Obtaining a Green Card for Private Chefs with Atty. Michael Wildes (2/2)

Michael Wildes
So why not own that space? Why not be a person who manages your own fate? It's so impressive and so important.

Hannes Hetji
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 for some of the most exclusive clients in the world.

Welcome back to the Private Chef podcast. I'm your host, Hannes Henshi. I'm excited to welcome back attorney Michael Wilders to the show. Today, Michael serves as the managing partner at Wildersen Weinberg, a prominent immigration law firm based in the US. Notably among his clients is Jeff Jean Georges.

In our previous episode, episode 80, Michael talked about immigration laws and visa options for private chefs. Today marks the second part of our discussion where we discuss the path and processes involved in getting a green card. Michael, thank you once again for joining us. So, basically, welcome back to round two. Last time we spoke about helo, the H visa, Evisa, Elvis, and O Visa.

And today we're going to dive into the green card. So welcome back to the show, Michael. My pleasure. I shaved since the last time I saw you, so if you're viewership, don't recognize me, it's not the younger brother. It's the same person.

Michael Wildes
Anyway, lovely to be back here. You and what you do for the community. Nice. Thank you so much for the kind words. Let's dive right in.

Hannes Hetji
Where can chefs make a dent on their journey towards a green card? What would that process look like for somebody who is a professional chef? So if you had a good experience listening to the first podcast where we reviewed those landmark visas, the H, the e, the L, and the O, you now have yourself a visa. That portends a dual intent. And it's wonderful because then you have no problem when you decide to apply for a green card.

Michael Wildes
Traveling in and out of America, even custom officers and immigration agents can't stop you once they look on the system and they see that you applied for a green card, because most of those visas, in some fashion, allow a temporary person to apply for a green card and their spouse, too, although the e is not 100%, and you have to be very careful to get good, solid advice. But if your journey from day one is to eventually live permanently or have the ability to get a green card, it's very important that you understand that you apply, maybe for your extension of your work visa and then apply for the green card so they don't collide if they have different intentionalities. And it's very important for you to understand first what is a green card? Green card is permanent residence in the United States. It allows you to stay and work for anybody.

You don't have to worry about anything. In fact, the next step is the golden Grail. Five years after getting a green card, or if you're married to an american citizen, three years, you can apply for citizenship. Then, God forbid, in case you're involved in something and there's an allegation or some criminality that you stepped into purposefully or inadvertently, you can never be deported from the United States. So I just want you to understand, although the green card is coveted and it allows you to work for anybody and to be here, you can still be deported from the United States, and you're not protected until you're a citizen.

I would also caution your viewership to actually get good tax advice because you might be better off getting for citizenship. It may be the same thing. And the rules generally are once you have a green card for about eight years, there could be an exit tax when you give up your green card. So you kind of want to make sure that you have right advice. And my thoughts are always to make sure that a tax advisor and counselor gives you a writing so that you can anticipate what you did years later and know why you did or didn't take certain action.

So many people come to me with challenges, and they wish they had applied for citizenship. Now they're facing a legal challenge and they don't know why. They had old advice and they didn't heed the modernization of both the immigration and the tax codes and everything. So be very careful and understand the value of a green card in your life with a good consultation with an immigration lawyer, of course, I'll always make myself available so you can get a green card. Like I said, in the temporary visas, generally there are three ways of getting visas.

It's the same matrix, if you would, for permanent residents, unless you can get a green card either based on a relationship to somebody, based on employment, or based on investment. In terms of the investment, there's different amounts based on where you invest. There are certain areas called opportunity zones where the investment is lower than whether you go to metropolitan area, like New York City, for example. Well, let's talk about this again. So those landmark visas that we talked about for the h, the e, the l, and the took the stage when it came to the temporary visa.

Let's look at the investment basis to apply for a green card. That's the EB five. We have five employment bases to get green cards. The EB one, EB two, EB three, four, and five. I'm going to start now with the EB five, because you brought up the investment.

The EB five is something very important. I want you to know. I think it was in 1990, my father, rest of soul, who just passed away a few months ago, as of the recording of this podcast, testified on Capitol Hill because there was a lot of pushback when it came on the books, and it still remained on the books. There's a tremendous amount of fraud in that space. It'll scare the hell out of you when you look in Google.

