Find out whether your counsel is built for immigration in 2026
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Success in immigration used to predominantly focus on getting to “yes.” In 2026, it’s just as much about staying compliant after the yes, as the government’s approach appears to move from a benefits model toward an enforcement model. That shift changes what good immigration counsel looks like, and many HR teams might still be evaluating firms by the old rules.
So when you pick a corporate immigration counsel, “What’s your approval rate?” might no longer be the question that matters most. Here are five to now think about.
A firm can file clean petitions and still make everyone’s life harder.
Consider two perspectives.
The first is yours. How easy is it to reach your attorney? Do you get a straight answer or a runaround? Can you learn where a case stands in less than three emails?
The second is your employees' perspectives’. Immigration is deeply personal and is undergoing a tumultuous moment, which warrants an empathetic approach.
For a foreign national, their case determines whether they can stay, work, and plan a life. A firm should treat people like people, not case numbers. And HR’s role is to make sure that happens.
HR sits in the middle, between your foreign nationals and leadership, which makes their experience your responsibility. This is not a niche viewpoint. In the 2025 KPMG Global Mobility Benchmarking Report, 35% of global mobility professionals named enhancing the employee experience as a top program goal.
One more test. When immigration policy shifts, who tells you about it?
In a good setup, your firm flags the change, explains who on your team it affects, and tells you what to do next, ideally before your employees see a scary headline and draw their own conclusions. Your firm should help you serve as a calm, informed source for your workers.
The answer can tell you a lot.
Good tech does two things:
But it’s important to know where your employees’ data lives.
It’s sensitive information, including passport numbers, home addresses, and family details. If it’s on a spreadsheet on someone’s desktop, that’s a risk. Spreadsheets are easy to lose and prone to errors.
You want data kept in one place, with strong safeguards. Ask whether the firm meets a recognized security standard, like SOC 2.
But technology should serve the attorney, not replace them. A slick dashboard means little if there’s no experienced lawyer behind it. The tool can organize the work, but the attorney should make the judgement calls.
So look for both: smart technology that saves you time and money, paired with smart people who know what they’re doing.
You want pricing you can plan around, because that’s what your CFO wants.
Ask how the firm charges. A flat fee is easier to budget, but only if it stays flat. Surprise charges can blow up your budget and make you look bad to leadership.
So push for specifics in writing. What’s included in the quoted fee? What triggers extra charges?
In a fast-moving policy environment, no firm can predict every fee with perfect accuracy. Rules change, new government fees pop up, and the cost of routine filings rises.
But you can expect transparency. A firm should tell you what it knows, flag what might change, and warn you about unexpected costs before they drop an invoice.
At some point, someone in the C-suite will ask why immigration costs so much.
That’s where reporting comes in. Ask whether the firm can pull reports on demand, and whether they can get granular.
When a rule changes, can they tell you exactly which employees it affects? Can they show you your whole sponsored population at a glance? This kind of reporting turns a vague budget line into a story you can sell.
It also helps you make the case that this spend is worth it, and the right firm does that work with you. A firm should arm you with the numbers and talking points to bring to finance, instead of leaving you to defend the budget alone.
Part of that argument is simple: in some fields, the talent isn't here to hire locally. For example, the U.S. semiconductor industry may see roughly 67,000 jobs go unfilled by 2030 at current training rates, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association and Oxford Economics. Sponsoring foreign talent is often the only way to fill a role, and your firm should know how to make that case.
The government’s approach appears to be shifting toward enforcement. That means every filing should be built to hold up if someone looks closely later.
Ask how the firm thinks about compliance. Do they treat it as something that ends at approval? Or do they build a defensible framework from the start, keeping records clean, tracking key dates, and staying ready if the government asks questions?
Getting the approval is often the straightforward part. Keeping your people in valid status over time is just as important.
Then ask about scale. The firm that worked for your first sponsored hire may not fit your 50th. As your foreign-national population grows, the work grows with it, often too fast for manual processes.
Here’s a good test. Ask whether their processes have changed in the last five years. The environment has changed a lot recently, and a firm still working the same way probably hasn’t kept up.
Five years ago, a firm that got approvals and answered the phone was good enough.
Today, an approval is just the starting point. A firm needs to protect your people, use technology well, keep your data safe, price honestly, report clearly, and build every case to hold up under scrutiny.
No firm is flawless. But these questions can help show which firms are built for how immigration works today.
Want to go deeper on these questions? Manifest Law is hosting a live session walking through exactly how to evaluate corporate immigration counsel, and answer your questions about the process.
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