Global Coverage

We have a team of immigration professionals within Seyfarth Shaw who are dedicated to global immigration cases. Our global team includes an on-staff Global Expert who is responsible for initiating and managing global cases. Because our Global Expert handles all Seyfarth Shaw immigration cases, we offer significant and centralized in-house knowledge and insight into the practical aspects of obtaining work permits and entry documents for foreign country assignments. In terms of substantive experience preparing and filing the actual global case, we have in-house capabilities for a number of countries, including Canada, Germany, and Austria. For other countries, we rely on several extensive networks of relationships with immigration specialists in foreign countries—including Pro-Link Global and the Alliance of Business Immigration Lawyers (ABIL) network, of which we are a founding member. This networking model gives us the flexibility to work with the top immigration experts in every foreign country. Unlike many global immigration providers, we are not constrained to use a particular resource in a foreign country simply because that resource works for our firm. This flexibility enables us to provide optimal global immigration resources.

Canadian Outbound Services

Seyfarth Shaw has developed particular experience assisting clients with Canadian immigration cases. We have a highly experienced Canadian business immigration team, including a Canadian immigration attorney, with extensive experience handling Canadian cases, including:

• Securing work authorizations in Canada for all categories under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and Regulations, including NAFTA and GATS professionals, Significant Benefits to Canada, SWAP and youth exchange programs, off-campus, and post-graduation.
• Securing permanent residency status under the Federal Skilled Worker class, the Provincial Nominee Program, and the Quebec selection system.
• Handling Citizenship applications.
• Handling high-volume cases and dealing with senior Canadian immigration officials at port-of-entries, visa offices, and Temporary Foreign Worker Units to streamline immigration processes.
• Securing pre-approvals for work permits from Temporary Foreign Worker Units across Canada.
• Securing positive Labour Market Opinion from Service Canada.
• Understanding the Business Visitor category in Canada and the narrow definition of business meetings.
• General guidance on Canadian corporate and employment issues.

Business Visitors

Illegal Stealth-Workers Entering on “Business Visits”

Corporate mobility managers, compliance officers and in-house counsel must be vigilant, in order to prevent your organization from breaking foreign-country immigration laws by allowing “stealth” workers to masquerade as business visitors. Increasingly, nations around the globe are tightening their laws and imposing criminal sanctions and fines on companies and individuals who try to circumvent the rules requiring work permits by pretending to enter for business visits. The extreme competitive pressures and deadlines on businesses are no excuse to break a country’s immigration laws by abusing the business-visitor visa category. Seyfarth Shaw’s Global Mobility group can help your company spot misuses of the business visitor category. We can also suggest the fastest possible avenues to procuring legitimate work visas and residency in your organization’s destination countries.

Work Visas

While many firms focus exclusively on U.S. immigration, we are able to draw on our extensive experience in obtaining global visas and work permits in other countries to provide comprehensive immigration services for employees headed to foreign-country assignments. Whether seeking assistance with the relocation of a single executive or with the assignment to a foreign country of an entire business unit, clients need legal counsel who understand their immigration needs at both the local and international levels. With our broad geographic scope and in-depth experience, Seyfarth Shaw’s Immigration Group is able to provide high-quality, sophisticated services wherever our clients are located.

Permanent Residence & Naturalization

Our global team provides advice and counseling as well as case processing for foreign permanent residence applications. For employees on long-term work assignments, we assess the options for obtaining permanent resident status in that jurisdiction and advise on the advantages of obtaining permanent resident status in comparison to long-term work permit and resident permit status. We also advise on permanent residence options for dependent family members and advantages such as employment authorization and related benefits.

Our global team provides advice and counseling as well as case processing for naturalization options in foreign jurisdictions, including derivative citizenship rights based on ancestry and dual citizenship options. In conjunction with Seyfarth Shaw's International Labor & Employment practice, we can advise on related issues such as global taxation and employment law considerations related to naturalization in a foreign country.

Compliance Advice

Many countries are developing more complex and restrictive immigration laws and processes. As companies locate their research and development, manufacturing and sales operations in the most ideal locations around the world, the need for a unified system of global immigration compliance becomes vital. A country-by-country patchwork of vendors and firms makes uniform, global immigration policy development and compliance difficult to achieve. Companies run the risk of damaging their brand and interrupting critical business activities if they fail to address immigration compliance throughout the international organization. Seyfarth Shaw serves as a single source for visa and work permit processing, policy development, and immigration compliance on a global scale.