And I'm going to tell you right now something that we're generally not allowed to tell our clients. We've never lost one of these. We had one arms dealer who put money into an investment, decided to get his money out, and withdrew himself from the program. So I suppose that's not a loss. He just retreated.

Sadly, he was killed a little later. But that's for my next book, one of the sexy stories that we have. But what is the EB five? You can buy a green card. This is a gentleman or a gentle lady's approach to permanent residents.

There are three kinds of eB five s. All right? The first one will cost you $1,050,000. You have to put ten people to work in a place of business. If you have nine, the case is dead.

If it's not a new enterprise, the case won't even have a pulse. You have to start a new business anywhere in the United States and have ten people. EB five s are now taking over three years to get done. So you still need to have a temporary visa that would allow you to remain in America. The green card you're going to get, they don't trust marriages.

They don't trust EB five s. You're only going to get a conditional green card, good for two years, requiring you to file a petition to remove the conditions to the green card to get a full green card. So the I 526 is the form that we file to try to get a green card for somebody who puts in $1,050,000 into an enterprise. The I 829 is the form that we file 90 days before the expiration of the two years. And we generally pivot with our clients, and we're in touch with them six months before, so we can line everything up so that on that 89th day, the government receipts in the application to remove the conditions to the green card.

The second EB five is you put $800,000 and ten people to work in rural areas or where unemployment is very high. So you can imagine you start a restaurant anywhere in the country, you're putting a million, 50,000, you start an restaurant in Goshen or Albany or God knows where, in the middle of the outskirts of the diaspora of civilization, you can put $800,000. You still have to put ten people to work. Now, how many people would like to really own a Dunkin donuts in the middle of obscurity? Not too many people, but it's on the books.

The first and the second methods of getting green cards, again have great opportunity to people that are proprietarial. What does that mean? Honest. There are a lot of people that would rather put a lot of money into themselves than into the third method of getting the EB five. And that is a regional center.

Not an opportunity zone, but a regional center. There are about 900 certified regional centers that the United States government has pre certified. They portend employment here. The one advantage is you have to put in 800k like the other one, but you're not responsible for the employment. I'm going to give you a perfect example of what worked for our clients years ago.

The Barclays center in Brooklyn, where the New York Net used to be the New Jersey Net, a basketball team play, was an EB five regional center. The governor wanted it, the mayor wanted it, everybody in Brooklyn was excited. Ten guys selling beer and the gentleman from Germany would get a green card. Ten guys selling popcorn and a lady from Afghanistan can get a green card. This is used as bridge loan financing.

The government has formulas for these major projects. Or if you have a little shopping pad and it's got ten stores, and the stores are big enough to hold more than ten people for each one, then you'll get a certain allocation. They get $10 million in free money, basically. That's right. And it's, you know, obviously the people with the accents that are coming into our office are doing this in order to get a green card.

The people that are doing this, who are the real estate developers, are looking for this financing to come in, and they don't care about the green card. And that's why you have to be very careful on the ethics here of a lawyer. There was a lot of fraud. A lot of immigration lawyers were taking kickbacks and money from the regional centers if they found clients, for them to make investments. You want to make sure you have an immigration lawyer, not a corporate lawyer that's expert on regional centers.

But then you want your immigration lawyer to be able to look over the shoulder of all these corporate lawyers and make sure that the regional center stands in full compliance. And the more important thing, whether you do any one of these three EB five s, and it's critical, you want to make sure that you're with the regional center if you're going to do the third one. That has removed the conditions of the green card for all the projects they've ever had in their history, in their rear view mirror, they have nobody left behind. It's no point. If they build a project, you get that conditional green card, good for two years, and then the thing goes belly up.

Now, there are all kinds of nuances. On some of the regional centers, you get a 1% investment money annually, and some of them, you can pull your money out so long as it's held in escrow. But those projects weren't wonderful. There were also national security. There were national interest.

Regional centers where individuals were able to do this in areas that the government targeted is really in our national interest. There was a horse racing. We used to warn our clients, it's horse racing. You're betting on the wrong horse, and you may not get your money back, or you may not get the green card. And the beautiful thing about the regional center, the 30 B five, you're supposed to get your money back five or six years later.

