Your Next Move - What It Takes to Navigate Immigration — and Build a Business Doing It

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

In this episode, Inc. staff reporter Ben Sherry interviews Jinhee Wilde, founder of WA Law Group, an immigration law firm based in Maryland that has built its reputation — and grown — on trust, empathy, and communication. Ranked number 1129 on the 2025 Inc. 5000 list, the firm reached this milestone after more than a decade of steady, people-first growth. Ben begins by asking Jinhee how she came to immigration law — and how her own experience as a first-generation immigrant shaped how she built her business.

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Jeff launched a woman's line scaling the brackish brand to the next level. Because at Capital One, it's not just business. It's relationships that help you do more business. Learn more at Capital One.com slash business cards. Welcome to Your Next Move, the podcast. We're here live at the Inc. 5,000 conference in Gala in Phoenix, Arizona. and, yeah, Lay, please welcome my guest. Can you introduce yourself?

Hi, I'm Jin He Wild. I'm a founder of an immigration law firm called W.A. Law Group based out of Maryland, Rockville. How did you first get into immigration law in the first place? Well, that's an interesting question. I was actually working for Al Gore's 2000 presidential election. When he lost, I joined a... small law firm in Maryland because I was still involved in politics. I was based there. So I joined the firm and that firm just happened to be an immigration law firm. And because of my trial experience

before with the government and as a prosecutor, I was asked to step into do deportation cases. And I have seen so many clients and other people in the courtroom that were there because their immigration process and paperwork got messed up along the way. And I thought maybe I can do better so that my clients will not end up in immigration court in a deportation setting. So what were the problems that you saw with the system at that time? Well, the biggest problem that I saw was that immigration law is very forms driven. So a lot of the lawyers that are getting into this immigration field downplay the importance of the detail and communication with the clients and things. I am an first-generation immigrant myself, and I saw firsthand how the non-communication from the, lawyer to my parents were hurting them. They didn't know what was going on with their

cases. And the case takes years. Right now, from the time they first start filing paperwork to actually getting a green card or a permanent residency is minimum four to five years. In that time, you don't know what's going on with your cases, and they're very nervous about it. Understandably, yes. I think the communication and letting the clients know what is going on with their cases on a, you need to know this because I just found out you need to know. So my first action with my clients was to institute a 24-hour response time. Emails, phone calls get returned within 24 hours. And I did that even when I was. was traveling like this. I retired at the end of 2024. Congratulations. Thank you. But when I founded the firm in 2009 after being with another firm is because my partner, who is traveling a lot

supposedly to drum up business wasn't doing it. The customer service was lacking. When the The W.A. Law Group was established. That was my policy. The clients get responded to. Even if I'm out of the country, I will get back at State, I will get back to you then. Even that gets sent out within 24 hours. And my clients know what's going on with their case the minute we find out what's going on with their case. They don't have to call us. We call them. So with that, they know what's happening. They also know why is happening. Many times it's the policy changes or just slow processing times by the agencies, government agencies. Right now, we're in a government shutdown. Yeah. Immigration service is not affected, USCIS.

However, Department of Labor is shut down. State Department is still operating. But out of the three agency, Department of Labor, USCIS, State Department, one of the agency is shut down right now. We can't file cases with the Department of Labor. People are saying, why can't my cases be filed? We have to explain. Those explanations, it takes five minutes of our time, but it is so important to our clients. And I think that is the secret of how I was able to grow my business from myself and two assistants 16 years ago to 12 people in the firm and multimillion dollar business because the clients trust us to inform them of what's going on with their cases.

You were able to empathize with your clients because you'd been in those shoes before. Yes. we're very blessed and I feel like, you know, I went out on a high note, so to speak, making this list for the first time. Yeah. So. Well, congratulations. You know, and tell me about building the business from 2009 now to 2024.

What was that, you know, process of growth like? Was there a moment that kind of puts you guys into a new level of growth or was it kind of a slow and gradual? It was a very slow and gradual. growth. We do not advertise at our law firm. There are many lawyers that do. You see it on a bus billboards and stuff. We don't do that. All of our clients are word of mouth referrals. And our clients love us because we care about their cases. The way it would, you know, it would affect us if it was our case. I think that that kind of of growth takes time. I went three years without a paycheck in order to get this going. But after several years of getting approval track record and we do have, we don't have 100% approval, but we are very close, like 99.5% or something. And those denials, few denials is because of change in policy, how they adjudicate a case.

rather than how we submit the case. We prepare, because I was a government lawyer for several years, I actually prepared cases with view of a government adjudicator officer in mind and made it as simple and easy for them to understand as, you know, I would like to see it. So that helped us. So that good approval track record accumulating several years got the word around. Oh, and by the way, they have wonderful track record. They have wonderful customer service.

