Murthy Law Firm's Adam Rosen: Why Immigration Attorneys Must Choose Optimism Over Despair
13th November 2025
Date
Interviewee
Adam Rosen
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Finding Opportunity in Uncertainty: Adam Rosen on Immigration Law, Innovation, and the Power of Perspective
Managing Attorney at Murthy Law Firm shares insights on navigating industry turbulence, embracing AI, and why attitude matters now more than ever
In a field increasingly dominated by negative headlines and policy upheaval, Adam Rosen stands out for an unexpected reason: his optimism. The Managing Attorney at Murthy Law Firm didn't arrive at this perspective through naiveté, but through years of navigating immigration law's complexities and learning that how you confront challenges often determines which solutions you can see.
"It doesn't sit right with me to just be in a reality where your entire perspective is just so negative," Rosen reflects. It was this sentiment that led him to reach out after seeing a LinkedIn video offering a positive outlook on current events. "Regardless whether you like or dislike current immigration policies, this is the administration that we have to work with."
Adam Rosen's Path to Immigration Law: An Accidental Beginning at Murthy Law Firm
Rosen's entry into immigration law reads like many successful careers do: part accident, part curiosity, part finding the right fit at the right time. During law school, a new two-credit course on employment-based immigration law fit his schedule. The instructor was David Leopold, later president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
"I just found it really interesting," Rosen recalls. The course combined policy, history (his first love), and practical application in ways that resonated. That summer, he landed a position with a small New York immigration practice handling H-1Bs, L-1s, and green cards. It was the kind of place where attorneys also served as their own paralegals, where direct client interaction was constant, and where you could see immediately how the law impacted real people's lives.
"I thought it was really an interesting field that was both intellectually challenging and I enjoyed the interaction with clients to see how it directly impacted people," he says. They offered him a job after law school, and he accepted. While he contemplated leaving the field a few times, particularly drawn to nonprofit work and constitutional law, each time he found himself more invested in immigration's unique challenges.
The field kept pulling him back for good reason. Immigration law is widely considered the most complicated area of federal law outside of tax law. "You've got laws that get passed and memos and rules, and there's letters that people have that say things," Rosen explains. "And then there's just lots of discretion." That discretion, he notes, particularly confuses attorneys new to the field, some even disbelieving that so much subjective decision-making exists within federal law.
Rising Through the Ranks: Career Growth at Murthy Law Firm
Rosen's ascent to Managing Attorney at Murthy Law Firm came through what he describes simply as hunger. "You have to be hungry. You have to push yourself," he advises those looking to advance their careers. But hunger alone wasn't enough. He emphasizes the importance of having people who support your interests and, critically, being genuinely interested in taking the next steps yourself.
Shortly after joining Murthy Law Firm, Rosen got involved with the D.C. chapter of AILA (American Immigration Lawyers Association). "It was a really great decision," he reflects. Coming to a new location where he didn't know anyone, AILA provided opportunities to interact with peers and seasoned practitioners alike. He organized conferences, sat on panels, and immersed himself in the professional community.
More importantly, Rosen developed specializations by diving deep into particular issues. "I would just read through everything and try to dig down and find a solution, come up with something that would work for them," he says of challenging client situations. He points to attorneys like Dawn Lurie, who became known for immigration compliance expertise before it was a widespread practice area, as examples of how investing time in developing knowledge and research pays dividends.
Working with Sheela Murthy taught him another crucial lesson: questioning assumptions. "She'll say, 'Well, why not? Why can't we do it?'" This approach, combined with his own experiences of being burned by taking things at face value, led him to develop a methodology: dig through the rules, understand why they say what they say, and look for space to work within them. "Sometimes it's really a coin toss, just basically asking for discretion. But immigration, there's lots of discretion."
Navigating the H1B Storm: Adam Rosen's Perspective on Current Immigration Challenges
The recent H-1B proclamation hit Murthy Law Firm's client base differently than it hit large corporations. "We represent mostly small to mid-sized businesses," Rosen explains. For giants like Microsoft, Amazon, or Meta, $100,000 fees become a calculation in a broader cost-benefit analysis that includes tariffs and other expenses. They're weighing whether to hire H-1B workers internally or continue outsourcing IT departments.
"One of the things that always gets lost in the discussion is when news reports that these companies are replacing their US workers with H-1B workers, it sort of misses the forest for the trees," Rosen observes. "What's actually happening is that they've laid off US workers but they're outsourcing their IT department." One reason companies outsource is simple cost reduction. He recalls a client years ago who hadn't outsourced their IT department solely because their technology infrastructure was too complicated to transfer.