So you're going to lose the money that the regional center charges you. It could be substantial, and the legal fee for the immigration law firm, but you get your money back in the first two, where you're putting 1,000,050 and ten people to work anywhere in the nation, or the 800 and the ten people, you don't get your money back. With the regional center, you're supposed to get all of your money back. So you have to be very careful that the regional center is standing. Some of them have multiple projects, so they can easily pivot the funds from one regional center to another regional center.

And it's very important that you do your research that your law firm is not tied to a particular regional center. We've done this for some of the finest families of our time. You can see on our website the kind of work that we represent. I represent Melania Trump. I happen to be a very proud Democrat.

So I'm like this with her husband's politics. But I did miss Universe, and I did trump models, and I represent her, and she is a dear friend. Despite the difference in our politics. I was invited recently to the funeral of her mom. I had gotten her parents their citizenship, her sister, a green card, and all sorts of other things.

I represent Mike Tyson, Dolly Parton, Cueco Mandela, who's Nelson Mandela's grandson, Elvis Presley's granddaughter, Riley Keough, and her husband. We have boy George. John George. We have. He's a chef, by the way.

John George. Yeah. We've had the good fortune to represent many, many people in their pursuits of visas, green card citizenship, as well as their staff and their loved ones. It's so important that you find a lawyer, particularly in the EB five space, who stays in their lane and has a lot of experience. And you can always call a person like me for a reference, even if you don't use our office.

We want to make sure that you stay in capable hands. Most capably are lawyers that are associated with the American Immigration Lawyers association. My father was president of that organization in 1970. In those days, it was the american immigration and nationality lawyers. But the acronym anal didn't really go over well nationally, so they changed the name of the company.

In any event, honest, that is the matrix of getting green cards. And it can take a long time to get the green card now, three plus years, and to remove the conditions. And if you don't do a good job, the government can deny cases and they can put you in removal proceedings. And we're litigating some cases now where people actually put money. They invested it.

It went belly up, and the government now wants to deport them. And we're trying to make the case that they did what they were supposed to do. It wasn't their fault that the company went belly up and so forth. So just keep in mind, if you do the regional center, you can lose the green card and you can lose your money. So you may want to have other ways of getting green cards concurrent with the measures that you're taking with the investment basis of getting a green card.

But that's the investment side of it. It's a gentleman or a general lady's way. Remember sitting with a gentleman whose daughter was an actor, and she was terrible, awful. Another gentleman I sat with, his son was a chef. He was awful.

And, you know, and the father confided in me, what do I do? I said, buy him. And for the actor, buy her a green card. He goes, why? I said, because you don't want them whistling around in the wrong employers.

An actor or a model in the wrong hands could be taken advantage of. Buy them the green card so that they can now have their own independence to work for who they want to or they don't want to. That's what a parent ought to do and so forth. And you get the money back if you do it properly. So that.

That is that path. If you'd like, I'm happy to go into the other ones, too. Yeah, sure. And actually, what you just mentioned is that your master of your own fate is so important. Like, it's.

Hannes Hetji
It's. It's one thing to get into the country, but it's. It's also another to live here and be tied to, for example, a really bad company that might not have bad ethics or does not have your best interest at heart, or is. There's also a nuance where there's some companies who are very aware that you cannot leave easily and. And they give you lesser pay, or, you know, they know that you're tied to them.

Michael Wildes
You know, the greatest risk takers and entrepreneurs are foreign nationals. Our founding documents and parents contemplated that. So why not own that space? Why not be a person who manages your own fate? It's so impressive and so important.

So let's talk about the family basis. Excuse me. Much like a conditional green card that you get through the EB five, if you marry an American citizen, you also get a green card that's temporary in nature. Now, this is where the good news is. If they lose your papers and it takes forever for them to get you the green card, and you're married more than two years, by the time the green card will be awarded, you'll get a full green card.

Now, a full green card is only good for ten years. You got to keep renewing the card every ten years, your visual, your image changes, and so forth. But that's, again, a very important step. If you marry an american citizen, again, you get a conditional green card. You can apply for the green card, and there are generally four different matrix or four different ways to onboard into the system.

