The Rivkin Radler partner has built a practice around a simple premise: executives and entrepreneurs navigating the U.S. need more than help securing a visa. They need a trusted advisor who understands their immigration objectives, business challenges and long-term plans - and who can connect those needs into a coherent strategy.

Executives and entrepreneurs coming to the United States rarely face an immigration issue in isolation. A visa or green card may be the immediate objective, but the broader undertaking can include forming or expanding a business, managing risk, resolving disputes with employees or competitors, opening bank accounts, securing leases, and building the professional relationships needed to succeed.

Henry Mascia, a partner at Rivkin Radler LLP and founder of the firm’s corporate immigration practice, has shaped his work around that broader reality. Alongside immigration law, he litigates and provides business counseling, allowing him to advise clients across the legal issues that accompany a move to, or an investment in, the United States. Some clients have come to rely on him to serve as a general counsel.

“I provide a holistic, comprehensive approach and range of services to clients,” Mascia says. “And that’s one of the main reasons for my success.” For business leaders entering an unfamiliar legal and commercial environment, that approach means treating immigration strategy as one part of a larger plan rather than as a stand-alone transaction.

The philosophy reflects Mascia’s unusual path: from helping immigration judges draft decisions, to clerking at New York’s highest court, to commercial litigation, to building a corporate immigration practice inside a full-service law firm. Each step reinforced the value of understanding the whole client, identifying the fact that changes the analysis and bringing the right legal and practical resources to bear.

(i) From Human Rights Ambitions to the Immigration Clinic

Mascia went to law school with his sights set on international human rights. He had studied abroad and liked the idea of traveling the world through his work. Then two things happened while he was still a student: his son was born, and he joined his law school's immigration clinic.

"That clinic was unbelievable," he says. Students wrote briefs to the federal circuit courts and petitions for certiorari, ran community education programs, and handled client intake. The work gave him an unusually wide range of experience.

Through the clinic, he also earned credit for an internship at the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the immigration court in New York. There he helped judges decide removal proceedings and draft decisions. He stayed with the clinic for three or four semesters.

(ii) Clerking at New York's Highest Court and the Immigration Courts

As graduation approached, Mascia leaned toward public interest work and cast a wide net. He applied for clerkships on the advice that they help no matter where a lawyer ends up, and landed one at the New York State Court of Appeals in Albany, the state's highest court.

"Many people encouraged me to take the opportunity," he recalls. "And the people who said that were right." The clerkship sharpened his writing and exposed him to a broad range of civil practice areas, including commercial disputes, insurance coverage, and personal injury.

Still, immigration kept pulling at him. He was accepted into the Department of Justice honors program at EOIR in New York City. He spent his first year at 26 Federal Plaza drafting decisions, mostly in asylum cases. His second year was at the Varick Street court, where the questions went beyond asylum to removability and the immigration consequences of crimes: which convictions can cost someone a green card, and which can bar asylum or withholding of removal.

Everyone on that docket was detained. "The work was extremely challenging, but equally rewarding."

(iii) Making the Leap to Private Practice at Rivkin Radler

After two years at the immigration court, Mascia decided to see what private practice was like, without ruling out a return to public service.

More than 13 years ago, a partner at Rivkin Radler approached him. His experience as an appellate clerk was exactly what the firm’s appellate practice group needed, and he joined as an associate.

A couple of years in, he noticed a gap: the firm had no immigration practice. So he went to the partnership with a pitch. "I haven't practiced on the business side of immigration, but I think I could take my experience in removal proceedings and translate it over to the business side," he told them.

"The firm supported me 100%," he says.

That pitch became Rivkin Radler's corporate immigration practice. Today it includes multiple attorneys, support staff and a full team. The practice focuses primarily on employers, investors and entrepreneurs, along with some family-based cases.

(iv) Henry Mascia's Advice for Rising Associates at Law Firms

Asked what it takes to rise inside a mid-sized or large firm, Mascia starts with the basics. "You have to do excellent work. There's no way around that," he says. "That's really the first step."

The second step is relationships, and not only with prospective clients. "You have to get to know even the people in your own firm. You have to do some internal marketing," he says. He did plenty of it while making the case for an immigration practice.

The third is a tolerance for risk. "You have to be willing to take a risk and make mistakes, that's for sure," he says, "because it's a difficult area to practice in and it's not getting any easier."

(v) A Holistic Advisor to Executives and Entrepreneurs

Immigration law is often treated as a narrow boutique specialty. Mascia has built his practice differently. By combining immigration work with litigation and business counseling, he can help executives and entrepreneurs address not only enter the United States, but also succeed in the United States.

