Immigration Pathways for International Chefs and Highly Skilled Workers

Eva Benach
The pathway is patience. Build your career. Build yourself. Build up your resume. If you're a chef, do a stage.

Do internships. Get big names on your resume. So if you can show one of the criteria for all these extraordinary ability visas is showing that you played a leading or critical role at an organization with a distinguished reputation. If you're a chef and you're thinking about how to venture into the private chef space, how to set yourself up for success, resume to first interactions with your clients as well as succeeding at the job. Our one on one coaching got you covered.

Hannes Hetji
Go to www. Dot Privatechef, dot CC, and connect with me. Decades of experience can be your support to seize the next private chef opportunity.

Welcome to the private chef podcast serving the 1%. I'm your host, Hannes Hetji, and on our show, we speak to the best chefs, how they honed in on their skills to excel in the industry, and what it takes to work as a private chef over some of the most exclusive clients in the world.

Hannes Henshi David
Welcome back to the private chef podcast. I'm your host, Hannes Henshi David, joined by Eva Benach, co founder of Benach and Kolopi, an immigration attorney with over 25 years of experience protecting, advancing the rights of immigrants in the United States. Eva will be discussing local advice and exploring different pathways open to highly skilled chefs on their journey to the United States. Thank you for being here today. Thank you for having me.

Eva Benach
I'm very happy to be here. So, first things first. What made you become an immigration lawyer originally? All my family are immigrants. My dad came from Cuba in 1959.

Well, he married an american. If you know anything about Cubans, you know that they tend to dominate any sort of social space by making a whole lot of noise. So my mother's more reserved family often didn't play as big a role in my life just because the Cubans were louder and noisier. I grew up among immigrants, not just Cubans, but people who had fled Europe in the Holocaust. Chinese people, indian people, all together in the community.

And they were my people. It's what I was comfortable with, and they're the people I like to get to know and learn about. And it seemed a very natural fit to me. Yeah, I feel like the United States, in so many ways is thriving on immigration. Like, it's people that want to do something, that are willing to literally cross oceans, even though it's not as dangerous as it used to be.

Hannes Henshi David
Now we're just getting on airplanes if we can. Not everybody. But it's quite the country of entrepreneurship and where people see their future. Oh, I think that's absolutely right. I think immigrants are sort of born entrepreneurs, and that you have people who have self selected to abandon everything they know and take great risks towards the unknown for the opportunity to fulfill themselves personally, professionally.

Eva Benach
And if they're not getting on airplanes, they're crossing deserts and jungles. I've met people who have been in cargo holds, and so it's really enriched our country. Since this is a food podcast or a cooking podcast, I'll tell the comment that my old boss, Michael Maggio, used to say, have you ever tried to get good mexican food in Rome? You can't do it. So the US has been tremendously enhanced by just the diversity of cultures that have brought in a ride down the seven train.

And you could see the entire. You could eat the entire world in a couple hours in New York City. Yeah, I mean, New York is just a matting pot. It's just amazing. It's also where many of the private chefs, or chefs in general, get their inspiration from.

Hannes Henshi David
Like, you can go to Chinatown, you can go to different parts of town and eat your heart out and see ingredients. Like, I remember when I first came to New York City as a young chef, I saw ingredients in the walking cooler that I just haven't seen in Europe before. It's like a whole new world of adventure and ingredients, and it all comes fueled by those different cultures that are bringing it together. Absolutely. And, you know, my kids are pretty good at eating.

Eva Benach
They're teenagers, and they like to try different things. And we're always trying to see if we're out somewhere, if there's something we've never had before. And we got a list going down of things that we've eaten recently, unusual ingredients that we've eaten recently. What is one of the most unusual ingredients that you've had last? Oh, I think we're still talking about the pig's ear.

Hannes Henshi David
The pigs ear, yeah.

Eva Benach
We'Re still talking about that.

Hannes Henshi David
That's definitely something you don't see on most menus. No, no. So I think that's. That remains the hit, at least hit for two of three. My daughter wasn't so fond.

I mean, sometimes it's also about the shape and the textures. Like, I mean, it was totally a texture thing. Yeah, it was totally a texture thing. And. But the boys loved it, and, you know, they.

Eva Benach
They lord it over her.

Hannes Henshi David
Well, food is. Food is the thing. Everybody has their favorites. It's a very easy intro to culture. If you can sort of meet somebody at the table and get to know them and eat their food.