First, you can do a k one visa. If the person is abroad, they're an important chef in their space, and you're engaged and you don't want to come to America right away. You can physically apply at the american embassy. They take longer now post COVID because embassies are backed up. And with the winds of war in Europe and the Middle east, all embassies now are absorbing nationals of other countries.

You then have to marry once you get the k one visa, within 90 days of your entry to the United States, the k one is very nuanced. You have to have seen each other physically in person, and you want to make sure that you really want to do that. I'm not recommending k one s. I generally recommend people get married and get on with the green card, unless there is a hesitation for financial reasons or you have a wonderful job. You're in a Michelin star restaurant in Europe, and you don't really want to leave until a certain time, over a year and so forth.

But those things are. That's the first way. You could also marry. The foreign national can marry an american citizen, and you can do a k three visa, which is permission to enter, married to a citizen to apply for a green card. Both the k one and the k three are very genuine applications backed up at embassies.

But again, the right path, the third way, is just get married abroad, someplace out of America, and file the I 130 file for the green card at the american embassy at the post. Wait till you're called. It could take a year to two years. And you do your green card. You generally have six months after the green card is awarded in order to make an entry into the United States.

The fourth one, and by the way, the third one. If you apply for a green card, then the question is, can you come intermittently to America on your esta? If you're one of those coveted countries that gets a 90 day entrance here, you have to be transparent at the point of entry to the border, where you have to say, I'm coming in for a brief, innocent, and casual visit. I have a green card pending. I intend on coming and leaving.

Is it okay? And they generally will treat you respectfully if you're not abusing the visa waiver and depending on the nationality that you have, the fourth way is a little more sophisticated. If you come into America, you have to wait 90 days before you can apply for a green card or get married. The government would argue if you sat down for an interview domestically in America, that you may have had a preconceived intention when you came here to marry and get a green card, and therefore you committed visa fraud on your esta or on your entry on the b one b two visitors visa. Now, that 90 day rule really works in the foreign affairs manual for cases abroad at the american embassies, but lawyers have extrapolated to respect its terms.

Domestically in the United States, they have every right to go through your telephone and ask questions, your social media, and if they see that you're coming to America to get married and start the rest of your life, and you came in on an esta that you may have had a preconceived intent, lending the narrative for a visa fraud. You have to make sure you get good advice, and that the medical examination and all the parts for a marriage case that we as practitioners have to present are dated commensurate with that 90 day rule and so forth. You never marry the wrong person for the right papers. I can't tell you how important this. I'm a survivor of a 34 year almost marriage myself.

Four kids, all married, five grandchildren, two on the way with God's grace. I can't tell you how important it is for you to realize you get a mother in law and all the parts that come with it, and you ought to really be vested in the happiness of that loved one, and they with you. And something bad can get worse. If this was not the right person for you to marry, and you did it and you accelerated it just for immigration, you've now added an albatross around your neck, and you may end up making more complications for you. But the green card you get is only good for two years.

The government has another look back. Sometimes they waive the interviews. If you do the case domestically, and, by the way, everything's said and done, I prefer to do the cases domestically in America, because we go to the interview, we have control, there are appeals. If there's problems at the american embassy, is the k one, the k three, the I 130, the three that I suggested? There's no right to counsel.

It's a very chauvinist approach. But the government says, yes, you have the right to attorneys, but not at America's embassies. Once you leave us soil, the hell with democracy. And it's a real problem dealing with these embassies. Sometimes a domestic case, it can work.

You then have to file a removal of the conditions to the green card. And I off board my marriage cases. When they get that temporary green card in such a fashion that I prepare them for the next station and afterwards for citizenship. And generally, an immigration lawyer is getting you a temporary green card, a full green card, US citizenship, and then a passport. And I make sure that after they do the different stages, they have files that they maintain at home, so they're prepared for the next one, and they're not caught off guard because they'll be very upset to get citizenship three years later, because you can get it three years rather than five years if you're married to a citizen.

