An Up-Close View of Immigration

Teuta Norman JD’98 helps clients navigate the bewildering maze of paperwork confronting those who want to come to America and stay. She knows how they feel; she was an immigrant herself.

Teuta Norman JD’98 has a successful immigration law practice, a family and a comfortable life in the United States. But her ease with American life is hard-won. Norman, a graduate of the Albanian school system at the height of the Communist era, was told by her country’s government what graduate school she would attend (civil engineering) and what she needed to learn (dentistry). She ended up in law school and graduated with high grades in the midst of protests against the Communist Party.

Asked to draft a new labor code for the country’s workers, Norman went to the American Bar Association for help. The organization put her in contact with Willamette law professor Jim Nafziger. Meeting Nafziger changed her life, she said. She was 22 at the time, and “I realized I knew nothing. I was so ashamed. How did I not know about collective bargaining agreements? How did they know so much?” She asked Nafziger if she could come to the States to study, and he arranged for her to be a visiting scholar at Willamette for six months. She decided she wanted to stay longer. She asked then-Associate Dean David Kenagy if she could study for a law degree at Willamette and was accepted. Norman graduated, got married to a fellow law school student and started her own employment law firm in 2001.

Employment law flowed into immigration law as Norman dealt with more and more clients who were in the States on work visas. “I kind of felt it was a window on the world I came from,” she says. “I felt very much in the right place.”

Norman specializes in business immigration, dealing with professors, doctors and other professionals seeking work visas or citizenship as a result of their in-demand skills. Her clients — natives of India, the Middle East, Romania, Turkey and Canada, among other places — write technical papers that she reads as part her job to make their case before U.S. immigration officials.

“Most of my clients were students here and liked it, like I did,” Norman says. “I’m very passionate about my work because it’s really good for America to have this group of people who would advance technology, advance learning. They’re eager to do something and not sit still.”

Rahul Agarwal, a physician from India and the vice president for business development at Mercy Medical Center in Roseburg, Ore., says the hospital worked with Norman to process his visa application and that she has offered to help him apply for citizenship in a few years. “It’s an arduous, complicated, detailed process,” he says.

“With Teuta, you have someone who really understands the law and how to meet the requirements that the state government and the federal government lay out. Teuta’s office has the process completely nailed down.”

“I’m very passionate about my work because it’s really good for America to have this group of people who would advance technology, advance learning. They’re eager to do something and not sit still.”

Most of Norman’s clients come to the U.S. as part of the H-1B visa program, which allows U.S. employers to temporarily hire non-U.S. workers in certain occupations. Those occupations require highly specialized knowledge in fields such as biotechnology, chemistry, mathematics, physical and social sciences, medicine, education, law, accounting and the arts. One of her clients was a track and field Olympian from Canada; another was a gymnastics coach from Russia who had coached that country’s national award-winning team. Norman had to enlist the help of gold medal-winning Olympic gymnast Nadia Comaneci, who knew the coach’s background.

There is a cap on the number of workers that can be admitted each year, and this year the quota was met the first week that the U.S. began accepting applications, Norman says. That frustrates Norman, who thinks of all the foreign brain power being turned away — all those people who have made significant contributions to science and the arts and can’t share that with Americans. She could have been one of those people, and so she feels a personal as well as professional connection with her clients.

“I had opportunities and they were made possible by others who helped me along the way,” she says. “I feel privileged to help people through that process. I would do anything to promote talent.”

“Immigration law is always evolving,” Norman says. “There’s always something new, always something exciting. It’s my window onto the world, and I enjoy being exposed to that.”