Eva Benach
It makes it hard to hate them. It's how we come together as cultures and as we share with one another. And that's the great thing about immigration to the US. Plus the dumplings.

Hannes Henshi David
True. Well, what is kind of getting into immigration? What are some of the common misconceptions about us immigration, especially maybe to employment related visas? The common misconception is that just because you want to immigrate to the United States, you can, and there's an efficient, easy process to do so. Sort of the why don't they just get in line crowd.

Eva Benach
Who wants to know why people are here without permission when they can just as easily go and get permission? Permission is a hard thing to get, and it's only available to sort of select people who have. Are really accomplished at what they do, who have close family members and who are in work in fields that are in high demand. So the idea that somebody could come to the United States lawfully and just work hard and make a living and get his citizenship at some point in the future, that's a big fallacy. If only they would do it the right way.

Why don't they just do it the right way? Well, because the right way is pretty much foreclosed to somebody. And as you know, the kitchens of America, the commercial kitchens of America, are populated by immigrants, not just at the high end, the Eric riperts of the world and the Jean Georges, like Michael's client, but all the way down the line. Spanish is the language of the kitchen, and they may or may not have legal status. And so they're the lifeblood.

Yet the opportunity to come and be a line cook and do a great job at it at a high end kitchen just isn't really available to someone. Yeah. Are there any legal implications for the restaurant employing somebody who might not have legal immigration status? Of course there are. Restaurants, like any us employer, are obligated to verify the authorization, the employment authorization of anybody who works for them.

Now, that means they look for a work permit, a green card, passport, whatever the case, a us passport, whatever the case may be, to show that someone's employed or is authorized to work in the United States. Yeah. Right. They are not, however, supposed to be document inspectors. They're not supposed to be forensic analysts.

They're not expected to be able to detect sophisticated fake documents. They are expected to detect unsophisticated fake documents. But documents. Documents can be made to look very convincing these days with the levels of printers. So the issue really comes down to is the employee knowingly employing somebody who is not authorized to work?

And if a employer could show that the document that they have and that they complied with all the forms, but the document that they were given wasn't proper, liability is not likely to attach. But if they're reckless about it, if they don't follow up, if they have people in positions of authority who are careless or somehow complicit in helping people obtain fake documents, you know, we've seen that a lot where someone says, go see this guy, and then come back here and apply for the job. That's, you know, that's obviously unlawful, and that's something. So, yes, there can be repercussions. And restaurants are often targets for enforcement because it's well known that they.

There might be many, many undocumented individuals working in a kitchen, just like in a construction industry or hotels or meat processing or agriculture. There are places that when immigration chooses to engage in enforcement actions, it's kind of like fishing. You go where the fish are. Yeah. And if you are a small restaurant with one undocumented dishwasher versus a giant hotel ballroom with 30 undocumented catering staff, where are they gonna look?

You know, where you could get the most bang for your bucks? Yeah. So in a case like that, I remember the very first restaurant in New York City, it's called, where I was considering work called Valsey. It got, like, raided in the middle of the day when I was there to interview because they were actually looking for somebody who was undocumented. And to me, that was such an interesting concept.

Hannes Henshi David
But also, I guess, being european, I was a little bit more privileged that I was able to get through the normal process and kind of get in line and get my paperwork filed, which takes a lot of patience. Like, what do you say is a common timeline. I think that's also another misconception, where people think they get in line and it's quick. I think if us immigration is anything. But quick, that is the understatement of the century.

Eva Benach
Anything but quick is absolutely the case. It depends on the nature of the employee. So for your high visible chefs, your highly visible, well docked people who have won awards, people who have got Michelin stars and have reviews and whose names have been in the paper, maybe they're on tv sometimes that's a different process than your basic line cook or anybody else that's sort of not a famous chef. The top echelon of any kitchen is likely to have an easier time and route because us immigration provides a residence for people that are at the top of their field. And in a sort of well known kitchen, in a very established restaurant that may include up to a dozen people, we have a sous chef, a chef the cuisine, an executive chef, a pastry chef, all the various different levels.

All those people can be said to perform critical roles for the restaurant. So that process can be done in a year to two. And that's the fast one. People who are not at the top level, generally a restaurant, if they wish to sponsor them for residence, would have to document that they've conducted a test of the labor market to show that they're not qualified or available us workers for the position. And that means placing ads and interviewing candidates, et cetera, and saying, okay, at the end of this test of the labor market, we found that there aren't qualified us workers for this position.

We did a bona fide, a good faith test of the labor market. We couldn't find anybody. And obviously that's easier in a tighter labor market than in a overflowing labor market. It's hard to do that in New York City, like, compared to maybe some smaller, remote town. I think that's true.

I think that's true.

An employer is allowed to say that these are the minimum requirements for the job. You have to have these skills. You have to know how to make a biryani. You have to know how to make a bechamel. I mean, obviously, that's sort of day one of cooking, but you have to know these things.

And the more sophisticated the cuisine, I don't want to say sophisticated, because everything's sophisticated. Mole takes a week. And so if you could show that you know how to make these specialty items, there might not be as many people available for that. If you're looking for someone to say, I need somebody who's going to cook North Kashmiri cuisine. Yeah, well, that.

That shrinks the potential labor pool tremendously. As opposed to, I'm looking for somebody who cook bacon and eggs. And in doing this, you have to show that there aren't qualified us workers. And many of the people that might be qualified to be a northern kashmiri cook may not be us workers. Us workers mean citizens, residents, asylees.

And so if they're undocumented or if they're in processes, they're not us workers and don't have to be considered. So would it be possible that, let's say I moved to rural Tennessee and I open a northern kashmiri restaurant kind of knowingly that I won't find anybody in the labor market? I could run the test, then say, hey, in the local market, there's actually nobody who is anywhere qualified. Like, not even in Nashville, which would be maybe one and a half hours from the rural place we picked, is it then possible to say, hey, we would like to bring somebody from overseas? Oh, yes, absolutely.

If you have somebody that you would like to hire who is from overseas and there is a job offer available in somewhere in Tennessee, you could go through that process in a way that is probably likely to be very successful because the idea is you have to recruit locally within the area of intended employment. Just for fun. Let's presume that the, there's not a lot of people that could cook and do their Kashmiri food in Tennessee. I have no idea.

I do know that certain places in North Carolina you can get outstanding oaxacan cuisine in rural North Carolina. So, yes, if you're doing that, if the labor market test reveals the lack of us workers and you have a business there and that's where you're working and that's where the job offer is, and there's someone who meets that qualification, yes, you could do the labor certification and get the approval and bring that person in in the future. The problem with this process, and this is what you first asked me about, is that it takes like five years. And so that's a long time to wait for you. That's a long time to wait for your chef.

Hannes Henshi David
See, what does the sequence of things need to be? Let's say I conceptualize the restroom and does the restroom need to be operating for me to run that test? Or can we say, hey, we've acquired land, we're running ads, we're trying to get those chefs in. At what stage of the actual build out of the restaurant opening do we need to be? You have to be able to show that there's a bona fide job offer and it's not really speculative.

Eva Benach
So you've got the land, you've got the concept, but until you're really operating, it's hard to meet that standard. In addition, you also have to show that you have the ability to pay the wage, and they're going to want proceeds and profit financing, funding, any number of different things can show it. I mean, for a long time, Amazon had no profit, but they were still able to get their workers. Now their profit is inconceivable.

But if you have someone in mind for a position and you're willing to wait that time, it's viable. It's just. It does take a long time. Yeah, I think that seems to be a very common theme in us immigration, especially if I think about countries like India or Pakistan, Bangladesh, where some of my friends have waited 17 years to get off their professional visas and actually become green card holders or citizens. So there are some of their relatives that it took them a decade to come over.

Hannes Henshi David
Do you feel like there is a certain narrative where certain countries are at a disadvantage compared to, for example, I'm from Europe, so from Germany, I already felt like it wasn't necessarily easy. It's still challenging, but far from what my friends shared with me. Absolutely. The first thing to know is that employment well, and family as well, but visas are allocated by country and so everybody gets the same amount. Basically, Costa Rica gets the same number as China.

It's crazy. And so when you take India and China, with 40% of the world's population, the backlog for those visas grows. So people from India and China particularly have incredibly lengthy backlogs and waiting for green cards because they can only give out so many green cards in per category to Indians. And given the numbers of Indians. And the other factor is, is that with Indians and Chinese, it goes through all the levels.

Eva Benach
So not just the sort of specialty cook at the sort of someone who has two or three years of experience, but also the extraordinary folks, because India and China have very solid educational systems that all across the employment spectrum, whether you're just sort of a laborer or an astrophysicist of great renown, there's backlogs for Indians and Chinese because there's so many of them. You mentioned Pakistan and Bangladesh. Those are challenging countries. And it's because the US. This is part of us foreign policy.

And with Pakistan, there's, as an islamic state, a country that has a presence of what we call terrorist organizations, things take longer to clear people. And so everything is backlogged in a place like Pakistan, just like it's backlogged if you're from Iran or Syria, Libya. So for that reason, Pakistan is a tough place to get your immigrant visa to go through it. The other thing is that they process everything from. Through Islamabad there.

And Islamabad is completely the consulate in Islamabad. Everything there is sort of backlogged and overwhelmed. And it takes years just to get your appointment, even beyond the. The backlog for the visa category. So I'm not surprised that your pakistani friends and your friends who have to process through Dhaka, Bangladesh, are also seeing these waits.

That doesn't surprise me. So why does the US system not maybe change that quota? Like, it sounds completely insane that Costa Rica and China have equal quotas because. Any that politically, immigration seems to be untouchable. Congress needs to act.

Congress needs to do things here. Congress needs to come together and say, this is not tenable, this is not good. This is not good for our country, it's not good for our people, it's not good for our businesses. And all that's true. But Congress is highly fractionalized and polarized at this time.

You have half of the Congress that would like to kick out every immigrant they possibly could find and another half that doesn't care as much. And they're not going to go to battle over it. So Congress has to act. Congress is paralyzed, and we haven't had any type of meaningful immigration reform in about 40 years. Oh, wow.

Hannes Henshi David
That explains a lot of how it feels so out of touch. Like the immigration process in so many ways. It's like, you know, like think about, you have chinese proteges or indian proteges or people who are like extremely skilled. I mean, Indians are, if I remember correctly, the richest immigrant or ethnic group in the United States. Like they're representing growth for the country, but they're having such a hard time coming here.

Eva Benach
Absolutely. And if you've been to a hospital lately, you know that there are a number of indian doctors. If you go to a research department at a major university, you're going to find chinese phds. And US immigration policy is driving these people, these talented people who have, who can help build a future into going home, into going to Canada. We are losing, I think, that talent because it's just so hard, it's so cumbersome, and it, to many people it's even humiliating.

So, yes, you said it at the very beginning of the podcast that the US still remains a magnet. People want to come here, and that image keeps direct, pulling people in. And they're willing to go through this process, which is by any definition unpleasant, at the very least because they think that this is where they have the best chance to be who they are, fulfill their dreams personally, professionally, socially. We don't make it easy, and we ought to make it a lot easier. Sorry for the interruption.

Hannes Hetji
We will be right back. And if you're a chef thinking about venturing into the private chef space, this is for you. We coach you on how to set yourself up for success from resume to first interactions with your clients, as well as succeeding at the job. Our one on one coaching got you covered. Go to www.

Dot Privatechef, dot CC and connect with me. Decades of experience can be your support to seize the next private chef opportunity. Yeah. So for somebody who doesn't have the accolades that you mentioned earlier, like somebody who is maybe not in sous chef of a merchnissa restaurant or the chef of the exec who doesn't have the accolades, what's their pathway to come to the United States? I would say that the pathway is patience.

Eva Benach
Build your career. Build yourself. Build up your resume. If you're a chef, do a stage, do internships, get big names on your resume. So if you can show.

One of the criteria for all these extraordinary ability visas is showing that you played a leading or critical role at an organization with a distinguished reputation. So if you could show that you were, I don't know, not the sous chef, but some type of high ranking chef at Alain Ducasse in Paris, you get the benefit of having that name attached to you. You say, look, it was a critical role. And if somebody at that restaurant is willing to write a letter that says, Hannes Hetke was really important to us, he made the turbot flambe that we're famous for.

And as you can see, the reviews of the turbot flambe are what make us famous. I tell you, I represented a group of restaurants that includes a spanish restaurant, and they have a honduran guy who is their paella man. I mean, he has been there for years and years and years, and he's the paella guy. And obviously, spanish restaurants are going to be judged based upon their paella. It's sort of.

