A Lawyer Between Worlds: Ron Matten on Cross-Chargeability, Timing, and the Human Side of Immigration
18th October 2025
Date
Interviewee
Ron Matten
The Founder’s Attorney: How Ron Matten Built a Career Bridging Borders and Lives
Ron Matten, Managing Partner, Matten Law LLP
A Life Framed by Borders
When Ron Matten tells his story, geography is always part of the plot. He grew up in a small college town in southern Illinois where visiting scholars routinely occupied the family’s guest room. At age two, his parents moved to Wales for a year, a formative experience that would make international movement feel natural from the very beginning.
“Even before I was conscious of it,” Matten says, “I was surrounded by people coming and going - professors from other countries, students with accents, families in transition.” The concept of borders wasn’t something distant; it was the background of daily life.
Two decades later, during an engineering internship near Paris, Matten experienced firsthand how bureaucracy can derail ambition. His visa was wrong, and his fix required a trip to Germany. The ordeal didn’t sour him on international work - it sharpened his fascination with how rules, paperwork, and people intersect.
By the time he applied to UCLA Law, Matten already knew what he wanted to do: immigration law.
A Personal Turn North
While in law school in 2000, Matten met the man who would later become his husband. The problem? U.S. law had no provision for same-sex sponsorship at the time. “We didn’t have a path to stay together in the United States,” he recalls.
Their solution was both personal and professional: they moved to Toronto, Canada, and Matten began practicing immigration law at Ernst & Young. For nearly 15 years, he built a cross-border perspective that few attorneys ever get - advising multinationals, studying systems from both sides of the border, and living the very challenges his clients faced.
That chapter would end when U.S. law changed and the couple returned to Los Angeles. But the lesson stayed with him: behind every petition is a life plan. “It’s easy to see forms,” Matten says. “I see families making decisions with everything on the line.”
Practicing Through the Post-9/11 Era
Matten entered immigration practice at one of its most transformative times - the aftermath of September 11, 2001. “The structure of the system changed overnight,” he recalls. The Immigration and Naturalization Service split into multiple agencies: USCIS, ICE, and CBP. What had once been an administratively complex field became one of the most procedurally unforgiving.
“The substance of immigration law didn’t change dramatically,” he says. “But the procedure did. You could have a great case, but if you missed a minor technicality, it would be rejected.”
That shift taught Matten to balance empathy with precision. His approach today still reflects that mindset: compassionate in client communication, uncompromising in detail. “We want to focus on substance,” he explains, “but we’re forced to master the tiny procedural traps too.”
The Founder’s Visa Frontier
Despite periodic political backlash, Matten remains convinced that the United States continues to draw extraordinary global talent - especially founders. Venture capital access, he says, is the biggest magnet.
“If you’re running a billion-dollar fund,” Matten notes, “you don’t care where someone is from; you care if they’re going to be the next unicorn.”
Many of his clients come from Canada and Europe, drawn by proximity and opportunity. But they also bring complexity: multinational entities, cross-chargeability nuances, and timing challenges that demand strategic foresight.
What stands out in Matten’s work is not just his grasp of legal categories like O-1 and EB-1, but his instinct for sequencing - when to pivot, when to file, when to wait. As one client described it, “He plays immigration like chess, three moves ahead.”
A Case that Defines the Work
When asked about a memorable case, Matten recalls a client who came to him after receiving a Request for Evidence (RFE) on her O-1 petition. “The core evidence was there, but the presentation was fragmented,” he explains.
His team rebuilt the case from the ground up, clarifying the narrative, tightening the evidence, and winning the approval. That same client later returned for an EB-1A - again approved.
Then came a twist: she announced she was getting married. “What country was your spouse born in?” Matten asked. The answer - Canada - opened the door to cross-chargeability. Despite EB-1 retrogression for India, she could now file for adjustment of status.
The case advanced to interview just as the annual visa quota lapsed, but within weeks the calendar turned to a new fiscal year and the green card was approved. “That’s immigration practice in a nutshell,” Matten says. “Timing, precision, and a little bit of patience.”
Lessons from the Long View
Over the decades, Matten has seen policy tides shift with administrations, but his core philosophy remains: immigration law is ultimately about alignment - between rules, timing, and human stories.
He believes America’s immigration identity is cyclical. “We go through phases where the country forgets its own history,” he says. “But the fundamental idea - that the U.S. can and should be a place for people who have nowhere else to go - still matters.”
Matten’s optimism is cautious but persistent. “We’re in a rough period,” he admits. “I hope it’s an adjustment, not a forever state. Until then, we keep building strong, well-documented cases that speak for themselves.”
About Ron Matten
Ron Matten is Managing Partner at Matten Law LLP, based in Los Angeles. His practice focuses on employment-based immigration for founders, technologists, and artists, with deep expertise in O-1A, O-1B, and EB-1A petitions, as well as complex cross-chargeability and adjustment strategies.
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