Immigration Attorneys Are Planning for 2027. Stability Isn’t Part of the Plan.

On October 1, 2026, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Rhoney v. Barbosa da Cunha, a case about mandatory detention for people present in the United States without having been admitted. On October 8, the Labor Department suspended eight major employers from the PERM labor certification program, interrupting a route to employment-based green cards while investigations proceed.

That same month, the State Department expanded online presence reviews to TN, TD, and I visa applicants, covering certain professionals, dependents, and foreign media representatives. H-1B applicants were already subject to those reviews.

All of this happened in a single month, reflecting the pace of change in immigration law over the past two years. Employers, workers, and families have to keep revisiting plans they may have made months earlier. Immigration attorneys are helping clients work through those decisions while preparing for further changes. To explore how they’re planning for 2027 and beyond, I turned to Jimmy Lai of Lai & Turner Law Firm, Jennifer Behm of Berardi Immigration Law, George P. Mann of Mann Law Group, and Greg Siskind of Siskind Susser.

They work with different clients and different parts of the system, but uncertainty runs through all of their practices. As Jimmy put it, “For employers and individuals, that uncertainty is often harder to manage than the rules themselves.”

The uncertainty has practical costs. An employer may leave a role unfilled while weighing sponsorship risks. A worker may pay to pursue a second immigration strategy, postpone a trip, or spend longer apart from family. These consequences help explain why the attorneys keep returning to the same advice: start earlier, document more carefully, and keep another viable option open.

This topic is also of particular interest to me through our work at Pioneerly, where we help firms with immigration law marketing and growing their practices. Understanding how attorneys are adapting to these changes helps us better support the firms we work with.

Employers are reconsidering sponsorship before a case is filed

Some of the most consequential decisions now happen before an immigration lawyer ever sees a case. Jimmy is watching employers reconsider whether they’ll sponsor a candidate at all.

“The biggest change over the past two years hasn’t been one particular rule. It’s been a change in employer mindset,” he told me. Companies that once treated sponsorship as routine now approach it more cautiously. Some avoid the conversation altogether.

“Some employers have quietly stopped interviewing candidates who will need sponsorship, and I’ve seen highly qualified people turned down by major companies simply because they’ll need visa support later.”

In the hiring decisions Jimmy describes, a candidate can lose an opportunity without ever receiving an immigration denial. The employer decides the uncertainty isn’t worth taking on, and no application is ever filed. Those lost opportunities never appear in official application statistics.

Jimmy sees the greatest pressure in IT, where international graduates compete for sponsoring employers. Higher education, research, and healthcare are affected too. Employers are weighing more than a candidate’s eligibility for a visa. They also need to know whether the person can start when needed, travel when required, and stay long enough for the investment in hiring to make sense.

While some notable employers are becoming more cautious, many companies still advertise sponsorship. Indeed Hiring Lab found that the share of U.S. postings advertising sponsorship remained near three times its pre-pandemic level through March 2026. This measures advertised offers on Indeed, not completed sponsored hires. AI-generated job ads might also inflate those numbers. These ads tend to overpromise to attract as many applications as possible and are often posted at scale. Meanwhile, clicks from abroad accounted for 1.4% of U.S. job-posting clicks in April, the lowest share since January 2020.

The postings and click data describe different parts of the hiring process, so they can’t establish whether employers follow through on advertised sponsorship. Taken alongside Jimmy’s experience, they suggest a market with continuing demand for foreign talent, declining interest from overseas job seekers, and hesitation in some individual hiring decisions.

Greg sees the pressure too, although the impact varies considerably across his clients. “Few are obviously better off, but the degree of impact depends, to some extent, on the circumstances of the employer and the individual foreign national,” he said.

For employees at the companies affected by October’s PERM suspensions, the immediate concern is the interruption to their green card process. Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL Technologies, and Capgemini were all affected. The suspensions affect labor certification applications, including pending cases, while employees’ existing H-1B status remains in place.

A worker may therefore be able to continue in their current job while their route to permanent residence is interrupted. HR and counsel need to check where each employee stands in that process and how much time remains in their current status before deciding what action is needed.

