Pam Nieto’s practice is focused on business immigration and international trade. Ms. Nieto has extensive experience helping clients meet their business immigration needs, whether a company desires to transfer an employee from an office abroad, needs to hire a foreign national to fill a vacant position or is interested in obtaining a work visa in connection with opening an office or starting a new venture in the U.S. She handles the full range of nonimmigrant (temporary) visa matters, including H-1Bs (specialty occupation); L-1s (intracompany transfer), including Blanket Ls for very large operations; E-1s (treaty trader); E-2s (treaty investor); TNs (Treaty Nafta); O-1s (extraordinary ability); among others. She also handles employment-based immigrant (permanent or “green card”) visa matters, including permanent labor certifications (PERM), multinational manager petitions and extraordinary ability petitions. Ms. Nieto works with her clients to determine which visa options might be available in a particular situation and, when more than one option is available, she helps her clients consider and assess additional factors so that the optimal visa category is chosen for the situation. In addition, Ms. Nieto assists clients in setting up compliance programs for and performing audits on I-9 Employment Verification programs and H-1B Labor Condition Application/Public Access File programs.
In the international trade arena, Ms. Nieto counsels clients on import and export control related matters, including providing guidance on due diligence; assessment and compliance strategies; preparing ruling, commodity classification or commodity jurisdiction requests; and formulating responses to enforcement actions, including seizures, penalty and liquidated damage cases. Ms. Nieto also provides analysis and advice on the use of preferential trade programs such as NAFTA, arriving at determinations on issues such as valuation, marking and classification (Harmonized Tariff Schedule, Schedule B, ECCN); and preparing and submitting license applications, as well as voluntary disclosures.
Ms. Nieto works with companies in all industries, from oil and gas, manufacturing, general service providers and healthcare, to those in the financial sector and professional sports teams, among others. She regularly works with multinational companies with hundreds of offices and thousands of employees around the globe, as well as small privately-held companies with a single office. Ms. Nieto is conversant in Spanish and regularly works with Spanish-speaking clients.
Ms. Nieto’s speaking presentations on Immigration and International Trade include the following: