Law Offices of Joanna M. Schaffer

Focus and practice areas

Immigration law is the whole of the work here. The White Plains office in Westchester County, New York handles United States immigration, naturalization and consular matters, and it takes cases for clients anywhere in the country or abroad when the matter turns on U.S. immigration law.

The service list is detailed. It covers nonimmigrant (temporary) visas, immigrant visa cases for permanent residence, fiancé petitions, conditional residence filings and the waivers that go with them, naturalization, derivative citizenship, travel documents and employment authorization.

Deportation and removal defense sits alongside that filing work. So do waivers of inadmissibility, consular practice, and I-9 compliance with employer sanctions matters. Family-based and employment-based cases both appear.

What that mix suggests about the caseload

A firm that files green card petitions and also defends removal cases works on two different clocks. Petition work runs on agency processing queues and evidence packets. Removal defense runs on immigration court calendars, with dates set by a judge.

In my opinion, keeping both under one roof matters for families whose situations shift. A pending petition and a notice to appear can land on the same household in the same year.

Who handles the work

Joanna M. Schaffer is the attorney the site names. She has represented clients in nonimmigrant visas, immigrant visas, citizenship and deportation and removal proceedings, which maps onto the service list rather than a narrow slice of it.

She taught immigration law at Baruch College, City University of New York, in the Continuing Studies Division. Teaching a subject and practising it are different skills, and the site is clear that she has done both.

She belongs to the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the national bar association for practitioners in this field. AILA membership brings access to practice advisories, liaison updates with government agencies and continuing education on rule changes.

Schaffer is an immigrant herself. The firm says so plainly on its about page.

How immigration matters generally proceed

The following is general context on the categories the firm names, and not a description of any particular case it has handled.

Petitions and applications

Family and employment-based green card cases usually start with a petition filed by a sponsoring relative or employer at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Evidence carries the case: birth and marriage records, tax returns, employment letters, proof of a genuine relationship or a qualifying job offer.

Priority dates then govern the wait. The State Department's monthly Visa Bulletin sets which filing dates are current by category and country of birth, and the queue for some categories runs for years.

Fiancé petitions follow a different track. A K-1 petition is approved by USCIS, sent to the National Visa Center and then to a consulate abroad, where the applicant attends an interview and a medical exam before travelling.

Conditional residence and waivers

A person who becomes a permanent resident through a marriage under two years old receives a two-year conditional card. Removing those conditions requires a joint petition filed in a ninety-day window before the card expires, with evidence covering the years since the first approval.

When a joint filing is impossible, a waiver of the joint filing requirement is the route, and it has its own evidentiary demands. Waivers of inadmissibility work differently again. Certain grounds, unlawful presence among them, can be waived where a qualifying relative would face extreme hardship, and the hardship showing is the substance of the application.

Naturalization and derivative citizenship

Naturalization applicants file Form N-400, attend a biometrics appointment, sit for an interview with English and civics testing, and take the oath at a ceremony. Continuous residence, physical presence and good moral character over the statutory period are all examined.

Derivative citizenship is a separate question with no application to approve. A person may already be a U.S. citizen through a parent by operation of law, and the work is documentary: proving the parent's status, the timing of naturalization, and the child's age and residence when the conditions were met. The output is proof of a status that already exists.

Removal proceedings

Removal cases run through the Executive Office for Immigration Review, an agency inside the Department of Justice. An immigration judge presides, a government attorney appears for the Department of Homeland Security, and there is no appointed counsel at public expense.

Cases begin with a notice to appear and move through master calendar hearings, where pleadings and relief are identified, to an individual hearing on the merits. Relief can include cancellation of removal, asylum, adjustment of status before the court, or voluntary departure. Appeals go to the Board of Immigration Appeals.

Practical arrangements a client can check

Fees at the firm are generally flat rate rather than hourly, and the site says so directly. Payment plans are available, and the firm accepts major credit cards.

As a reviewer, I find flat-rate pricing worth noting in this field. Immigration matters can stretch across months of agency processing, and a fixed figure agreed at the start tells a client what the case costs before the waiting begins.

What a prospective client can verify

The claims on this website are checkable ones. AILA membership can be confirmed through the association's own directory. New York attorney registration and disciplinary history are public through the New York State Unified Court System's attorney search.

The site does not state a founding year, and it does not name an entity form such as P.C. or PLLC. It names one attorney, and the biography stays with what she has done: the case types, the teaching post at Baruch, the association membership.

Firms in this field often list case results or approval rates. This one describes its services and its attorney's background, and leaves it there. Readers who want a sense of outcomes will need to raise that in a first conversation.

The office is on Mamaroneck Avenue in White Plains, a short walk from the Westchester County Courthouse district and reachable by Metro-North from Manhattan and from the Bronx. New York City immigration court sits at 26 Federal Plaza, which is where many Westchester residents in removal proceedings have their hearings. Clients located elsewhere are within scope, since immigration law is federal and much of the filing work is done by mail and through agency portals.