Fiegel, Carr & Joyce

Focus and practice areas

The firm handles United States and Canadian immigration, and it divides that work across corporate, business and family matters. Clients come to it for filings that cross the border in one direction or both. The people it represents include companies moving staff between countries and individuals joining family in a new one.

On the U.S. side, the work covers employment and investment visas: H-1B, L-1, TN, E-2, E-3 and O-1. The firm also prepares green cards through employment or marriage, K-1 fiancé visas, and naturalization applications. Each of these runs through a different federal process, and the forms and evidence vary between the categories.

On the Canadian side, the firm processes work permits, permanent residency and citizenship applications. It also represents people who have been refused entry to Canada because of a criminal record, a problem that turns on the details of a past offense and the time since it occurred.

The United States filings

The employment and investment categories cover several distinct situations. H-1B is a route for specialty occupations that need a degree, L-1 moves an employee inside a company from a foreign office to a U.S. one, and TN opens temporary professional work to Canadian and Mexican citizens. E-2 and E-3 tie to investment and to treaty arrangements between the United States and specific countries, and O-1 applies to people with a record of high achievement in their field.

Family and permanent status make up the other half of the U.S. work. Green cards can come through an employer's sponsorship or through marriage to a U.S. citizen or resident, and each path carries its own forms and interviews. The K-1 fiancé visa lets a foreign fiancé enter to marry, after which the couple files for adjustment of status. Naturalization comes at the end of that path, once a resident meets the time and residence rules for citizenship.

Cross-border work at the Buffalo ports

The office sits close to the crossings between the United States and Canada, and the attorneys appear in person at the Buffalo ports of entry. There they represent clients on admissibility and work permit questions, the kind that an officer settles at the border itself.

In my opinion, the location does real work here. A firm within reach of the Buffalo crossings can put an attorney at the port when a client's entry is in doubt, and a cross-border case often depends on that immediacy. TN and L-1 workers, in particular, can sometimes present their paperwork directly at the border, so having counsel nearby has practical value.

Canadian filings follow their own authorities and rules. Work permits, permanent residency and citizenship each move through the Canadian system, and a past criminal record can block entry until the firm addresses it. The firm also arranges work permits and green cards for professional athletes and their immediate family members, a group whose schedules make quick cross-border clearance matter.

Who handles the work

Two partners and one Of Counsel attorney make up the group, and all three belong to the American Immigration Lawyers Association. All three also earned their law degrees at the University at Buffalo.

The partners

Jamie Fiegel, a partner, has practiced U.S. immigration law for close to twenty years. She holds a J.D. from the University at Buffalo Law School and is licensed in New York State and as a Canadian Immigration Consultant. She is a citizen of both countries, which fits a practice built around border cases and clients who move between them.

Kelly Carr, the other partner, has worked in immigration since 2010 and earned her J.D. at the same school. As a law student she clerked for the University at Buffalo's immigration attorney, where she prepared more than one hundred H-1B petitions and helped secure green cards for professors and researchers. Her practice now centers on business visas, including H-1B, L-1 and TN.

Of counsel

Daniel P. Joyce joined the firm in June 2019 and holds the Of Counsel role. He earned his J.D. from the University at Buffalo School of Law and began as a corporate attorney in Philadelphia and Buffalo. He has concentrated on employment-based and family-based immigration since the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement in 1989 and NAFTA in 1994. Earlier in his career he co-founded and managed Hirsch & Joyce, which ran from 1992 to 2004.

Credentials and client experience

The shared University at Buffalo background gives the three attorneys a common grounding, and their membership in the American Immigration Lawyers Association places them in the national body for the field. That association sets continuing education and practice standards, so the membership points to current work in immigration and standing among peers. Jamie Fiegel's Canadian Immigration Consultant license adds a second country's credential to the mix.

As a reviewer, I notice one consistent theme in the firm's public feedback: clients find the attorneys approachable and clear about the status of their case. For immigration work, where timelines stretch and rules shift, that kind of steady communication carries weight with the people going through it.

How these matters usually move

Immigration cases run on government timelines, and the firm's job is to prepare filings that meet each agency's requirements. Each category the firm names follows its own path, and the evidence that carries one petition often has no bearing on another.

An H-1B petition goes to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and depends on an employer's sponsorship and a job that meets the specialty occupation standard. A TN application draws on the professional categories carried over from NAFTA and can be presented at a port of entry. An L-1 transfer asks the company to show a qualifying relationship between its foreign and U.S. offices. A K-1 fiancé visa runs through a consulate abroad before the couple can marry in the United States and move to the next stage.

Canadian criminal inadmissibility cases turn on the nature of a past offense and the years since it happened, and they often call for either proof of rehabilitation or a temporary permit to cross. Family immigration adds its own interviews and proof of a genuine relationship. Handling both national systems from one office keeps a cross-border file with a single team that has followed it from the start.