It's an iconic dish. And this isn't some guy who went and studied at the Royal Gastronomy Institute of Madrid. This is a guy that came in with some sort of documentation and started working. He did whatever he did. He started doing chopping vegetables, and then eventually they put him on the paella.

And he's held onto that for 20 years. The guy's been making paella. Is he in any articles? No. Does anybody write newspaper about him, or does he have a tv show?

No, but he's someone who performs in a critical role. And I'm not saying that that guy will eventually get to zero status or eb one extraordinary ability status, but we do know that it's not necessary just to have articles about you and to be on tv in order to get the zero one. Even people that seem unheralded could fit within that. So your question was, how could someone prepare, get names on your resume, work in places, and earn people who will say good things about you so that you can show your criteria. The criteria for zero one s in the arts is distinction.

In the artistic field substantially above that ordinarily encountered. And it's not just the big names. They're going to do it. Obviously, if you've been in print, if you've been in media, it's a benefit. But there are ways to go about it.

That doesn't mean it's only for the best known. I always tell people that it's the Pavarotti visa, and I think that that's probably not a good thing to say because that creates an expectation that you have to be, you know, the very, very, very peak of the. Yeah. Like the exceptional or the exceptional. I mean, how many people have made it into a group called the three tenors in order to.

So, but there are probably hundreds of tenors that can meet the criteria, because there are thousands of tenors. Yeah. And so, you know, maybe I shouldn't say it's the Pavarotti visa, but I do. And half the people have no idea who I'm talking about, so. But the part of the arts, you know, like, there's chefs sometimes start talking about the chefs and the restaurants, and people like, and then other people start about musicians.

Hannes Henshi David
And I was like, that's where I lose it. Or then one of my friends, she's into art, so she actually curates art collections for collectors. And I have no idea what she's talking about, but it's just part of the art. There's also extraordinary ability in business. And one of my colleagues here just recently did a case for a woman who works in sort of central asian arbitration practice, and it was incomprehensible.

Eva Benach
I was glad he did that one because it's just too, too complex. I like talking about art. I like talking about music. I like talking about, I love working with chefs because one, I love to eat. I love to read about food.

I love to see people doing, but mostly with extranebility cases. I like anybody who's great at what they do or passionate about what they do. So learning about things that I didn't know existed, including central asian arbitration, but learning about places, you know, when I, when I have to sit, as we talked about it, say, you have to show the lead critical role for organizations with distinguished reputations. And I look at a resume and say, okay, what's this place they worked before looking up on the Internet. And then I get hungry, and I send the website to my wife and say, we have to go here.

But learning about the world through immigration is probably my favorite thing. And that's why I really like doing these extraordinary ability cases. Because it's not just food, because we do it for athletes. We do it for artists. We do it for business, we do it for scientists.

And we're constantly, you know, we're about. We're doing one right now for a concert pianist, and it's fabulous because, you know, I put on his music and I type away, and I get lost in it. Sometimes I put on the music of the client, and I say, oh, God, I can't listen to this. But I have a question. So let's say somebody gets to the status of external.

Hannes Henshi David
You mentioned athletes. Like, I've been an athlete on national level when I was younger. Could that have translated into one of those wizards? But then I maybe, like, let's say my career is over or something. Can I stay then and become a chef?

Like, could that translate into a different skill set that allows me to. No, you have to show that you're coming to work in your area of extraordinary ability. Yeah, I mean, maybe I immigrated as an athlete, but that, like, a year in, I don't know, I pull a ligament or something. Do I have to leave? No.

Eva Benach
Once you have a green card, you have to show there's not an obligation to continue to do that work. Yeah, there is an obligation to have the intention to do that work. So in the example you gave, if you blow out your knee and can no longer do that, they don't take away your green card. But if you come into the United States, never play the sport again, never get involved in it, and immediately go work as a chef. Well, they might look at that and say, this looks a little bit like fraud.

It looks like you misrepresented your intention to come to the United States. And so we're going to look at that, and that's going to come up in the citizenship context. So it's something that to be aware of. But people come into the United States all the time with the intention of doing one thing, and life gets in the way. I know a poor guy went to pick the school that he went for college that he wasn't crazy about, but it was the best baseball opportunity he had.

The first day of his practice in college, ball came back from the batter and hit him square in the face. Everything around his eyes, his nose, his forehead, he never played baseball again. And he picked a school that really the only thing that had going for it was the baseball program. And now that's out, and he's got four years of college where he's not doing what he intended to do. So it's the example you did, I look at it kind of like a marriage based green card.

