Habich Law, PLC

Focus and practice areas

Immigration law covers the whole of what this Phoenix firm handles. The list on the firm's practice areas page runs through family based immigration, employment based immigration, nonimmigrant visas, asylum, citizenship and naturalization, U visas, VAWA petitions, waivers, deferred action, and FOIA records requests.

Those categories map onto the two halves of immigration practice. Some clients want to bring a relative into the country or move from a green card to citizenship. Others need protection: asylum applicants, crime victims applying for U visas, people petitioning under the Violence Against Women Act.

The employment side and the nonimmigrant visa work bring in a different kind of client, usually someone with a job offer, a study plan or a temporary business purpose. Waivers and FOIA requests sit alongside all of it as the repair work of immigration practice: fixing a bar to admission, or getting a copy of a file the government holds on someone.

Who the practice areas suit

A person filing a family petition and a person filing for asylum have very little in common procedurally. One is a paperwork exercise with long waits. The other turns on evidence, testimony and credibility in front of an officer or a judge. Habich Law lists both, which tells you the firm takes affirmative filings and contested matters alike.

The FOIA line deserves a mention because it often goes unlisted. Immigration files matter enormously when someone has an old case, a prior removal order, or a border encounter they only half remember. Getting the record first shapes everything that comes after.

How the team is built

Roya D. Habich founded the firm in Phoenix in 2012 and is the attorney the site names. She was born in Memphis, Tennessee, to parents from the Middle East.

Her education runs through two states. She took a B.A. in History and Spanish from the University of Texas at Austin in 2006, then a J.D. from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 2009. The Spanish degree is worth noticing given where she practises and who immigration clients tend to be.

She holds membership in the State Bar of Arizona and the State Bar of Wisconsin, and she is admitted to the Federal District Court of Arizona. She also belongs to the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the main professional body for attorneys in this field.

Section leadership

Habich chaired the State Bar of Arizona's Immigration Law Section for 2015 to 2016. Section chairs are chosen by their peers in the same practice area, and the role involves running programming and continuing education for other immigration lawyers in the state.

In my opinion that is one of the more useful signals on the whole site. Bar section work happens in public, other lawyers see it, and it is verifiable through the state bar rather than through the firm's own copy.

Languages and client reach

Habich is fluent in English, Spanish and Persian. The firm offers services in English and Spanish.

Three languages in an immigration practice changes the working relationship. Immigration interviews involve dates, addresses, family relationships and sometimes traumatic events, and a client explaining those through an interpreter loses precision every time. Persian in particular is a language with few immigration attorneys serving it directly in Arizona.

The firm says it assists clients in Arizona, elsewhere in the United States, and abroad. Immigration law is federal, so an attorney admitted in one state can represent clients before US Citizenship and Immigration Services wherever those clients live. Consular cases involve people who are outside the country entirely, waiting on a US embassy or consulate to act.

What the record shows

Habich Law reports representing more than 1,000 clients. The firm opened in 2012, so that figure covers well over a decade of filings.

Volume matters differently in immigration than in most fields. A firm that has filed hundreds of family petitions knows how a specific service centre behaves, how long a given form actually takes, and which supporting documents draw a request for evidence. That knowledge accumulates case by case and shows up in fewer avoidable delays.

The 2012 founding date gives the firm a run through several distinct policy periods. Deferred action, one of the listed practice areas, has been through repeated litigation and administrative change since 2012. An attorney who has handled those filings across the whole span has watched the rules move.

How a reader should weigh this

As a reviewer, the credentials here are the checkable kind. Two named universities with years attached, two state bar memberships, a federal court admission, a dated section chairmanship and an AILA membership all sit in public records that anyone can confirm.

The site names one attorney, so a prospective client should expect to work with Habich herself on their matter. Small immigration firms often run this way, and the practical effect is direct contact with the lawyer handling the case.

Where this firm fits

Phoenix has a large immigrant population and sits close to the border, which puts a steady mix of consular processing, adjustment of status, humanitarian filings and removal defence work through the city's immigration bar. A firm that lists asylum, U visas and VAWA alongside routine family petitions is set up for that mix.

Someone with a straightforward naturalization application will find the service listed here. So will someone with a harder problem: a prior removal, a criminal issue requiring a waiver, an asylum claim with a filing deadline. The practice area list covers both ends.

Habich Law has operated under the same founder since 2012, in the same field, from the same city. For a directory built on checkable facts, that continuity, plus a bar section chairmanship and an AILA membership, is the kind of evidence worth recording.