Many clients first come to him for a visa or green card. Their needs, however, often extend to business planning, risk management and potential litigation. Because Mascia practices within a full-service firm, he can either address those issues directly or connect clients with the appropriate specialists. The result is a coordinated relationship rather than a series of disconnected engagements.

That breadth can place him in a role similar to general counsel, “which is unusual,” he notes. It also allows him to anticipate how an immigration decision may affect a client’s company, family and long-term objectives - and how developments elsewhere in the business may affect the immigration strategy.

(vi) Advice for Immigrant Founders and Global Talent

For founders, business owners and executives coming to the United States, Mascia’s top advice is to find a trusted advisor: someone who can understand the full objective, connect them with the right specialists and coordinate the legal and practical guidance they need. “And that goes for legal and commercial needs,” he says.

He practices what he preaches. "I put clients in contact with other clients," he says, when their businesses seem to have a natural synergy. He also points newcomers toward groups of entrepreneurs who share advice and brainstorm together.

Those networks matter because the hardest challenges are not always the legal ones. "Something simple like opening a bank account and getting a lease," he says. "All those little details are important."

(vii) Inside an Enforcement-First Immigration Environment

On the current climate, Mascia is blunt. "We’re in an enforcement-first environment," he says.

What many people miss, in his view, is that the pressure is not limited to people without status. "Not only is it harder to come here," he says, the administration is "also making it harder to stay here legally." By making it more difficult to keep lawful status, he explains, recent policy changes are creating a larger pool of people without status.

He places this within a broader backlash against globalization and immigration around the world, one that politicians are tapping to push stricter rules. Yet the ordinary people he talks to see it differently. With few exceptions, he says, people believe "immigration is a good thing as long as people do it legally."

(viii) What Henry Mascia Is Seeing on the Front Lines

In his day-to-day practice, the shift is concrete. "Proof that used to be enough to obtain a visa is no longer sufficient," he says.

He points to EB-1 extraordinary ability petitions and O-1 visas as two examples. The standard is being ratcheted up through interpretation of existing regulations. "They don't have to pass a law to do it," he explains. "They just say the regulation now means more stringent than it did a couple of years ago."

The government is also issuing Notices to Appear more aggressively, including to people in lawful status whose applications are still pending. For years, Mascia went to immigration court only on pro bono matters. Now his business clients are being placed in removal proceedings. "That's not something that ever even happened in the first Trump administration," he says.

(ix) The Long View on U.S. Immigration

As a student of immigration history, Mascia sees today's moment as part of a longer cycle. Tolerance for immigration has "always waxed and waned over the course of U.S. history," he says.

The share of the U.S. population born abroad has fluctuated between roughly 5 and 15 percent throughout the nation's history, he notes. Each time it approaches 15 percent, a slowdown tends to follow, and it is close to that level now. "It just may be that we're in a period of contraction," he says.

Over the longer run, he sees a structural advantage. Birth rates are falling across modern economies, and some European countries face shrinking young populations that are straining their economies. The U.S. birth rate is also below replacement. But, Mascia says, "the United States has a huge advantage because people want to come here," which allows it to maintain population stability.

(x) How AI Is Changing Immigration Law Practice

Mascia uses AI heavily in his own work, and he sees two clear benefits: it saves time, and it produces better applications. "We have at our disposal tools that we never had before," he says.

Legal research is not always the top priority in petition work, since most cases turn on facts and evidence. But AI helps him prepare detailed, specific support letters drawn from voluminous records. Work that once took him or his team hours now moves far faster. "That's a good thing for clients," he says.

Clients are using AI too. They send him AI-generated strategies, summaries and documents, and it often shows in the homework he assigns them. Sometimes that is fantastic, strengthening the petition and streamlining the process. Other times, "it is more of a headache," he admits.

The piece still missing is the government. Mascia has not yet seen AI shape how petitions are adjudicated, though the Department of Homeland Security may already be experimenting. "I haven't really seen that side of the practice yet by AI just yet," he says, "but I expect it will."

(xi) Why the Details Still Decide Outcomes

Tools will keep changing. Standards will keep shifting through interpretation.

Through all of it, Mascia’s message stays consistent: executives and entrepreneurs are best served by counsel who sees the entire picture. Effective representation requires understanding the client’s business, anticipating related risks and coordinating the legal and practical support needed for long-term success in the United States. That is the value of a holistic advisor - and the organizing principle of the practice Mascia has built.