Jonathan Grode: Immigration Attorney and Cultural Champion Fighting for America's Future
5th November 2025
Date
Interviewee
Jonathan Grode
Jonathan Grode, U.S. Practice Director at Green and Spiegel LLC: Championing Immigration as the Foundation of American Excellence
The moment that changed everything came not in a courtroom or a law office, but in a cancer research center. Jonathan Grode was just a high school student, grieving the loss of his father, when he found himself interning at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. His supervisor was a Nigerian doctor who became far more than a mentor.
"He really helped me through a lot of things," Grode recalls. "But in the process, I became very interested in culture and learning about different cultures. He'd invite me to his house and I got to experience this beautiful melding of his past and his background with what it means to be an American."
That experience planted a seed that would shape Grode's entire career. Today, as U.S. Practice Director at Green and Spiegel LLC, overseeing the firm's entire United States immigration presence with offices in Philadelphia and Providence, Rhode Island, he leads a team of 125 people handling thousands of cases annually. He approaches his work with the same curiosity and cultural appreciation that first captivated him as a teenager.
A Different Kind of Travel
For Grode, immigration law offers something unique: the ability to travel the world without leaving his desk.
"Any given day, I will talk to people from 10, 12, 15 different countries," he explains. "And it's the moments in between the work that sometimes feel the most rewarding. Why are you here? Where you come from, what values do you hold on to? Being able to bring that to America in the spirit of immigration, being the foundation of this nation, is highly rewarding."
This philosophy wasn't just academic pondering. Grode spent his twenties traveling extensively, drawing from those experiences to inform his later legal practice. He went to law school later in life as an evening student, but he was always drawn to immigration law for one simple reason: it was a way of honoring what he believes makes America exceptional.
The American Experiment
When asked what immigration means to him, Grode moves beyond simple economics or policy. He sees immigration as fundamental to the American identity itself.
"The American experiment is truly a pathway to what is going to be the global citizen," he reflects. Paraphrasing President Reagan, he notes, "What makes America so special is that anybody can become American. You can come from any part of the world, and if you're naturalized, you are a citizen. You are an American citizen. And with each new wave of immigration, we have new waves of innovation, we have new ways of thinking, and that cements our position as leaders in the world."
The statistics bear out his argument. Half of all Fortune 100 companies were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants. Seventy percent of new AI companies being developed in the United States are founded by people on student visas.
"We are better because of our differences, not in spite of them," Grode emphasizes. "And I wish people would just pause and recognize that a little bit more with what's going on today."
Navigating the Narrowest Strike Zone
The current immigration landscape presents unprecedented challenges for attorneys like Grode. He uses a baseball analogy to describe the shift: imagine being a pitcher whose job is to throw a strike. The government is the umpire, and each umpire has a different strike zone.
"This administration has the narrowest strike zone I've ever seen," he explains. "You're not getting anything on the margins. You got to throw that pitch right down the middle of the plate if you want to be successful."
The contradiction between stated policy goals frustrates him deeply. "You can't simultaneously want to bring back manufacturing whilst at the same time excluding the very individuals that are necessary to perform these jobs," he points out. He cites the example of a Hyundai facility that invested billions of dollars, only to have immigration raids detain executives and workers from Korea who were merely overseeing a massive investment creating jobs for U.S. workers.
"You have a fundamental disconnect between your policies," he says.
The Economic Reality No One Wants to Discuss
Grode believes the current immigration debate ignores fundamental demographic realities. The U.S. death rate will soon exceed the birth rate, and population growth, which is the foundation of capitalism, requires immigration.
"For the first time, we're predicting a period where the world's population is going to stop expanding," he notes. "We're going to get to about 10 billion people by the end of this century, and then it's going to start to decline."
Countries like Japan, Korea, and Italy are already experiencing the economic consequences of population decline. Some are offering incentives for people to move there. Even U.S. states are getting creative: if you move to Alaska, you get tax credits and a winter coat.
"Right now we have an immigration policy of exclusion. But if you really want to look 30, 40 years from now, we're going to be bidding for immigrants, we're going to be that desperate for people," Grode predicts. "What pains me here is we're pushing people away at the time when we really need to embrace them more than ever."