They actually return our phone calls. They care. They care. It was almost like a switch being turned on at one point, several years later. And from there, it just grew. Yeah, I'd love to hear it because, you know, you've been in immigration law for almost 25 years, something like that, 24 years. So how have things changed over that time? You know, you've gone from, you know, George W. Bush to Obama to Trump, to Biden, to Trump again. So how have things sort of changed in the, you know, sort of law? Well, I mean, immigration service has changed from president to president. They always do. They tweak it.

The statute doesn't change much because that takes congressional action, but regulation that implements those statutes do change. And it's not always that Democratic presidents are favorable for, you know, immigration. That's just not the case. Their policy manuals change all the time. and that those policy manuals tell the adjudicators or officer reviewing the case how to review certain case. They tell them what to focus on. So those being changed all the time, you know, every few years, they tweak it and it impacts greatly.

A person who is applying for a green card process starts with the Department of Labor and the employer will have to say, okay, we have done the local recruitment. We needed 100 people to apply, and we only were able to find 20 people. We are now short 80 people. I need to sponsor. Depending on the size of the company, you don't want to sponsor 80 people, because that's like majority of what you need. But what we told them was you can do about 10 to 15 maximum 20% of your workforce.

Because the idea is to supplement your U.S. hire, not replace it. So you do that. And then Department of Labor may say, oh, that 20% is too much one day, changing. It's been like that for many years, but all of a sudden someone said, oh, that's too much, then 20% gets denied. So, you know, that's the kind of change in policy that I'm talking about, that it is very difficult to predict what's going to happen because you can do the same thing year after year, but if the policy changes, you have to pivot. So we've done that, and we refile cases and things like that, and we still have a very good track record. But those little bit of changes now and then gets us not to the 100% approval. Starting a business comes with a share of ups and downs, which is why staying true to your vision is essential.

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they were able to spend more and earn more rewards while bringing their vision to life. Today, Ross's success is proof that with passion and the right support, it's possible to make your dreams a reality. Learn more at Capital One.com slash business cards. I would imagine that's the kind of thing that you really need to train employees to handle. Yeah. How to training the employees is important, but more important is explaining to the clients why this happened. Actually, George W. Bush, his tenure was very good for immigration. He was pro-immigrant president. Obama was to certain extent, but towards the end of his tenure, he became a little bit more restrictive. And he instituted policies at the U.S.C.IS level that was more restrictive. You need to vet more heavily. and State Department was vetting it heavily

and sending cases back to USCIS. So that happened actually under Obama administration, tail end of it. First Trump administration basically sat on all of those cases, didn't do anything. And it took four years to get that dislodged. So instead of four to five-year process, it became eight years process, and people were saying, oh, I give up.

It's not worth it, you know, that kind of thing. So that happens. Illegal immigration problem has to be addressed. However, in order to minimize or reduce the illegal immigration, you need to increase the legal immigration. Right. And streamline that process. Exactly. Exactly.

We are still paper submission process. We don't do it digital. There are some digital applications that we can submit, but not all of it. I think number of visa available for employment base, especially, because you have U.S. employers needing these workers and needing them now, not five years from now. Increasing those visa numbers so that our U.S. employers can be productive with immigrants and U.S. workers and helping the economy that way, that's crucial. I applauded Trump administration's desire to get rid of the diversity visa or sibling visa because it takes so long anyway. And diversity, everyone wants to come to the United States,

or at least they used to. You don't need a diversity visa. You don't need a diversity visa in order to get certain people. Get rid of that category. That's the 60,000 visa numbers right there available to the U.S. employers at the employment side. Sibling visa, 40,000. Get rid of that and give it to the employment base. That helps the economy. The employment-based immigration helps the U.S. economy. Bring people in to work. Yes. Legally. Legally. Yes. So I think that is what I advocated for 20 years.