You have to track your physical presence in and out of America. Homeland security also has the right to look, to see that you are a person of good moral character, that you're truthful about where you go, why you went, and your taxes are being paid and so forth. But the path into the system, the clients that come to us with visas and business interests, sometimes happens because of people that they love or love that finds them along the way while they're in America. I'm also a mayor in New Jersey, where I live, so I get to marry people. And when they come in the city hall for me to marry them, and they have the label on the suit jacket that shows me that they may be returning the jacket after they take the picture with the mayor and that they're only in it for the phony marriage.

So. Law firms of repute. I take pictures of couples on my zoom. I ask questions of them. I do not onboard a marriage case unless I've spoken to both people, seen them on a zoom or in person where I can.

Yeah, we haven't lost a marriage case for that reason. Yeah, it's. It's. The proof is in the pudding. You know, you have to make sure you have a genuine case.

Hannes Hetji
Otherwise it just falls apart in the process. Honest. When I have two clients and they come in to see me and they have two toothbrushes lined up in their bathroom because they're living with each other and they don't want to get married on principle, and they want to get a green card based employment, and I tell them, here's the fee for a marriage case, here's the fee for employment. All of a sudden, the toothbrush looks a lot better to them, or people were living with each other for so long, and then when they get married, they actually kill a good thing. And it brings out conversations like prenuptial agreements and all the other things that people have to be worried about.

Michael Wildes
And I like prenuptial agreements because it shows immigration that a person went in thoughtfully, they each have a lawyer, and they exercise the document so it could get complicated. And everything is great in a marriage until one party starts throwing the dishes at the other party. And then you have to look at this carefully, because who do you represent as the lawyer? The person who threw the dish or the person who got smacked in the head with it? You represent both, actually.

And you have to be careful to make sure that you advance the interests of the couple as a couple to the authorities. But we have of a robust family group that accompanies the business visas for that reason, because love finds itself differently during COVID People wanted to kill each other when they were living with each other at long strides, and then other people found love because of those opportunities. And we have had some really wonderful cases in our office through the years. Not just royalty throughout Europe, but people with different age and cultural disparities, which is amazing to see. With the winds of war in the Middle east.

Are Jews married to Palestinians and people who are married to people who are 20 or 30 years older than them, and the government testing their mettle, and us pushing back with the substance and the proof. And here, where the EB five, you need to prove that you and I forgot to explain this. To do the EB five, by the way, you need to show the source of the funds, where you got the money from, and that the EB five center qualifies. Often the EB five cases could be this thick. Half of it is the source of where the person got the money, and then that the regional center qualifies.

Here, with a marriage, you also have to prove the substance. Otherwise you're not getting that temporary and ultimately removing the conditions and getting the full green card. If they go to doctor's appointments, I want to show the doctor that they listed each other in case of emergencies. The husband is picking up the wife's dresses. The dress is being picked up by the husband.

Or if you have two husbands and two wives, because everything is modern these days, that they travel together, they sit next to each other in airplanes, the boarding passes that they filed their tax returns, by the way, the boarding passes also they keep in that other folder to show their physical presence for citizenship purposes. And I have couples keep that separately as well. So we have to do a good job as immigration lawyers, whichever way you apply for permanent residence. In painting the picture that you're eligible, you're going to put 1,050,000 into a business. You're going to put 800,000 into a regional center.

In EB five, we're going to have to prove where that money came from, that it was legitimate, and there may be tax consequence to those conveyances. You're marrying somebody. We're going to want to show the government you met online. It used to be they met in a bar. These days, they met by swiping.

Well, do you still have a copy of the first time you encountered each other? Yes, we went out to dinner with so and so. It's on our social media and our instagram. The government will data mine and easily find a lot of the content. And it's very important for us to kind of corral all of that there are other ways of securing permanent residence.

Some are also more provocative. If you come from a country that you actually have a fear of going back to, you could apply for political asylum. If you're placed into removal proceedings, you'll have another bite at the apple, even if you lose the political asylum before an immigration court to renew your application. And there you have other remedies, including the convention against Torture and other un supported remedies. Or you can apply for the visa lottery.

There are 55,000 green cards a year that are regaled and provided for individuals from countries where we're underrepresented by green card applications. With an eye towards getting that mixture, if you would. The main ingredients for the chefs watching this is to select the right solution for you. We have clients all the time selecting maybe one or two. There's no prohibition so long as the visa you have allows for a dual intent, applying for multiple methods at the same time.