Even as employers and workers face those disruptions, Greg continues to see clients move forward through other immigration categories. “On the other hand, many of our clients who are filing in other categories are managing. That includes L-1s, E-2s and O-1s.” He cautioned that those routes can still encounter unexpected problems and travel restrictions.

Helping employers understand the alternatives to H-1B sponsorship is also a growing part of Jimmy’s work. Each route has its own requirements: eligibility may depend on a transfer within a qualifying international business, evidence of extraordinary ability, a qualifying professional role, or an eligible investment. An alternative category is useful only if the person’s circumstances meet its requirements.

Assessing a candidate’s eligibility for those alternatives early gives the employer a clearer basis for a hiring decision. If counsel is brought in only after the employer has decided sponsorship is impossible, the company may already have lost someone it could have hired. Explaining the available routes before that point gives the hiring team a more accurate picture of sponsorship costs and timing.

Green card planning needs to cover the whole immigration timeline

Once an employer commits to sponsorship, the next question is how to retain the worker through a permanent residence process that can take years. Jennifer helps clients plan for the temporary status and work authorization they’ll need while their green card cases move forward.

“The employment-based green card process has become much less predictable, so we are counseling employers and foreign nationals to plan earlier and avoid relying on a single strategy,” she told me.

Tougher adjudication of National Interest Waiver petitions is one reason Jennifer is encouraging clients to consider more than one strategy. The National Interest Waiver, or NIW, allows a qualifying EB-2 applicant to seek a waiver of the job offer and labor certification requirements. That can create a route independent of a sponsoring employer, but the applicant still has to establish eligibility and explain why their proposed work merits the waiver.

For NIW applicants, Jennifer sees particular scrutiny of whether the proposed work has national importance and whether the individual is well positioned to carry it out. USCIS’s January 2025 guidance addresses those questions and emphasizes that broad claims about economic benefits or job creation don’t, by themselves, establish an entrepreneur’s eligibility.

The decline in NIW approval rates reinforces Jennifer’s concern about relying on that route alone. Drummond Advisors’ compilation of USCIS data puts NIW approvals at 55.2% of decided cases in fiscal 2025 and 42.6% in the first quarter of fiscal 2026.

For applicants with employer support, PERM offers another route, with its own requirements and delays. The employer-led labor certification process generally involves a prevailing wage determination and recruitment before the employer files with the Labor Department. An approved labor certification is one stage in the permanent residence process, with further agency review and visa availability still ahead.

Within the PERM process, review times have improved, according to Jennifer, although employers still face a substantial wait. The Labor Department’s October 21 processing update lists January 2026 cases in the analyst review queue. Its latest published average is 336 calendar days for analyst reviews completed in August 2026. 

Those improvements in processing time come as employers prepare for possible changes to the PERM rules themselves. Jennifer is also watching a proposed overhaul of the program. Reddy Neumann Brown reports that the proposal cleared review by the Office of Management and Budget on October 23. Clearing that stage doesn’t put new requirements into effect. Employers will need to see the proposed requirements and follow the rulemaking process before they can assess how their sponsorship plans may be affected.

Even after petition approval, applicants may still have to wait for an immigrant visa number before they can obtain permanent residence. In the October 2026 Visa Bulletin, EB-2 final action dates are November 1, 2013, for India; October 1, 2021, for mainland China; and January 1, 2025, for countries in the general column. EB-3 dates are January 1, 2014, January 8, 2022, and May 15, 2024, respectively. These are eligibility cutoffs for final action in that month, not forecasts of how many years a newly filed case will take; the Philippines also has a separate EB-3 cutoff.

Between petition adjudication, labor certification, and visa availability, several waiting periods can shape a client’s future. Jennifer wants counsel to “look at an applicant’s entire immigration timeline, not just the green card case.”

Clients need to keep working and plan where to live while several different timelines run at once. Progress on one petition may still leave questions about work authorization, travel, or the wait for permanent residence.

Jennifer’s approach is to consider parallel strategies where the evidence supports them: “If there is a strong NIW or EB-1 case, pursue it, but consider starting PERM at the same time rather than waiting to see how the first case is decided.”

Running a qualifying NIW or EB-1 case alongside PERM can preserve more than one route to permanent residence. Temporary status and work authorization need to be managed throughout the process: filing an immigrant petition doesn’t itself grant permission to stay or work.

