The first thing Claudine Gasana will tell you about her work is that it refuses to sit in a neat box. She trained in business immigration, earned her first wins inside Dallas and Houston law firms, then stepped out on her own after her second child. Overnight, the tidy tracks of PERM, L and E visas widened into a map that touched nearly every corner of the field. Marriage cases, naturalization, removal defense, asylum interviews that span a decade of waiting. “When you are a solo practitioner, you cannot afford to only do one area of immigration,” she says. “I would say right now I practice almost all of the areas of immigration law.”

Her path into immigration was not an accident, but it was not a straight line either. In law school she and a friend lobbied the academic dean for an immigration elective. She took the class, interned, and landed a law clerk role that became an attorney position once licensed. Early on, the focus was clear. “My expertise was employment based,” she says. “National interest waivers, EB1 extraordinary ability, labor certification, L1, O1, E2, even E3.” The work followed her when she moved.

Then 2016 arrived, and with it a new tempo. Sweeping executive actions, travel and visa bans, a sharpened posture on enforcement, and a growth in denaturalization review. “That time I had to go on social media and speak,” she says. “Taking time to write was not going to do with all the changes.” The system’s delays deepened through COVID. Claudine still meets clients today whose asylum filings date back to 2015. “When you go to interview 10 years later, to have that case prevail is going to be a problem,” she explains. “Evidence is harder to maintain. Expectations shift. Even a marriage case can take a year.”

Yet changes have not been uniformly negative. She notes that naturalization processing rebounded. Premium processing expanded to new categories like some changes of status and certain employment authorization requests. And at consulates, interview waivers helped smooth visa renewals for those with prior approvals. The story of the last decade, in Claudine’s telling, is complexity. Improvements in one pocket, new friction in another.

For high skill talent, the bottlenecks remain glaring. “You have 65,000 H1B numbers, plus 20,000 for U.S. master’s,” she says. “Demand is in the hundreds of thousands.” For those who pivot to O1, EB1 or NIW, agencies have raised the bar. “We are seeing more RFEs, then denials, even for people who are qualifying,” she says. The rhetoric that dominates the border conversation, in her view, masks a different risk. “People being targeted are not only those who came illegally,” she says. “They are researchers and professors. That does not attract talent.”

What most occupies her mind now are the precedents that could outlast any administration. She watches cases testing the use of the Alien Enemies Act, a statute with roots in the 1700s, applied far beyond wartime scenarios. “It is dangerous,” she says. “Due process can be taken away if they use that. If that is set as precedent, people can be removed without the usual protections.” She is following challenges tied to First Amendment activity and to birthright citizenship. “The U.S. Supreme Court is going to decide things that can change immigration forever,” she says. For now, she sees injunctions, stays, and contested venues. She sees clients and even lawful permanent residents stuck in detention as cases crawl through the Fifth Circuit and beyond. Above all, she sees uncertainty.

Uncertainty is not new to solo practice. Claudine built a business that sits at the junction of employment, family, humanitarian relief, and federal litigation. She refers out true crim-immigration cases, but handles misdemeanors that intersect with status. She keeps a niche in F1 reinstatements and J1 waivers. “Not many attorneys do them,” she says. She also keeps an eye on practical shortcuts that help clients survive long processes. The best case management systems, in her view, do more than generate forms. They gather, categorize, and surface evidence across criteria. Clients need a portal, attorneys need control, and both need a single view of what is missing.

The discipline is visible in the way she counsels different audiences.

To other immigration professionals: keep your footing. “Our profession is being attacked for doing our job,” she says, citing news of judges and lawyers under scrutiny. The oath still binds. “Keep doing your job within the boundaries of the law, be careful, and do not jeopardize your license.” She emphasizes documentation, ethical walls, and the courage to keep litigating when agencies overreach.

To immigrants and noncitizens: treat status as a daily practice, not a one-time filing. “Make sure you have your papers in order,” she says. For permanent residents with any criminal history, even minor, seek legal advice before travel. For students and workers, guard status and avoid oversights that can snowball. “Do not overstay, avoid criminal activity, and be careful with social media,” she says. She urges people to carry proof of lawful presence. In states where law enforcement cooperates with federal authorities, a limited-term driver’s license can trigger questions. “Have your I-94, your EAD, your proof of visa, or your asylum receipt and work authorization,” she says. It is not paranoia. It is readiness.

Claudine does not romanticize the field. She tells the story of a decade where a simple timeline rule, such as “file and wait 3 to 6 months,” gave way to a maze of 12-month adjudications, 10-year asylum queues, and rooms where clients must answer for an inconsistency that began with a tourist visa application in 1979. She also tells a story of resilience. She built a practice during a turbulent period, learned to thread employment cases with humanitarian relief, and kept showing up for interviews even when the calendar made no sense. Her advice reads like a checklist, but underneath it sits a conviction. The law is still a place where preparation matters.

There is a line from those early classes to today’s mix of court filings and corporate petitions. It is not flashy. It is steady. “Clients choose their attorneys,” she says simply. Some chose her back in Dallas and Houston and have stayed. Others arrive scared and undocumented, then become citizens who return for a paternity dispute or a protective order because they trust an attorney who understands what it feels like to navigate two systems at once. Claudine accepts that, too. “People are more comfortable when their attorney understands their situation as an immigrant,” she says. “All of it is immigration.”

The next five years will test that steadiness. Claudine will keep tracking federal litigation and Supreme Court calendars. She will keep filing NIWs and EB1s alongside J1 waivers and defensive asylum. And she will keep telling clients to carry proof, to wait for the right moment to travel, and to think of status the way pilots think of pre-flight checks. It is not pessimism. It is a way to protect possibility.