Lawyer Unsticks 7-Year Visa Logjam

"Max Mamontov loves order. It’s why he loves his job as an accountant, where he takes the relative chaos of business transactions and turns them into something understandable.

But one thing the Russian national who grew up in Alaska couldn’t find order -- or even answers -- in was his struggle to legally enter the United States.

Mamontov spent seven years attempting to work his way through the H1-B visa system to legally work in Alaska. What began as a misinterpretation of U.S. immigration law sent Mamontov’s residency status into the bureaucratic depths of the U.S. visa system, ultimately keeping him barred from entering the U.S. for years.

Mamontov found himself stuck in “administrative processing” -- a black hole of the U.S. visa system where he couldn't gain any information about the status of his reentry into the United States. ... 

Mamontov said it was the work of Margaret Stock, a noted immigration attorney and MacArthur "Genius Grant" recipient, that finally managed to shake free his visa from the holds of the system.

He’s not sure exactly what made Stock’s work different from the previous attorneys'. He thinks maybe the way she phrased it made more sense to officials, but he’s not sure.

Butler, an immigration attorney based in Seattle, didn’t know, either. She said she’s seen a few others dislodge themselves from the system recently.

“Maybe there has been some quiet policy announcement that State Department wants to clear out these files,” she said.

In an interview last week, Stock declined to speak specifically to Mamontov's case, citing confidentially, but said people often get trapped in the system for months or even years. She said the law is so complicated that even officials in charge of understanding it can misinterpret statutes.

“It’s a law that’s so complicated that people don’t understand it, members of Congress don’t understand it, senators don’t understand it, Donald Trump definitely doesn’t understand it,” she said. “And the people who do understand it get attacked for trying to make the system work better.” " - Suzanna Caldwell, Alaska Dispatch News, Aug. 22, 2015.