Qualifying for an alternative route can also depend on evidence gathered well before a filing. Jimmy encourages clients to build a record of their work as their careers develop: “That starts with documenting their work early and consistently, so they’re positioned for options like the O-1, EB-1 or National Interest Waiver.” Waiting until a job ends to document years of professional contributions makes an already difficult assessment harder.

Parallel planning has a cost, and some applicants won’t qualify for another route. The question is whether pursuing a second strategy now preserves an option that might be lost by waiting. Counsel and the client need to weigh the strength of the evidence, the expense of additional filings, and the time available before deciding whether to proceed on more than one route.

Canadian border crossings still depend on the work and the evidence

For Canadians crossing into the United States for work, Jennifer is seeing changes in border inspections even where the underlying rules have stayed much the same. From her practice in Buffalo, she sees how those changes affect travelers and the employers sending them.

“Legally, very little has changed for Canadians crossing to work. CBP officers have always had significant discretion at ports of entry. Right now, they’re using more of it,” she said. In practice, she is seeing longer conversations and more variation between ports, although she describes most crossings as business as usual.

For a traveler, a longer inspection can create uncertainty even when their eligibility hasn’t changed. Employers can help their travelers prepare by making sure the planned work and supporting documents are clear. Another employee’s uneventful crossing offers only so much reassurance when the work, documents, or circumstances differ.

For Canadian professionals using TN status under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the job must fit a listed professional category and the applicant must have the required qualifications. Jennifer says those fundamentals remain intact. Her firm’s TN guide for Canadians provides further background on the category.

Business visitors face a related question: does the planned activity fit a business visit, or does the traveler need work authorization? An employer may describe a trip as a meeting, while the itinerary includes work that needs a different authorization. The employee’s job title alone won’t establish which authorization the trip requires. Counsel needs to know what the employee will actually do, for whom, and for how long.

Jennifer identified several circumstances that can prompt additional scrutiny:

• Frequent or patterned trips.
• Longer stays.
• Descriptions suggesting hands-on work in the United States.
• Travel with work tools or equipment.
• Flying without a return ticket.
• Difficulty clearly explaining the purpose of the trip.

Any of those circumstances may lead to more questions; none automatically means refusal. Jennifer’s emphasis is on understanding the planned activity and the authorization it requires before the trip. The traveler’s explanation and supporting documents need to reflect what they’ll actually be doing.

For qualifying Canadian L-1 applicants, Jennifer also highlights the option of presenting a petition at a port of entry or preclearance location. That flexibility makes the choice of where and how to present the case part of the strategy. Selecting a port or preclearance location belongs in the preparation process, along with assembling the supporting evidence.

Where someone applies also matters when interpreting the State Department’s October expansion of online screening. That announcement concerns visa applicants at U.S. consulates. Canadian citizens seeking TN admission directly at a port of entry generally follow a different process from applicants seeking a TN visa abroad. A headline about TN visa screening shouldn’t automatically be read as a new consular step for every Canadian professional crossing the border.

The USMCA review adds another variable Jennifer is watching. She noted that no changes to the TN occupational categories had been announced. For now, the practical task is familiar: match the proposed work to the right classification, assemble the evidence, and make sure the traveler understands the application they’re presenting.

Reviewing the planned work, the required authorization, and the application process before booking gives the employer time to address potential problems. The employee can then travel with an understanding of their own case, rather than trying to judge the risk from other travelers’ border stories.

Federal courts are deciding access to immigration bond hearings

For George’s clients, uncertainty can mean remaining in detention while lawyers challenge the legal basis for holding them. The consequences are immediate for the person detained and for the family trying to understand what happens next.

“The administration’s attempt to take away the right to ask to be released from custody by paying a bond would overturn a policy that has stood for many decades. It applies to persons who entered without documentation,” George told me.

The dispute concerns which detention provision governs people already inside the country who were never admitted. In Matter of Yajure Hurtado, the Board of Immigration Appeals held that immigration judges lack authority to conduct bond redeterminations for people detained under the mandatory-detention interpretation at the center of the dispute. The Board is part of the Justice Department’s immigration adjudication system; federal district courts provide a separate forum for challenges to unlawful custody.

