Law Offices of Shamieh, Shamieh & Ternieden

Focus and practice areas

Immigration cases fill the docket at the Law Offices of Shamieh, Shamieh & Ternieden, a firm based in San Francisco, California. The attorneys take on asylum and refugee status, green cards, and citizenship and naturalization. Family-based visas and business and employment-based visas round out the core immigration work.

Removal work runs alongside those applications. The firm handles deportation defense, appeals, and cancellation of removal. That mix covers the filing side of immigration and the hearings that follow once a case reaches immigration court.

Two practice areas outside immigration also appear on the firm's list. It handles guardianship and probate matters, and it takes DUI defense cases. In my opinion, that pairing reads as an extension of the firm's family-facing work, since guardianship and probate often involve the same households an immigration case touches.

How the team is built

Four attorneys carry names on the firm's roster across three working ranks. Ghassan J. Shamieh is the Managing Partner. Raymond K. Chau is a Partner, and Kate E. Ruston is an Associate Attorney. Elias Z. Shamieh is the Retired Founding Attorney whose surname the firm carries, and his listing signals continuity between the firm's earlier form and its current partners.

The firm states that its attorneys hold over 45 combined years of experience in immigration law. Legal assistants and case managers support the attorneys on active files, a structure that lets the lawyers focus on hearings and filings while support staff track documents and deadlines. The site does not publish individual attorney bios, law schools, or admission years, so the combined-experience figure is the group's main public marker of tenure.

Offices, reach, and languages

The firm keeps two offices in California, one in San Francisco and one in Sacramento. From those bases it represents clients across all 50 states and internationally. Immigration law is federal, which lets a California firm handle cases for clients who live in other states.

Representation at that range means much of the contact can happen by phone, video, and document exchange, with in-person visits saved for hearings and signings. Sacramento adds a second California point of contact, useful for clients closer to the state capital and the Central Valley. The San Francisco office handles the firm's work in the Bay Area and the wider metro region.

Language access is a practical part of how the firm takes in clients. Staff offer services in English, Arabic, Spanish, Cantonese, Portuguese, and Russian. For people who file documents and give testimony in a second language, that range covers much of the intake and interview work an immigration case demands.

How immigration matters generally proceed

Immigration cases move through set stages that shape how any firm handles them. An asylum claim starts with an application and supporting evidence about the risk a person faces at home, then an interview with an asylum officer or a hearing before an immigration judge. Asylum claims generally face a one-year filing deadline from arrival, with some exceptions, which puts timing near the front of that work. The firm works with individuals and families through applications, interviews, and immigration court hearings.

Green cards follow two main routes. A family-based case begins with a relative's petition, and the wait then depends on whether the applicant is an immediate relative or falls into a preference category with a priority date. Both routes end with either adjustment of status inside the country or consular processing at a post abroad.

Business and employment-based visas cover a separate set of categories, including workers sponsored by a company and people with particular professional skills. Many of these cases turn on the employer's paperwork as much as the applicant's, and they run on government processing times that can shift year to year. The firm lists this work next to its family-based practice, which means it handles both the personal and the work-driven sides of legal immigration.

Naturalization and the citizenship path

Citizenship and naturalization come at the end of many of these paths. Most applicants qualify after a set period as a lawful permanent resident, and they must show continuous residence and good moral character over that time. The application runs through biometrics, an English and civics test, an interview, and the oath of allegiance once the case clears.

Removal defense and appeals

Deportation defense begins when the government files a Notice to Appear and the case enters immigration court. Early master calendar hearings set the schedule, and an individual hearing follows where a judge hears the evidence. Cancellation of removal is one form of relief argued at that stage, open to people who meet strict time-in-country and hardship tests, and asylum can also be raised as a defense before the same judge.

Appeals extend a case past that first decision. A denied matter can go to the Board of Immigration Appeals and, in some instances, to the federal circuit courts. As a reviewer, I read the firm's listed appeals work as a sign that it stays with cases into the review stage after an initial ruling.

The record behind each case

One thread runs through most of these matters: the client has to prove something to a government officer, such as a family tie or a fear of return. Much of an immigration lawyer's work is assembling that record and preparing a client to answer questions under oath. The firm's mix of languages fits directly into that part of the job.

The guardianship, probate, and DUI work

Beyond immigration, the firm names three areas that run through state courts. Probate opens after a death and moves through proof of a will, if one exists, then distribution of the estate under a judge's supervision. Guardianship petitions ask a court to name someone to make decisions for a minor or an adult who cannot make them alone.

DUI defense has a practical link to the firm's immigration work. A drunk-driving charge in California runs on two tracks at once: a court case and a separate hearing with the Department of Motor Vehicles over the driver's license. For a non-citizen, a DUI can carry immigration consequences, which ties the charge back to the immigration work at the firm's center.