You could put an EB five in and you could have an employer do a perm or a conventional green card case. You can marry an American citizen and have a green card case to the Labor Department or an EB five cooking, but the government's going to look suspiciously if you don't really love the person that you're with and so forth. But the thesis is very simple. There are so many governing ways of getting permanent residents, particularly for long term un workers and other methods as well. Yeah, as long as both of those ways are legitimate.

Hannes Hetji
Like, we can be in a genuine marriage and have genuine employment, and both of them could, like, move the cause forward to get a green card. It's not necessary to have both. At a certain stage, the applications mirror one another when you adjust your status, but we don't withdraw cases because sometimes marriages go up and the person at least has the ability to be here. Either way, a good immigration lawyer is going to want to keep your visa in place so that if the green card doesn't work, if the marriage doesn't sustain itself, at least you have a visa. A belt and suspender, so nothing falls down.

Definitely sounds something where you want to have proper legal counsel and a good team in your corner. Yep. So when you earlier mentioned that the government have every right to go through your phone up on entry, too, right? This actually something that happened to me the very first time I came on a j one visa, that the officer at the border took my phone from me and went through it, and I wasn't even sure if that's legal or not.

Michael Wildes
You have no expectation of privacy at an airport. If you want to come to America, and you're going to go through an airport under the rubric of security, they have every right, and then they have the right to see whether or not you're consistent. I have beautiful models that come into America, and they go through their suitcases, and if they see matchbooks from parlors where they're waiting on tables selling vodka and they're supposed to be a model, they'll call the place up and they'll investigate. The government is doing a good job of protecting its homeland, and you have to be careful. If you take your social media down, they're going to want to know why you took it down.

If your emails are empty, they're going to want to know what you're hiding. If you tell the truth, you can be screwed. If you lie, you're definitely screwed. You have to be smart about the way you handle circumstance. Yes, I'm married to an american citizen, but I have no intention of living permanently into America, is how I train a lot of my foreign students when they're traveling.

Hannes Hetji
Like, if a chef, for example, comes for a trial and that. And he might do that on a nester with a waiver and they find chef knives or some chef clothing in the suitcase, that might be an issue, right? I have it. We represent Lincoln Center, a beautiful performing arts center in Manhattan. Somebody comes in with their favorite tuba, it doesn't matter if they're volunteering for a charity.

Michael Wildes
Their use of their tuba, even if they're not being paid, is a breach of immigration law. You bring in your chef's hat and your knives with you. Yes. You're portending a business narrative, and you can't say, I'm looking for a job, and then I'm leaving, because that is not contemplated with an esta. If you're trying to supplant the permanent narrative or job in America, you have to be very smart.

Buy your chef's knives here and throw them out before you leave or ship them back to Germany or your home country. The critical thing is that you're consistent with the narratives that you're placing to the government. I'm sorry? Yeah. Why are you saying shipping them back?

Hannes Hetji
Like, I don't ever remember anybody checking my bags. Flying back home and flying out is never a problem. But again, I have clients that will ship their equipment back and forth so they don't have to worry about being stopped with it and having to explain things, whatever the equipment is, a piano, a tuba, or chef's knife. Okay, let's look at the employment Ledger. We've discussed the family.

Michael Wildes
We've discussed the investment. The employment has multiple tiers. You could be doing something in the national interest. And if it is, and we can coin it and it's related to being a chef or in the food industry, we're going to make the case. You can also be doing something extraordinary.

We talked about last time about those o visas, the individuals of extraordinary ability. The EB one, which is the employment based first preference, contains individuals that are extraordinary. The government has recognized you hit three out of six or three out of eight standards for an o visa. Now, can you hit three out of ten? And even if you hit three out of the ten, can you surmount the Kazarian, a famous case, the totality of circumstances.

In the totality of circumstances, you're one of a handful of people in that space. The EB one is a wonderful visa because you can apply for a green card independently of an employer. You can self petition. So if you rose to a level, if you yourself have invented certain cuisines, written a cookbook, but original content, or worked and are known as one of the top chefs of our time, or certain foods or industry, you're going to get the EB one. Could that be very niche like if I cultivate a very odd and very niche?