A detained person can bring a habeas petition in federal court to challenge the legality of their custody. That is a different question from whether the person ultimately has a right to remain in the country. A favorable custody ruling may lead to a bond hearing or other relief specified by the court; it doesn’t, by itself, grant immigration status.

The National Immigration Forum’s October analysis cites approximately 8,000 immigration habeas petitions in 2025, compared with 222 in 2024. Those are reported filing totals, not counts of releases or successful cases, and they shouldn’t be treated as a person’s likelihood of obtaining relief.

For George, whose practice includes federal litigation and appeals, the courts are central to what happens next. “Until the legislative branch asserts itself again, the courts will be our shield,” he said.

The Supreme Court has now agreed to address the detention question in Rhoney. For families making decisions today, the governing law in the relevant jurisdiction and the person’s own circumstances still require close attention.

While the Supreme Court case proceeds, counsel must assess which existing rulings apply to the person in custody, whether those rulings are stayed, and what relief they order. A favorable decision elsewhere may offer an argument without providing immediate relief in the client’s own case.

Alongside the litigation, George is helping clients and families get through the wait: “I’m advising all clients to stay out of trouble. Better days are ahead. In other words, keep the faith.” Families still need to know what their lawyer can do now, what depends on the court, and when they’ll hear more. Hope matters, and so does having someone explain the next step.

Greg sees litigation changing expectations in employment immigration too. “The one thing that seems to give people a sense of optimism is the regular success of lawsuits challenging these policies,” he told me.

Greg participated in the challenge to the $100,000 H-1B payment in Global Nurse Force v. Trump. The September 30 California order granted relief against the implementing policies. Justice Action Center, one of the organizations representing the plaintiffs, explains that the order covers implementation of both the original proclamation and its September extension, while litigation continues. The court didn’t invalidate the proclamation itself.

For employers budgeting for an H-1B petition, the difference between the proclamation and its enforcement has direct financial consequences. The payment requirement can remain in the proclamation while a court order prevents agencies from collecting the payment under their implementing policies. The document announcing a requirement and the order governing its enforcement have to be read together.

Immigration attorneys expect more policy changes and court challenges in 2027 and 2028

Jimmy expects the next two years to bring more scrutiny, more requirements, and possible pauses, followed by further challenges in court. Employers and workers will need to keep making decisions while those disputes play out.

On stability, he remains cautiously optimistic: “I believe we’ll get there gradually as policies are formalized and tested in court.”

The gradual stability Jimmy describes would still leave employers planning around unresolved questions. A judgment may resolve one legal question while a new proposal introduces another. An employer can gain clarity about a fee and still face uncertainty about recruitment, processing, or travel.

Jimmy also expects more attention to employers and compliance. He wants employers to have counsel involved before a compliance problem arises. HR teams can support that work by keeping employment and immigration records accessible and flagging changes in a worker’s role or circumstances early.

Early involvement by counsel matters for the changes Jennifer is watching too: employers are planning around processes that may change before a case is finished. George is looking to federal courts for relief in detention cases, while holding out hope for longer-term legislative action. Greg expects litigation to remain part of the response to policy changes, even as technology changes how firms handle the work.

The developments with direct planning implications for 2027 include the Supreme Court’s detention ruling when issued, further orders in the H-1B payment cases, publication of the PERM proposal, and each month’s visa availability and processing updates. A proposed rule should be treated as a possible change until the rulemaking process establishes requirements that take effect.

Tracking those court cases, proposals, and agency updates helps clients when the firm identifies whose cases could be affected by each development. Which employee has an approaching authorization deadline? Which planned trip depends on consular processing? Which permanent residence strategy becomes impractical if a stage takes longer? The firm needs someone responsible for checking affected files and telling clients whether they need to act.

My bet is that the best-prepared employers and applicants will spend less time trying to predict every announcement and more time identifying which announcements would require them to act. Knowing which developments would change a hiring, filing, or travel decision gives them a basis for planning while the broader uncertainty continues.

Jimmy puts it plainly: “plan for change, keep a backup option ready and don’t let one decision or one lottery define your future in the U.S.”

