Michael Ashoori Podcast Transcript
Michael Ashoori joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Michael Ashoori. Michael Ashoori is the founder and president of Ashoori Law, a US immigration law firm that helps individuals, families, investors, entrepreneurs, and professionals navigate the US immigration system. His practice focuses exclusively on US immigration law with an emphasis on business immigration, investor visas, employment-based immigration, family-based immigration, and extraordinary ability petitions.
The first American-born member of an immigrant family, Michael brings both professional experience and a personal understanding of what immigration means to the people living through it. Through his legal practice and the firm’s library of free educational content, he is committed to making immigration information more accessible so that people can make informed decisions about their future in the United States.
Well, good afternoon, Michael. Welcome to the show.
Michael Ashoori: Thank you so much for having me, Brian. It’s a pleasure to be with you.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely, my friend. I appreciate it. Do a lot of these. You’re in Los Angeles, I’m in Kansas City, so I appreciate you making the time. We’re just a two-hour time difference, but again, that’s sometimes hard to do with busy schedules and calendars.
So, thank you. Michael, let’s jump into your first question. As the first American-born member of your family, you bring a lived understanding of what immigration means to the people going through it. How does that personal perspective actually change the way you practice, the way you talk to clients, prepare cases, or advise someone facing a hard decision compared to a lawyer who came to this work purely academically?
Michael Ashoori: Yeah, well, I think the, the background that I have gives me a little bit more perspective. Like you said, I’m American born, but my parents are immigrants, and so through their stories and through their lived experience, I understand certain aspects of the opportunities that they experienced coming to America and the different challenges that they’ve experienced from, getting ingrained into a new culture and, starting a business in the United States and learning the language.
So, I think learning from their lived experience gives me a sense of empathy that I’m able to carry with me in my practice
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate that. And you’re an entrepreneur, obviously, so you have that perspective, but you also have the perspective of your parents be- being an immigrant here which totally applies to what you’re doing and obviously makes a, a much better I, I would say relationship there with your clients ’cause you can really, in a sense, walk in their shoes, so to speak.
But I love the background. I always do. We always start the first question off, and that kinda gets that story. So Michael, you’re freq- you frequently help investors and entrepreneurs with visas like the E-2, L-1, EB-1C, and EB-5. For a founder or investor weighing whether to build their future in the US, what are the most common misconceptions they arrive with, and what do you wish more of them understood before they start the process?
Michael Ashoori: That’s a great question. I would say with respect to the misconception, I think one misconception that many people seem to have is thinking that there’s only, you know, a select few or even less than that options for founders, investors, entrepreneurs. And so they’ll, they’ll, they’ll hear about one option, and they’ll think that that is one of the only options that are, is potentially available to them, when in fact, in many cases, there are multiple compelling options for somebody to weigh and evaluate which one could suit their personal circumstances the best.
So the misconception is thinking that there’s only a few options available. And, an example of that, some… One, one example is somebody might, be looking for Different immigration options, and they might hear about, one investment pathway that requires a significant investment.
For example, EB-5. EB-5 is an immigrant investment-based category, and it requires a significant investment of either currently, at the time of this recording, either eight hundred thousand dollars or one million fifty thousand dollars, along with a host of other requirements. And somebody might hear about that option, and they may assume that that is, what they’re bound to, to, come to the United States to, you know, operate a business, when in fact, there are several other potential pathways, or they might have an entirely different kind of method of immigrating to the United States.
Maybe there’s somebody that has exceptional ability in a particular industry that can be documented in various ways, and then maybe they might be a candidate for EB-1A, which is a pathway for people with extraordinary ability in a particular field. So the misconception, again, is just a more so a lack of familiarity of all the potential options.
And that carries me to another side point to this or going into another point where oftentimes… An- another mi-misconception is that people think that they have to have everything figured out by the time they start consulting with an immigration attorney, that they have to come, ready to go with their, exact idea for what they’re gonna pursue and the strategy behind it and the particular immigration pathway that they’re, that they’re gonna pursue.
When in fact, one of the very important roles of an immigration attorney is the consulting that they provide at the outset to help you identify potential opportunities or potential pathways that are, well-suited to your particular circumstances and your goals. So, and another thing that, people should know is that in many cases, immigration lawyers charge on a flat fee.
And again, I can’t speak to everyone, but whether you sign up with that immigration lawyer after you’ve done all the initial legwork, let’s say, for example, in the context of an E-2 investor visa. This is a non-immigrant investor visa where you essentially invest a substantial amount of capital in a business, and there’s a lot of legwork that takes place on the part of the investor.
Registering their company, opening the bank account. Transferring the money to the business. And this is, case by case, so don’t use this as the exact framework. But then they spend the money towards their, towards their business and and all of that stuff. So sometimes people think, “I have to do all this stuff before I even contact the immigration lawyer,” when in fact they could benefit by con- consulting with the immigration lawyer at the outset, taking these various actions under the supervision of their immigration lawyer so that the immigration lawyer can consult with them from an immigration standpoint and, avoid, careless errors.