Yes. But we know it when we see it. We know how much money you're making. Even though it's the culinary art, you know, you still have to do well business wise, financially. We know when people are not really hitting it.

Are they legends in their own minds, or objectively, are they really important? And we spend a lot of time trying to get that narrative going. By the way, we do assessments in our office where we assess somebody for it. We don't necessarily file it or take a smaller fee and do a deep dive and say, look, this is your weak spot. You're not going to surmount the kazarian totality of circumstances, because, let's face it, there's so many chefs out there that are making what you're doing and doing what you're doing, but there may be nuanced, and they may be able to surmount this and get the case.

And we've succeeded in getting a lot of EB one s for very important chefs. We've gotten them for tattoo artists, believe it or not, and scores of scholars and creative directors. And you name the industry, we've been doing it. I did it for chief rabbis and all sorts of very important people in their own space. The EB one is a wonderful visa, and we know it very handsomely.

I have a whole group that surrounds that effort, and we know what buttons you have to show that you've spoken at conferences or you're part of a group that is very hard to get to. You've won awards and prizes of national or international renown and so forth. If you've participated in a lot of these television programs as the best chefs across Europe, there's also ways to be regaled in that space. Also, the conventional way of getting a green card through employment is called a labor certification. That's where the employer does a little bit of a waltz with the Labor Department and they run ads in the newspaper looking for an American who can fill this job.

You can only set modest requirements. It's called a perm, capital P E R M. It's an acronym for an online protocol that you do with the Labor Department, where America's restaurants and companies and hospitality groups are running ads and newspapers and showing the requirements that they have for a job. When they show that there's nobody out there and they've danced as little waltz and running ads and on Sundays and so forth, and the resumes come back and they don't find the right people. And we know all the tricks in the trade.

There's no bonuses, there's no smoking, there's no raises. So you make it as unattractive as possible. You can do a live in chef person has a home in Manhattan, one in the hamptons, and they want somebody to live in in the Hamptons. They're running the ads out in a newspaper that's more obscure. And you tell people, we want you to live in our house.

Nobody wants to do that. But you have to then show a social calendar that needs a chef, that you have enough food and needs, and you have other employees doing the cooking and the cleaning, and maybe this is the head of your pantry or this is the baker or the soda maker, whatever it is that you're doing. We've done these in the commercial sense and we've done these in the residential sense. Once you have that certification from the Labor Department, you then file petitions with immigration, and then you can go into the system and get a green card all along, whether you're doing the EB five where you're making the investment, or the labor certification, conventional green card, you must have a visa that allows you to be here, or you can do the EB five and the labor certification while you're outside of America. There's some people who come to me and say, I got a great job, but I want to come to America.

I convinced them to do a green card. Put your trip off for three years. You're 27 years young. You're not extraordinary. There are gazillion chefs out there.

Do you have a restaurant, a company, a family that would be willing to sponsor you? Let's do a labor certification. In three years time, you'll be 30 years old. You'll come in with a full green card to work for that family and work for anyone, mind you. I want you to work for the company that sponsored you.

Critical. Now, there are certain rules that allow you to pivot to other employers, but when you're going to apply for citizenship down the road, a good moral character is becoming a citizen. They're going to want to know, did you go home with the girl you brought to the dance? Did you go back? Did you work for the person that sponsored you for a green card?

And if you didn't, you may be accused of fraud. They may come after your green card. If you did for the requisite time and you can prove it, you'll be in good stead. Yeah, I think this is a good, good nuance to put out there. One of the things that in my immigration was, was mentioned that my green card is a, is not a right, it's a privilege.

Hannes Hetji
So it can be taken from me at any time. If you committed fraud or you just did it as a friend, you know, you married somebody, hang on. You marry somebody for the right papers, but that person has a relationship and they're traveling with their boyfriend or girlfriend, and the government picks up trips that they're taking, they're going to dun you that your spouse was traveling with somebody who wasn't their brother, their mother, their sister, or you, and they condone you. There's all kinds of fraud. You have to be very careful.