You get the marriage based green card with all the good intentions in the world to have a bona fide relationship and build your lives together. Sometimes that doesn't work and you wind up getting divorced. Now, immigration will not kick you out of the country if you could show that. Look, we tried. We lived together, we had bank accounts.

It just didn't work as opposed to came in, never lived together and never join the lives together in any sort of way. Two different scenarios. Yeah. Are there particular age groups, for example, young males. There are singers that don't have roots in other countries that might be at a disadvantage trying to migrate, or is it easier for a family to come or easier for a single male or a single woman?

Hannes Henshi David
Or doesn't it make any difference? Immigration favors the wealthy and comfortable. Okay. And I'll tell you a story. I know a consular officer, retired consular officer, who said, we have the three suit rule.

Eva Benach
What's the three suit rules? Rick? He said when an applicant applies for a visa, they have to show that they have an intention to go home on, say, a tourist visa or student visa or something like that. So they give us their passport. They also take a picture with their application and they come in to the consulate for an interview.

If for all those things, the applicant is wearing three different suits, they're a good person to give a visa to. But if the guy is wearing the suit in his passport picture, in his visa picture, and at the embassy, you know that that's his suit, that's the one he wears to weddings and to funerals and to everything that's important to him. And it suggests lesser ties to the country. So young people often have a harder time getting visas because immigration is a young person's game. Right.

It's more likely that someone's going to sort of cast caution to the wind and leave Bulgaria and start over again in the United States. If you're 22 and unemployed, and there's a million different prejudices that also come into play, that if you're a young woman from eastern Europe, they think you're going to come here and get married. And if you were applying for a visa today from Russia, everybody thinks it's because you don't want to be drafted or because you don't want to be part of the war. So if things are bad in the country, it's harder to get a visa. Venezuela.

And so us immigration tends to favor the accomplished and comfortable. They're more than happy to give a visa to somebody who has a stable job, who has sizable bank accounts, because the presumption is, well, why would they leave that behind? Why would they come here to drive an Uber? But a young person. Immigration is a young person's game.

Hannes Henshi David
Does it? What kind of consequences does it have if somebody, for example, came here on Eston, was turned back to Europe or came here on a visa and maybe also coming from a different country, that requires a short term visa for tourists, but they've actually been turned away at the border. People who are turned away at the border under Esta are not deported. They are simply returned, and that means that there's no formal bar on them re entering the United States. Whereas if you show up with a visa from Kazakhstan and they don't let you in, you could be deported from the United States and subject to a five year bar on ever coming back.

Eva Benach
But if you show on the Esta, it's not deportation. However, what it does do is it cancels your ability to use the EsTa, and you have to go get a visa at the US embassy. If you go to get a visa at the US embassy, the consulate is going to look very closely at your ties. They're gonna say, oh, this person was returned because the officer at JFK wasn't convinced that they had non immigrant intent. So we want to be very careful about this.

So one of the things we do a lot of is sort of help rehabilitate people after being turned away on an esta. So if you go apply for a new tourist visa or a student visa after an esta denial, they could very well say, sorry. Looks to us like you have immigrant intent, and therefore, we're not going to give you the visa. However, there are visas that don't require you to have non immigrant intent. You can have immigrant intent like the h one B visa, which is a common work visa, or the l visa, which is another work visa, and the to a certain extent, so you're not barred from those.

And the fact that you may not have exclusive non immigrant intent won't borrow you from an h and l and O, a green card. But esta denial could make it hard for you to get a tourist visa, student visa, or j one exchange visitor visa. Is it sometimes they hear, or is that a common misconception that if you manage to live in the United States for ten years, work there, prove that. That you have the ability to use it as a case for yourself and your family? So when I hear ten years as an immigration lawyer, I know that people are thinking of something called cancellation of removal, and that term tells you a lot about it.

It is a defense to deportation. So if the immigration service puts you into deportation proceedings, and only if you can't apply affirmatively for that, it's a defensive application, you could ask an immigration judge to let you stay here. And you have to show that you've been in the United States for ten years, that you have good moral character, and that your deportation would cause exceptional and extremely unusual hardship to a us citizen or permanent resident, spouse, parent, or child. So if you don't have that relative, you can't get it. In addition, extremely unusual, exceptional hardship is a pretty high standard to meet.

