Our History
Allen & Hodgman was founded as a general practice law firm in 1983. For our first fifteen years we practiced in the areas of civil litigation, employment law, civil rights, criminal defense, family law, estate planning, and probate. In the area of civil rights and employment law we established a number of precedent decisions that significantly expanded rights in these fields.
In 1998 our partners became qualified as Canadian lawyers as well as U.S. lawyers. We began to focus on immigration law, including both U.S. and Canadian immigration law, and this soon became our exclusive area of practice. Our focus is on business immigration and family immigration.
Our business immigration clients include a broad spectrum ranging from the largest publicly traded companies to individual entrepreneurs. On the U.S. side we have handled hundreds of H-1Bs, employment based green cards, TNs (NAFTA work permits), Ls (intracompany transferees), and E-visa cases. On the Canadian side, we have developed expertise in Federal Skilled Worker cases, Canadian Experience Class, and provincial nominees, especially Nova Scotia nominees.
In the family area, we have also handled many marriage cases, including a large number of U.S.-Canada marriages.
Our work has also included a wide range of inadmissibility cases, including, on the Canadian side, DWI cases, other criminality cases, health based inadmissibility, Temporary Resident Permits, and Rehabilitation. On the U.S. side, we have assisted many clients with both nonimmigrant waivers and immigrant waivers.
Since the 2016 elections in the United States, we have counseled many persons in the U.S. regarding Canadian options, both U.S. citizens and non-citizens. We have developed a specialization in obtaining Canadian citizenship certificates for persons born in the U.S. or elsewhere when one of the person’s parents was born in Canada. To the best of our knowledge we handle more of these cases than any other law firm.
The COVID era has placed unusual stresses on our clients, our business, and our employees. We have remained focused on providing a high quality of service through the expanded use of Zoom conferencing and other technologies.
While there are thousands of other U.S. immigration lawyers and hundreds of other Canadian immigration lawyers, we believe we offer a unique perspective, because our background and experience is unparalleled in the immigration field. There are only a handful of immigration lawyers in the world who are licensed, qualified, and experienced in both the U.S. and Canada. For individuals and companies with both U.S. and Canadian immigration issues, we can offer counseling, advice, and services which few, if any, other lawyers can provide. In addition, our first hand experience in other areas of law, including criminal law and family law, provide us with an exceptional ability to understand and resolve immigration problems that arise from other areas of law.
