Build Talent Labs, an incubator of immigration pathways for global talent, has named the people’s choice winners of the Immies, the first national awards program dedicated exclusively to honoring immigration attorneys.
The inaugural ceremony was held on June 19 at the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA0 Annual Conference in San Diego, with a virtual stream available for those attending remotely.
Winners across the program’s ten categories were selected by their own professional communities, including colleagues, firms, clients, and the foreign nationals whose cases they have handled. The remaining three grand prize recipients will be named in July, and Built has confirmed the program will return for a second edition in 2027.
The launch arrives during one of the most turbulent stretches in recent memory for U.S. employment-based immigration, a climate that has placed considerable strain on the attorneys navigating it. The H-1B visa program – long the principal channel through which American employers sponsor skilled foreign professionals – has undergone significant structural change this cycle.
The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has moved from a flat, random lottery to a wage-weighted selection model that allocates additional entries to higher-paying positions, altering the calculus for how firms classify and file on behalf of entry-level and recently graduated candidates.
On March 31, in fact, USCIS confirmed that it had selected enough beneficiaries from electronic registrations to meet both the regulator cap and the advanced degree exemption for fiscal year 2027, concluding a registration season that required firms to recalibrate strategy under considerable pressure.
Compounding that shift has been ongoing uncertainty over a proposed $100,000 USD fee tied to certain H-1B petitions processed through consular channels. On June 8, a federal judge ruled the fee unlawful, only for the same court to subsequently pause its own decision – leaving the fee in effect pending appeal.
For practicing attorneys, that sequence of events has translated into immediate, practical consequences: client guidance that must be revised in near real time as the legal status of fees continues to shift.
Danielle Goldman, co-founder and CEO of Build Talent Labs, situated the awards within the broader context:
“America won the last era of innovation because the world’s people could come here, study here, stay here, and build here. If we break the ‘stay and build’ part, we should not be surprised if the next generation of companies is built elsewhere. Immigration attorneys are the people fighting every day to make sure that does not happen,” she said.
The people’s choice winners
The ten categories were structured to reflect the full range of immigration practice, from high-profile legal strategy to the less visible work that sustains a case through to resolution:
- The Trailblazer Award (Legal Innovator): Zain Ali, CEO of Centuro Global, for combining elite legal expertise with AI-native technology in global mobility practice; and Calen Correl, senior attorney at Corporate Immigration Partners for his firm’s ethical implementation of AI alongside complex case strategy.
- The Against All Odds Award (Breaking Through Red Tape): Nelli Shevchenko, UK immigration solicitor at Sherrards, recognized for creative outcomes across both corporate and individual cases.
- Thought Leader of the Year: Rosanna Berardi, managing partner at Berardi Immigration Law, for her consistent voice in one of the most polarized corners of American law; and Sonya Cole, senior associate at Fragomen Knowledge Group, as editor-in-chief of the firm’s Worldwide Immigration Trends Report.
- The Resilience Award (Outstanding RFE Response): Kristin Hommel, business immigration attorney at Corporate Immigration Attorneys, for securing approval on a highly complex O-1 Request for Evidence.
- The Community Impact Award: Dorukhan Oguz, founding attorney at Oguz Law, for building a practice centered on underrepresented communities.
- The Breakthrough Award (Advancing Immigration Law Through Advocacy and Action): Yohana Saucedo, founder and managing partner at Law Office of Yohana Saucedo, who has led her firm and advocated for clients for more than two decades while undergoing a life-threatening illness and two double lung transplants.
- The Paralegal of the Year Award: Krischelle Joseph of Messner Reeves, described by colleagues as the operational backbone of the firm’s immigration team.
- The Associate of the Year Award: Ruth Blanco, senior associate at Tafapolsky & Smith LLP, who built her career from paralegal to senior associate and brings end-to-end command of business immigration.
- The Power Partnership Award (Exceptional Collaboration): David Asser, partner, and Sam Harden, associate attorney at Messner Reaves LLP, recognized as a mentor-mentee duo handling corporate, family, detention, and asylum cases together.
- The People’s Choice Award (Standout Attorney Voted by the Community): Sonal Sharma, founding attorney at Sharma Law Associates, who overturned a USCIS Notice of Intent to Deny to secure H-1B approval for a client whose case involved a bending B-2 visa.
Beyond the trophies
What’s notable about the Immies isn’t just that immigration attorneys are finally getting recognized; it’s which parts of the job are getting highlighted. Paralegals and associates have their own categories, as does collaborative mentorship – or surviving the system long enough to win a case that looked unwinnable, as in Hommel’s and Sharma’s accolades.
The shift to a pay-weighted H-1B selection model doesn’t just affect employers’ odds, but forces attorneys to rethink job classification and wage-level strategy for every entry-level hire and recent graduate they represent; a lower wage tier now draws fewer lottery entries than the identical role coded higher.
And adding in a fee landscape that can flip from struck-down to reinstated within the same month, the day-to-day reality of immigration law in 2026 looks less like steady casework and more like triage.
Build Talent Labs runs three signature immigration pathways precisely for this reason: Build Fellowship, a cap-exempt H-1B pathway, Build Exchange for J-1, and Build Extraordinary for O-1 agent services – all designed to help companies route around cap uncertainty.
The Immies, in that sense, double as a spotlight on the broader ecosystem Build Talent Labs is trying to build: one where the attorneys doing the hardest version of this work don’t have to do it without anyone noticing.
Featured image: mana5280 via Unsplash+
Disclosure: This article mentions clients of an Espacio portfolio company.