And the courts have said that that is hardship beyond that which is to be expected when someone is deported after being in the United States for a long time. So you're really looking at people that have sick children, sick spouses, sick parents that depend upon them for their lives. It's a very challenging application and standard to me, and you can only do it defensively. So if you're not in deportation proceedings, you can't actually seek it. So it's a last resort sort of strategy.

Hannes Henshi David
So how does somebody who's been here for ten years, worked here for ten years, maybe even build something for themselves? They might have built a restaurant with accolades. They might have brassed it in their own name by now. How does somebody translate it into a legal status? So they can always petition the government for immigration status as an individual of extraordinary ability, or the spouse of a citizen, or whatever the case may be.

Eva Benach
However, having been here unlawfully, they're not allowed to get green cards in the United States. They have to do it at the US embassy in their home country. The law also says that if you have been here without permission for more than 365 days and you depart the US, we're not going to let you back in for a period of ten years. So it's a catch 22. They say you can't get in the United States, you have to go out of the country.

You're out of the country, you're barred for ten years. Now there's a waiver of that ten year bar. If you could show that denying you residents would cause extreme hardship to your us citizen or permanent resident, spouse or parent, and you could seek that waiver before proceeding abroad. And so you get the waiver, it gets approved, you go out of the country. They say you have a ten year bar.

You said, no, I don't. I have a waiver. And then they let you in. So that's. But again, if you don't have that, us citizen or permanent resident, spouse or parent children are not included in this, by the way.

Yeah, it's. You're stuck. I mean, this sounds extremely challenging like this. To navigate this, you really need legal advice. Like, this is inconceivable as a.

Hannes Henshi David
As a common citizen or somebody who would like to get a legal status here. I would say absolutely need legal advice. Some people have real straightforward cases. If you're here on a student visa and you meet somebody in your school and you fall in love and apply for a green card, that's something that many people could probably navigate on their own. I always tell people that I could probably watch a bunch of YouTube videos to fix a clogged sink, but I'm going to wind up wet and cursing a lot.

Eva Benach
And to me, and you might have. To do it twice. I might have to do it twice. And just to sort of take the immigration metaphor further, I may mess it up so thoroughly that it's unfixable. Yeah.

Or I might find myself with 6ft of water in my kitchen. So to me, just who I am, I would rather pay somebody to get it done right. I agree. That's the way I did it. We did it.

Hannes Henshi David
So thank you so much for your time. Working people connect with you. Immigration attorney Ed Ben Akalope what's the best way website telephone number. Thank you. Binach Kalpi we're a full service immigration boutique in Washington, DC.

Eva Benach
We've been at it for 25 years or so. And what we really do is we work on individuals. We work on extraordinary people, like chefs, athletes, artists, entertainers, people who are doing interesting work. That's who we want to represent. We're in Washington DC.

Our website is binachcolopy.com. Phone number is 202 644 8600. We are seven attorneys and six staff speak a number of different languages. Let's say the most unusual one is Haitian Creole. But English, Spanish, French, Italian, Korean, Russian and Haitian Creole.

So we're binachcolopy.com and we're on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and all those fun places. And you can learn about some of our clients and the work we've done on those places. And we'll also make sure to add all of those details in the show notes so that everybody has access to you. And again, thank you so much. This has been a tremendous amount of information in something that is life changing for many people.

Hannes Henshi David
Like immigration to the United States has changed my life. It's changed my wife's lives and so many other people's lives. So thank you for doing this work for people like us, you know, and standing up for people who are navigating immigration. I'd like to say thank you for choosing this country as where you live, and thank you for hosting this podcast. It's certainly interesting.

Eva Benach
I've had the chance to listen to it over the past couple of weeks since we met, and I really enjoyed it. And I love hearing about as I said, I love hearing about what people do and what they're passionate about. And that's why I really like working with chefs. Thank you for joining us at the private chef podcast. If you know any highly skilled chefs that want to take their life to the next level, make sure to share this podcast with them.

Hannes Hetji
And if you enjoyed this episode, click subscribe and check out our upcoming episodes. Thank you for listening.

Immigration Pathways for International Chefs and Highly Skilled Workers

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1: Introduction to Immigration Challenges

2: Pathways for Highly Skilled Chefs

3: Legal Challenges and Employer Responsibilities

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