the company’s established, we kick into gear and make sure that those founders or technical founders or other key technical staff have the work permit that they need to get to the United States.
Will Fragomen be attending the SelectUSA Investment Summit?
We most certainly will. We attend every year. We’re excited about it. I’m sorry I won’t be there this year, but several of my colleagues will be there and we will have a booth in the convention area. I don’t know the booth number yet, but it’ll say Fragomen and we encourage all of your listeners to come and talk to us. We love chatting with people and consulting with people at no charge, of course, about their businesses and about how the U.S. immigration system might assist them.
What are some of the benefits to attendees at SelectUSA that you’ve found over the years?
Exposure, exposure, exposure. There are thousands of people there, including virtually every U.S. state represented that are offering various incentives and benefits for people to establish businesses in the United States. And just the chance to network with different service providers and other people in the same situation to benchmark how they dealt with the hurdles that they needed to deal with to do business in the United States. And there’s also a lot of government representatives there just to talk about the different issues that companies might face. So whether you want information on the best tax incentives or best places to move your goods or to get your kids into school or immigration, obviously, or the tax issues that you have to deal with, all of those kinds of professionals are there. And I encourage people to go to the sessions that are most relevant to their needs and to really take some time and walk around that convention floor because you’re going to find dozens upon dozens of vendors and people in the trade that can help you.
For people who are seeking further information on Fragomen and your services, where is the best place to search?
Thank you. So you can of course go to www.fragomen.com, which is our website. If you want to reach out to me directly, I’m at a greenfield @ fragomen.com. But when you go onto the website, you can just look up Andrew Greenfield and you’ll find my contact information there. And with regard to established foreign businesses that have or are about to have legal entities in the United States, we’re able to offer free consultations to you to understand your needs and give you a sense as to the feasibility of immigration options for you. You just have to mention SelectUSA.
Andrew Greenfield, Senior Counsel of Fragomen. Thanks for joining us.
Thank you so much for having me, James.
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