By TRACEY DRURY
Business First

When Dr. Adnan Siddiqui began thinking about how to bring his parents to the U.S. from Pakistan earlier this year, he knew he'd need the skills of a good immigration attorney.

Siddiqui, a neurosurgeon at Millard Fillmore Gates Circle Hospital, had become a U.S. citizen years ago after coming to the U.S. for medical school. And with his siblings here too, the missing piece was his parents. It appears that his work over several months with attorney Michael Serotte will soon lead to his parents' arrival in Buffalo.

"Once a client has realized that they're going to get here and stay here, they're probably most concerned with their family members and how can we help the family members come here and stay here," says Serotte, a senior partner with Serotte Scarborough & Associates.

The Buffalo region is home to several immigration attorneys and organizations that assist immigrants. That work might include helping business owners move foreign companies here, giving a refugee a new lease on life or assisting family members from other countries who want to be near their children or grandchildren here.

We asked several lawyers to talk about their work helping immigrants settle in Western New York. What follows is an overview of their responses.

 

• Michael Serotte, Serotte Scarborough & Associates

Serotte's law firm focuses on immigration law. His niche has become helping businesses, both U.S. businesses that want to bring employees in from other countries and foreign businesses opening a branch here, or simply doing business here for a period of time.

His work with Siddiqui's family is an extension of his relationships with medical and research professionals in the region. Other similar work has included helping the families of 10 Asian students coming to Buffalo to attend a local private high school.

The majority of his practice, however, is focused on working with investors and entrepreneurs in Canada and in the U.S. outside of Western New York. Nearly all of those clients share some common concerns: getting family here, learning how the U.S. health-care system works and finding the right schools for their children.

"The people who come to America who are successful who are not coming here just for family purposes are people who are independent, entrepreneurial and somewhat aggressive," he says. "They're very much like the successful people here."

• Rosanna Berardi, Berardi Immigration Law

Berardi, managing partner of the firm, brings a unique experience to her practice: She spent five years as an immigration officer at the border and an attorney with the U.S. Immigration Service before going to work at a large area firm in Buffalo.

Now she specializes in border cases, including those involving cross-border couples who wish to marry, and defense work for people who have difficulty entering the U.S. because of previous criminal or fraud issues.

Cases related to the latter area have picked up since June 1, when the new passport requirements went into effect. Berardi points to expanded information that's been made available to officials at the border.

"Consider a Canadian pulling up to shop at the (Walden) Galleria," she says. "Now they're swiping their passport, and it's telling the officer if the person has ever been arrested in Canada, and anything that was an arrest in Canada is still an offense for border-crossing purposes."

Berardi said the increased work on the defense side is balancing out a decline in other areas affected by the soft economy, including work for U.S. businesses sponsoring foreign workers.

 

• Michael Marszalkowski, Damon Morey LLP

Marszalkowski is special counsel to Damon Morey and chairman of the firm's immigration practice group. He's also board chairman at Vive La Casa, a nonprofit on Buffalo's East Side that helps people seeking asylum in Canada.

Marszalkowski does a little bit of everything, from bringing families here to deportation-defense law and asylum cases. On the business side, he helps companies set up shop here, expand or bring key employees to the U.S., and also does work for medical professionals and entertainers.

"The starting point is to understand that this is a very complex system of laws that deal with immigration," Marszalkowski says. "The application you may be pursuing may not be sufficient. You really need to think it through, not just for the short term, but (asking), how does this impact future steps?"

Marszalkowski, who speaks Russian, Polish and a bit of German, French and Spanish, has a broad background that includes having served as an interpreter at the 1980 Winter Olympics. He says being able to communicate with clients - even knowing just a bit of another language - can help set the relationship from the start and begin the process of making the client feel comfortable.

"You don't need to speak a foreign language to be an immigration lawyer, but I do think it's a positive help," he says.

 

• Joy Trotter, International Institute of Buffalo

As director of legal services at the International Institute, Trotter provides immigration services to low- and moderate-income clients. Services provided include affirmative and defensive law - for example, helping people picked up by immigration authorities and slated for removal.

The affirmative work includes family reunification, such as establishing permanent status for family members and spouses of U.S. citizens. The agency also provides resettlement services for refugees and citizenship filings.

Trotter tries to establish the intentions of her clients and whether they are coming here never intending to leave.

"You can be here for 20 years and in some cases not be an immigrant if you never intended to stay," she says. "It's a distinction that's important to keep in mind."

 

• Sophie Feal, Erie County Bar Association Volunteer Lawyers Project Inc.

Most of Feal's work as supervising immigration attorney at the VLP is on the defense side. Feal's staff spends much of their time providing education services to detained men about the removal process. Most of her department's funding comes from the Department of Justice, which limits their work to orientation proceedings, not direct representation of clients.

But though she handles very few cases, Feal identifies other attorneys to provide pro bono representation for VLP clients and mentoring those attorneys. That's important, because many of the private attorneys who sign on for the pro bono work do not specialize in immigration law.

Of the 1,200 men detained in Batavia who participate in the orientation program, limited resources allow those attorneys to handle only about 25-30 cases annually. The office also handles up to a dozen asylum cases each year, with about three-quarters of them referred to pro bono attorneys.

She recalled one case where the client's wife hugged the attorney.

"He said, ‘My banks never hug me,' " she says. "(The attorneys) understand that if this person is returned to their native country, they face persecution, torture and even death, and they find that very compelling.

"It's very different than what they perhaps do day to day. I know they handle very important issues involving lots of money, but there's something very deeply human involving immigration cases."