Sheila Starkey Hahn

I primarily practice employment-based immigration at Serotte Immigration Partners. My clients are established companies, start-ups, and the professionals they sponsor, and most of my work involves PERM labor certifications, H-1B petitions, and the related filings that come with them. 

I'm drawn to the cases that reward careful planning and close attention to detail. PERM is a good example, because so much of the outcome depends on getting the process and the documentation right from the very beginning. 

Before I talk about visa options with anyone, I want to understand what the person or the company is actually trying to accomplish. Immigration is almost never the real goal by itself. It usually sits inside a larger business plan, or a family's long-term hopes. So I start with that goal and work backward, because there's usually more than one way to reach it, and my job is to lay out the options and help find the most practical path. 

Where people most often trip up is by fixating on the visa category first and underestimating how much timing and planning matter. The early decisions tend to shape which options are even available later on. Many years of practice have taught me that timing is frequently as important as eligibility itself. A lot of problems can be headed off with early planning, and once something has been missed, it's usually much harder to fix after the fact. 

What my experience really provides is the ability to separate what matters from what doesn't so I can keep clients focused on the things that actually affect the outcome. A well-prepared case, to me, is one that's straightforward and consistent: the documents match the story, the timing makes sense, and we've already worked through the questions that are likely to come up. 

I see myself as both an advisor and an advocate. My aim is to help clients understand their options and feel genuinely confident about the decisions they're making. Every case is different, so beyond the legal framework, I bring judgment and practical guidance drawn from years of handling similar situations and seeing how they play out. When someone feels anxious or overwhelmed, I bring things back to what we actually know and can control, and to what happens next. 

What's kept me in immigration law all these years is the chance to help people at genuinely important points in their lives. For most of my clients this is tied to a job or a longer-term plan for their family, and I find real meaning in helping them move through a process that can feel uncertain and come out the other side with a clear result. What clients need most, in my view, is clear and honest guidance from someone who understands both the law and the real-life weight of the decisions they're facing. If a client remembered one thing about working with me, I'd want it to be that I listened, took their concerns seriously, and worked hard to help them reach the outcome they were hoping for.