Immigration firms need to explain their judgment as the work changes

Keeping track of changing requirements and their effects on individual clients takes time. AI is one of the tools firms are considering to help manage that workload, and Greg brings both legal practice and years of technology development to the discussion. In his August immigration bulletin, he announced The AI-Ready Law Firm, written with Jason Susser and Josh Waddell for the American Bar Association.

He expects AI to become more capable and more common in firms, with experienced teams using it to improve their work. “I’m not confident it’s going to replace people for a while. I think we’ll see this as an increasingly powerful tool to make people more productive and provide better service to clients.”

The planning challenges Jennifer and Jimmy describe show where AI assistance can help and where legal judgment remains essential. Software may help organize evidence or prepare a draft. Someone still has to decide whether the evidence supports another immigration route, whether an order applies to a client, or whether a proposed trip creates a problem. Those decisions depend on case-specific facts that even a polished draft can omit or oversimplify.

Greg expects clients to continue valuing that legal judgment, even as AI makes document preparation faster. “In the current immigration environment, I think we’ll still see a flight to quality with a reluctance by clients to rely on law firms (and non-lawyer organizations) who claim AI makes them equivalent to experienced and reputable law firms.”

The need for experienced lawyers doesn’t rule out substantial productivity gains from AI. Clio’s 2026 research on mid-sized firms reports that 65% of those firms say AI lets them handle higher volumes of work. That’s a self-reported finding from legal-sector research, not an immigration-specific measure or proof that any particular tool improves case outcomes.

For firms investing in AI, handling more work is most valuable when the additional capacity improves service: a shorter wait for an answer, more complete preparation, or enough attorney time to revisit a strategy when circumstances change. A higher volume of drafts alone won’t show whether attorneys have more time to assess clients’ options or respond to a change in circumstances.

Helping clients understand their options also matters before they hire the firm. When several firms publish an update about the same policy announcement, prospective clients still need to understand how the change could affect their own case. Publishing quickly helps, but the explanation needs to clarify whether they need to act, what information to gather, or when to speak with counsel.

Firms with substantial experience can explain how they approach a difficult timeline, what makes a second strategy worth evaluating, and which information an employer should bring to a planning discussion. When discussing a court ruling, they can explain who may benefit and what counsel would need to assess in an individual case.

Jimmy spends much of his time helping employers understand their options: “For corporate clients, my role is largely education.”

My recommendation to managing partners and marketing teams is to build their content around the questions clients are already asking and make the firm’s answers easy to find. An article about a PERM suspension should distinguish current work authorization from the permanent residence process. A detention update should explain who the ruling covers. A border guide should help the reader recognize when the planned activity needs legal assessment. Firms also need to monitor changes in immigration policy and enforcement and immediately update any published material affected by those changes. Keeping guidance accurate helps prevent prospective clients from being misled by outdated information and supports SEO by keeping pages relevant to what people are searching for.

When a prospective client contacts the firm after reading its guidance, the consultation should build on what they’ve learned. If a firm’s public content emphasizes careful planning, the first conversation should make clear what the lawyer will assess and what further information the client needs to provide. Following through on the clarity promised in the firm’s content gives prospective clients a practical reason to trust its lawyers.

The judgment Greg expects clients to value needs to be visible throughout that process, from the first article a prospective client reads to the conversation where they decide whom to hire. At Pioneerly, our immigration law marketing work helps firms communicate their expertise and reach the clients they want to serve.

Experienced immigration counsel will remain essential in 2027 and beyond

Writing about practicing law in New York and the future of personal injury practice, I kept coming back to the value of judgment and communication as legal work changes. Immigration puts both under pressure: clients need to make consequential decisions while rules remain subject to change, timelines are uncertain, and litigation is ongoing.

Jennifer helps clients preserve immigration options while cases move through separate processes. Jimmy helps employers understand which routes remain available. George challenges detention in court, and Greg sees technology giving experienced teams more capacity to serve clients. Their approaches differ, but each helps clients move forward without waiting for the entire system to settle.

People will keep wanting to come to the United States to build careers, start businesses, and reunite with family. Employers will keep needing talent. Good advice will keep turning an uncertain situation into a clearer next decision. For immigration firms planning for 2027, helping clients make those decisions will remain central to the work.