And again, in many cases, the fee, whether that individual signs up just before, filing the case when they’ve done all the legwork or at the very outset when they’re just exploring their options, in many cases, that fee is going to be the same, except when you wait too long and, and you do all the legwork, you’ve excluded a lot of the beneficial consulting services that can come with working with an immigration lawyer.
So that’s another misconception. I hope, I hope that’s clear.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. Thank you. I appreciate that. And again, you don’t know what you don’t know, as they say, and it’s always best to consult with an immigration lawyer first just to kind of really give you your options. But you talked about a couple of those mi- misconceptions, thinking there’s only a couple options, and so they get frustrated or think that there’s just no way.
But you walked us through some of those examples for example, the, the investment category, the EB-5. I think that was interesting. But there are many other pathways. And again, at the end of the day, you need to consult with your lawyer, so that’s awesome. Thank you. Michael, AI is rapidly entertain- I’m sorry, enter- entering the legal world and immigration is a field with enormous documentation, evidence gathering and form heavy work.
How do you think about AI in your practice where it can genuinely help clients and streamline case preparation, and where do you draw a firm line because the stakes of getting an immigration case wrong are so high?
Michael Ashoori: That’s a great question, and I would say, first and foremost, AI is obviously very rapidly developing and continuing to expand.
And it’s really interesting in the legal space to see the differences in different attorneys’ and law firms’ approaches. I work with and I con- I collaborate with immigration lawyers and immigration law firms throughout the country, and it’s very interesting to see, the various rates of adoption from these various practices.
From nothing at all to, more, more heavy, more heavy usage. And what I’ll say is that AI is definitely not a replacement for an immigration lawyer. A lot of immigration law is vigorous strategy and, the immigration lawyer has a lot to contribute from that standpoint. I would say that where AI comes into play is that it can potentially help an immigration attorney be more efficient with some of the legwork.
But it’s very important to remember that any sort of AI usage must be done ethically. And again, AI is not a replacement for the role of the immigration attorney.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. Absolutely. We talk about this all the time on the podcast. You gotta have that human in the loop. It’s that 10% which is the human.
Maybe there’s a prompt there. 80% the AI is the out- provides that output, and then that last 10% is so important that, the person, the human, the lawyer is validating that information. And as, as you said, AI can certainly help the practice be more efficient, and I think that’s great. And we do see just an explosion or pro- proliferation of AI even in the law industry.
As, as you mentioned, it’s go- it varies. Depends where- what law firm you’re at, but, but we’re seeing that growing rapidly with the a- with the adoption. So thank you. And Michael, the last question of the day: as you look out over the next five, maybe even 10 years, with AI changing policy, global com- competition for talent, and evolving investor pathways all in play, where do you see the U.S.
immigration landscape heading for entrepreneurs, investors, and highly skilled professionals? And what should people be doing now to position themselves for that future?
Michael Ashoori: Yeah. That’s a great question as well, Brian. So, it’s, it’s very hard to predict, especially in this particular timeline that we’re in, what the world is gonna be like five or 10 years down the line.
with especially considering factors like the rapid acceleration of AI. I recently heard an interview with Elon Musk, who I believe said something along the lines of, saving money has no purpose, in 2036 or something along those lines. So, it’s very hard to predict what the future is gonna look like.
But I think that, depending on how heavily AI or how sophisticated AI becomes and to what extent it can replace certain labor in the US labor market, I think it– But again, we’re just speculating here. I think that, one category that may potentially be at risk is some of these employment-based categories where, US employers sponsor foreign workers.
I think potentially that depending on how how sophisticated AI becomes and AI and robotics becomes, I, I’m just speculating maybe that those types of visas may be at risk. Maybe, there might be policy shifts that attempt to protect the US labor market more, more extensively. So again, it– with the caveat that I, I don’t know what the future holds, I think that if I’m speculating the merit-based categories, the more investment-based categories potentially may be more safe, I guess.
Again, I don’t want to sound like a broken record. It’s hard to know what the future holds, but those are some initial thoughts.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. It, it is really hard to say, and five years is a long time. 10 years is a long time in this world that we live in with AI just constantly leapfrogging. You know, I was on a podcast and a gentleman talked about the CEO of Anthropic saying if we stopped p- working on AI today, stop, advancing it, we still haven’t even tapped into the AI that they’ve already built.
That’s how powerful AI is today, and we haven’t even scratched the surface. So hard to say what’s gonna happen in five years, but I think that’s really interesting what you, you said about the employment market those employment-based categories anyway. They certainly could be at risk, but we’ll have to see.
And like I said, I think there’s always going to be and I know there’s always going to be a need for the human because that human to human connection interaction is, is so, so important for the world to maintain its sanity, in my opinion. So thank you so much. And Michael, it was such a pleasure having you on today, and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Michael Ashoori: Likewise, Brian. Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Michael Ashoori Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s Podcast Page.