They're not listening, but... But like you said, it's slow incremental progress. Yes. And maybe you take two steps back. You take one step forward. It has been to. But that's politics, right? Yes, it is.

And immigration, unlike any other legal field, seems to be very prone to the winds of the politics. Well, yeah, and as you said, it is an interesting legal field where there is so much emotion, there's so much hope and dreams sort of caught up in it. So it makes sense that you're really prioritizing, you know, the feelings and emotions of the people of your clients. And yeah, I can imagine how that's a very powerful, you know, thing for them, especially if they've had bad experiences at other agencies, right? Yeah, I'm very gratified that we were able to grow this much. When I hear about all these other tech. companies, they started 10 years ago, 8 years ago, and they're already at Inc. 5,000. It took us 16. So it wasn't a fast growth, but it was a steady growth. And I'm very proud of my staff and my clients for trusting us with their very important life decisions that they had to make and helped us grow this much. Yeah, and it's honest growth, too. you know, unlike a lot of tech companies that just find a small problem that they can solve and scale it up as much as possible, you're changing lives.

Yes. That's really admirable. Thank you. Thank you very much. Talk to me about, you know, deciding to retire and kind of leaving the firm in good hands. How did you kind of come to the decision that it was time? Well, I've been actually planning that for about five years before I actually stepped away. I'm still the founder, retired, but I'm still the founder, which.

is why I'm, I guess, taking the victory lap as it were today. As you deserve. Thank you. I hired the current managing attorney right out of law school. And she has been with me for 17 years. Oh, wow. I trained her from as an intern to associate attorney to partner to managing attorney. And so given that slow but methodical growth and learning,

she was able to step in and take over as of last year. I didn't just go out and say, oh, I'm going to sell. I gave it to the partner, my former associate attorney, because I trust that she will continue my legacy of taking care of our clients the way they deserve to be taken care of. So what's your involvement right now? I am consulting on a, administrative and management side, payrolls, the health care, you know, all of those

nitty-gritty to just operate the firm. I actually haven't done actual legal work for several years now because I have other people to do it. Even before I retired, and now that I'm retired, I'm not practicing law. I'm just running the day-to-day operational stuff. What have you been doing with your extra time and retirement? Traveling. Oh, yeah. Where? I am actually about to go to Hawaii next week. I was in Kabul earlier this year.

And, you know, so my husband retired at the beginning of this year as well. And it has always been our goal to retire together. So we're hoping while we're still young and able to enjoy it, travel and, you know, enjoy ourselves a little. little bit more. As you look forward, you know, with this new generation in place, how do you kind of see them rising to the occasion of all of the, you know, obviously immigration is so hot in the news right now. There's so much talk about it. What's your hope for, you know, them going forward? Well, I am hoping that anyone who is getting into immigration law field will feel the way I did empathize with the immigrants going through the struggles for several years, long and arduous

process, and put them in their shoes and be more empathetic, be more responsive, take care of them, like the way you would take care of yourself. The flip side is put yourself in the very overworked government officials handling hundreds of cases and make it easy for them to say yes. Organize the file so that they don't have to go through 500 pages to find the evidence that they're looking for. Organize it so that they can see it at the top what they can find at page number 392, do it that way, you can get better results. You're not just filing. You're telling a story. Exactly. And I learned this from my previous work that it is not just what you say,

but how you say it, right? You have to show that your case is approvable and make it easy for them to say yes. These government officials are very over. worked with many, many cases on their desk, and they have a few minutes to find what they're looking for. They don't spend hours and hours pouring over these files. They don't, they can't. They just don't have that capacity. Anything you can do to make it easy for them to find what you're trying to show them will help you in the long run. How have you been enjoying the Inc. 5,000, you know, just being here and picking it in. I mean, I'm a little bit overwhelmed.

We have, what, 2,000 plus attendees. And these are all the people that have made it, made it. They're from all walks of life. And I'm just like, oh, my gosh, you know. I'm one of them. I guess I'm at 1129 out of 5,000 ranking, I guess. I feel very humbled and overwhelmed at the caliber of people that are attending here. And I'm very thankful to Inc. 5,000 for giving us this opportunity.

Well, we're so glad you're here. And, yeah, thanks so much for coming. This was great. Thank you. Yeah, I really enjoyed this. Thank you.