Jim Hacking’s Post

Optional Practical Training. If you work in Human Resources and have never heard of it, OPT may be a nice option for your company to grow its team with top grade talent. There are many things wrong with our federal immigration system, but OPT is not one of them. OPT allows international students on F1 visas to stay in the U.S. after graduation and work in an internship within their field of study for a full year. The program allows employers to "test out" an international student to see if they might want to take a chance on sponsoring the worker for an H1b employment visa. The paperwork is minimal and the parties can agree on the salary (unlike the H1b system in which the employer is required to pay the prevailing wage). OPT also helps international students make some cash and build up their resume. Added bonus - if the student has a STEM degree, they can actually work a full three years on OPT. This program is a win-win! Smart employers have embraced the OPT system to help recruit excellent talent in a low-risk scenario.

Super proud of Amany R Hacking who had a terrific op-ed published in today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch. https://lnkd.in/d7wJB9uu

On Monday, the St. Louis immigration bar received an amazing treat. Ira Kurzban, one of the most important and thoughtful immigration lawyers in all the land, came to St. Louis for a CLE presentation with local hero immigration lawyer Javad Khazaeli. During the CLE, Ira and Javad walked attendees through the history of U.S. immigration law during the last five years and then shared some of the scary immigration plans of Donald Trump's Project 2025. Trump is promising to deport 12 million undocumented immigrants. He wants to build deportation camps and to use the military and local law enforcement to round up every immigrant who lacks legal status. Trump and his acolytes also want to severely curtail legal immigration to the U.S. Scary stuff. I hope it was a wakeup call to all attendees on the seriousness of this next election, especially for those who care about immigrants like I do. After the CLE, some of us were lucky enough to join Ira and Javad at Ben Poremba's amazing new restaurant, Esca. We had a fundraiser for Immigrants List, a political action committee devoted to helping get politicians who care about immigration issues elected to Congress. It was an amazing day. Special thanks to Jill Mceldowney, Thomas Kalish, Casey Plach, Rekha Sharma-Crawford, Michael Sharma-Crawford, Jessica Mayo, Nicole Mejia, David Cox, Genevra Alberti, Mario H. Camere, Gary Burger, Matthew McBride and everyone else for helping support immigrants at this crucial time.

My kids clown on me for using proper punctuation in texts. But they give Amany R Hacking even more trouble because she signs them. What do you think?

Immigrants bring a lot of great benefits to the U.S. One of them is, of course, the recipes and restaurants. This article highlights two new restaurants in St. Louis owned by immigrants. They are both fantastic. https://lnkd.in/gwm2VsTz

On my first day of high school, I was assigned to Homeroom 105. My homeroom teacher had just transferred from DeSmet Jesuit High to Saint Louis University High School. We were his first homeroom. This was September of 1984. My homeroom teacher was Dick Wehner and he is one of the most wonderful people that I have ever met. I am so lucky to have had Mr. Wehner both for homeroom and for sophomore theology. To say that Coach Wehner is a force of nature would be an understatement. We had so much fun with him and he made every student feel loved beyond measure. I just checked. He's not on LinkedIn. But Mr. Wehner didn't need social media to make an impact. He did it boy by boy. Helping us to become Men for Others. The U. High published a wonderful profile of Coach and I share it here with you. God bless him. https://lnkd.in/d-63-GSR

Eight years ago, I gave a talk to pre-law students at Saint Louis University. One student, Layla Husen, came up to me and wanted to work for our small law firm. We found her a spot and she was a rock star. Layla could do paralegal work, legal research and even yell at dumb clients who were making poor choices. Fast forward to last night. Layla is a successful associate at Thompson Coburn LLP. She is a litigator, mom and all-around awesome human being. Layla and our friend Fatima Khan invited us to the first annual Iftar at TC. We had a wonderful time and were honored to be included. But mostly, we are just so proud of Layla and all of her success.

When one of our immigration attorneys goes into a marriage-based green card, they usually bring a stack of updated marital evidence. The trick is to bring the right documents, but leave out the unnecessary extras. I don't think USCIS officers like receiving hundreds of pages of tax returns. But they do like to see evidence of a shared life. For photos, we do two digital pics per page, with a short description underneath. We document any purchases or trips together. Recurring bills with both names on the account are good. But leases or property purchases are better. Of course, children are perhaps the best evidence of all. We don't usually recommend bringing small children to the interview, but evidence of their existence is helpful. In any event, we like to hand the evidence to the officer and to give it a little heft so that when it hits the desk, there is a bit of a thud. Sometimes, our paralegals go a little overboard and we have to cut back some of the stack. We also always have our clients bring their identity documents, but we have a ready copy of those too. Pays to be organized and thorough at the beginning and usually makes the whole interview easier.