Michael Wildes
And for anybody who has adverse criminal history and their background, you have to also be careful that this is handled judiciously and openly. And more importantly, we know that these things can change over time. When we do a labor certification, somebody says they have x amount of requirements. Sorry, you can't require chinese or japanese language. The business language of food in America is English.

You also have to, you say you have two years experience someplace, and therefore this employer wants to sponsor you. Good. We want the job showing that you have that two years experience now. We want that letter now. I don't want to chase you two years down the road and say, oh, I really didn't have it or the company that's going to sponsor you has to be in the green.

Unless you have a visa that allows you to work for that person and the taxes go up and down, then you're okay with immigration. But if the employer goes into the red and doesn't maintain their, their numbers, you can lose that green card case any one time. So I will warn and I will want to get the tax returns of a company earlier before later. So there's a lot of fraud and a lot of vetting that we do all the time with clients, particularly with marriages, to make sure they're real. And when they start to fall apart, you have to be honest with people with the EB five, if they don't have good source funds.

We had a chinese cop. How did you make your money? I used to get bribes. Sorry, fellow, we can't do this. Certain countries, they don't take tax returns.

So I have to show how he made money and he sold money because he had chagall paintings and all kinds of stuff. You can be creative, but creative and lying is a very fine line. How important is it? Like, let's say the marriage does fall apart within the two year condition, but maybe you can prove that there's domestic violence or something. There's a legit reason.

Hannes Hetji
Is there a chance for that person to stay in the United States? Yes. The government does not want you to stay with the wrong person for the right papers. And they allow you to file a petition to remove the conditions independently of the relationship if it's abusive at any point. If you're married to a citizen and you suffer, sadly, physical or verbal or emotional abuse, we already tell clients to go get advice first.

Michael Wildes
The lawyer is invalidated to helping you because the lawyer was sworn to help both of you. You need to get your own lawyer. A lot of these lawyers, a lot of these individuals will come to us, and then we represent only one party. And you can put in a violence against women act case, even for males. The VAWA claim, as it's known, is something of a great nuance.

And the government goes to great lengths to protect you, but you need to prove it. Did you call the police? Do you have a police report? Are there pictures of a bruise? Or if he's abusing you or she's abusing you in texting pictures of you with somebody else and all kinds of abusive stuff.

We need proof of it. I hate to end on that note. I was just about to say, well, Michael, thank you so much for your time. Just one final question. Where is the ballpark figure for kind of getting a green card service with a lawyer so people have an idea where they like.

So be very careful of these one man shows or one women shows where they do a third of the price because they really don't have the capacity to bring in work and get it done unless they have a good reputation and staff. We have over 400 reviews on Google. Fees are project based in our space. Visas and green cards can run anywhere between ten grand and 20 grand in the employment vector in the family place between five grand and ten grand, plus filing fees and so forth. I always meet clients comfortably where they can afford and give them payment plans a minute for the relationships, not just for the money, but at the same time, I don't do free consultations.

I'll credit the consultation fee to the case, but I know people go shopping all the time and you want a quality lawyer. I teach in a law school. I've written a book on the subject. My father started the firm and my son is a lawyer in the practice. So I'm vested on keeping a good name.

And your reputation and your ethics is everything these days. Yeah, I think that speaks for you and the firm and the longevity of it and, you know, hopefully the legacy that your son gets to carry forward. Thank you. Thank you Hannes and I appreciate you and your talent and your audience and I would be honored if I could be of any service. I can be reached on my mobile which is 347-203-6355 by WhatsApp or text.

My email is Michael m I c H a e l s law. My last name and the word law wildeslaw.com. Again, my father started our practice on 53rd in medicine. We're still in the same building 65 years later. Wow.

Hannes Hetji
That's a legacy. In Miami. Also right now in Denver, by appointment only in Tel Aviv and Los Angeles, and also in New Jersey in Englewood, where I happen to be the mayor. 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 him.

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

Obtaining a Green Card for Private Chefs with Atty. Michael Wildes (2/2)

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1: Introduction to Green Card Pathways

2: Details on EB-5 Investment Visa

3: Family-Based Green Card Options

4: Practical Advice for Visa Applicants

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