The One Change That Would Make a Difference
When asked what single thing he would change about the immigration system if he had the power, Grode doesn't hesitate.
"We need a year-round, low-skilled visa category, like desperately," he says. "There is no dishwasher visa, there is no home health care visa. There is no mushroom farmer visa."
He points out that while everyone debates whether undocumented immigrants should stay or go, they're arguing about effects, not causes. The fundamental problem is that there's no legal mechanism for these workers to be in the country.
"Employers often have no choice. Foreign nationals often have no choice. U.S. Workers don't want to do the jobs anyway. Let them in and let them do it legally," he argues. "And then if there's bad actors, go after them. If there's people abusing the system, go after them. But when you don't even let them enter the system in the first place, it's very hard for me to get on board with destroying the system."
AI and the Future of Immigration Law
Grode has a provocative view on how artificial intelligence will reshape immigration law. While many attorneys focus on using AI to produce filings, he sees a different future.
"I see AI becoming the new adjudicator. I see AI replacing the government workers. I see AI doing the first analysis on a filing and saying yes or no," he explains. If it's a no, a human reviews it on an appellate level. If it's a yes, humans conduct quality assurance checks.
"I think it's far more adept as a tool for the government and the adjudicative process rather than the individual law firm," he concludes.
For his own practice, Grode has a specific dream: using AI to transform his drafters into editors. By training AI on the thousands of cases his firm has handled, he wants to create a system that can draft letters of support based on their data and style, allowing his team to focus on refinement rather than creation from scratch.
A Case That Sticks With You
Among the thousands of cases Grode has handled, one stands out. About 15 years ago, a woman came to his firm with an unusual problem. Born to parents struggling with substance abuse, she spent the first eight years of her life transient, never going to school or daycare, traveling from town to town, living on the streets. She wasn't born in a hospital and had no birth certificate.
When her mother got sober, they crossed into the United States from Canada without proper documentation checks. The young woman went on to excel in school, earning scholarships and graduating at the top of her class. But when she applied for her first job, she had no proof of identity and couldn't complete the required employment verification.
"We worked with her to actually piece together her family history to give her a claim to U.S. Citizenship, which was ultimately successful," Grode recalls. "I'll never forget the day that she got her U.S. Passport. I get tingles just thinking about it. It was like a spectacular moment in this person's life where they finally had the paperwork to match their identity."
The story illustrates something Grode sees regularly in different contexts: people whose identity doesn't match their documentation, whether due to nationality, gender, religion, or other factors.
"Imagine that being your nationality. Imagine growing up thinking you're something your entire life, but not actually being able to prove it. And then you're the lawyer that's able to piece it together," he reflects. "It's not all about business. There's the personal component, too."
A Call for Reflection and Action
As the interview draws to a close, Grode offers a perspective that's both pragmatic and hopeful. He acknowledges that progress isn't linear and that America is a place defined by its contradictions.
"This is a particularly challenging time where the actions of the administration are forcing us to look at who we are as a people and what we want our identity to be," he says. "And that reflection, in some ways, even though it's very painful right now and people's lives are being affected, can ultimately be very productive."
His advice is clear: speak out, call your congressional representatives, donate to nonprofits helping those less fortunate within the immigration sphere. But more than that, engage in deeper reflection.
"Ask yourself, who are we as a country and what do we stand for? Because in three years, we got to decide again."
For Grode, the answer is already clear. Despite current challenges, he believes that the core values that make America exceptional are too deeply ingrained to be extinguished by any single administration.
"America is a place of ingenuity. It is a place where you are applauded for trying, and if you fail, you get to try again. It's a place where the person that says they have a startup is more popular at a dinner party than the guy that's a brain surgeon," he says. "I think it is so ingrained in who we are as a people that eight years of a specific presidency or administration is not going to extinguish the torch. We will still stand for all of these things, and I hope we continue to do so."
Jonathan Grode is U.S. Practice Director at Green and Spiegel LLC, directing the firm's entire United States immigration presence with offices in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Providence, Rhode Island. The firm, headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, serves corporate, nonprofit, research, university, and individual clients across the full spectrum of immigration matters.
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