For smaller and mid-sized businesses, the approach has been largely wait-and-see. Some companies are phasing out H-1B workers entirely. Others are making case-by-case judgments, particularly given recent clarifications. Before USCIS posted guidance on paying the proclamation fee, Rosen's advice was straightforward: "Just file your cases. If they haven't told you how to pay the fee, then you don't have to pay the fee."
Now that payment procedures are clear, Rosen expects to see significant increases in nunc pro tunc requests (asking USCIS to waive errors under extraordinary circumstances and grant status). This echoes patterns from the first Trump administration's end, when COVID made leaving the country impractical or impossible. "People were more open to, essentially almost forced into challenging these decisions," whether through requesting nunc pro tunc status or federal court challenges.
He anticipates more litigation overall. Even petitions without status issues, if denied on grounds like specialty occupation requirements, present a calculation: spend several thousand dollars on a lawsuit that might overturn the denial, or send the person abroad, pay $100,000 plus additional fees, and face an unknown timeline for their return given the lack of interview waivers.
Adam Rosen on AI Transformation in Immigration Practice at Murthy Law Firm
When discussion turns to technology, Rosen's enthusiasm becomes palpable. Murthy Law Firm has been using AI for their extraordinary ability practice since last year. The impact? "Transformative." Cases that once took much longer now take just a couple of weeks. "It's still a process of reading through highly detailed letters," he notes, "but the process you're going through with a case of that sort is just completely transformed."
His perspective on government technology, however, reveals frustration. He contrasts USCIS's multi-billion-dollar failed attempts to create usable online forms with the Department of Labor's success with labor certification. The DOL, facing massive backlogs, transformed their program with a user-friendly interface that allowed form reuse and clear information entry. "The interface was extraordinary," Rosen says.
USCIS's current online filing system, by contrast, remains onerous. There are no APIs for software integration, no ability to save or reuse submitted forms, and no way to feed collected intake information directly into forms. "If you have somebody you're doing an H-1B for, and maybe it's the same position with just a minor change, you’ve got to redo the form," he explains. Even the printout of the completed online forms are problematic, with questions left empty rather than marked N/A, something that would get an attorney-prepared paper filing rejected.
This creates client experience issues. "You send it to the client, and if the client is not familiar with how filing online works, they're saying, 'well, you didn't fill this out or why is this there?'" Rosen's theory for the difference? "USCIS can just raise their fees, but Department of Labor has to go to Congress for appropriations." He's long wished USCIS would adopt DOL's approach, noting even FOIA requests are "completely different experiences" between the two agencies.
Maintaining Perspective: How Murthy Law Firm's Adam Rosen Sees Immigration's Future
Looking ahead, Rosen acknowledges the limits of traditional instincts. "I learned during Trump 1.0 that the instincts that we've honed from years of experience don't always serve us well," he admits. The shift in how adjudications were handled made collective professional intuition less accurate than before.
He expects continued litigation on the proclamation and other policy changes, including an upcoming rule changing the H-1B lottery. More changes are coming in the months ahead. A recent rule lowering EB-5 filing fees caught his attention as unusual: "Fees are just going up," typically, so a decrease "might provide an avenue for people who will pursue the EB-5 case as a route to the green card."
Denaturalization and naturalization issues will likely develop more over the next year. The proposed rule changing student status from duration of status to a specific end date concerns him less than the broader atmosphere. "I don't think it's going to be the reason why students stop coming to the United States of America," he says. "People will figure out a way to deal with it." The bigger problem is "the general atmosphere of anger towards foreign nationals that come to the United States."
When foreign nationals have choices about where to study or work, the United States is losing out. Rosen is particularly enthusiastic about an underappreciated change: H-1B regulations now allow beneficiaries to petition for employment with their own company. "I think for an economy where most jobs are created in small to mid-sized businesses, so much of the innovation happens in small businesses that are starting up, started up not just by native American-born-here Americans, but people who come to the United States as students and then establish their careers and lives here," he observes. Current policies are counterproductive: "We're shooting ourselves in the foot."
He points to economic history for perspective. "The US economy has grown as much as it has compared to other countries that have either stagnated or grown more slowly. The difference, the major difference between them has been the immigration policy of the United States." He cites Japan's restrictive immigration policy and resulting economic stagnation as a cautionary example.
Rosen acknowledges real concerns behind current sentiment: valid feelings that elites have forgotten Main Street America, particularly after manufacturing closures. "Those are very valid concerns," he says, wishing Democrats were more unified in addressing them. "You don't survive and thrive when just a portion of your population is doing well." He believes Trump tapped into genuine problems, and some voters supported him either because they agreed with his message or because they felt Democrats had their chance and didn't fix things.
Despite disagreeing with many policies, Rosen recognizes political realities. Trump won both popular and electoral college majorities. People across various fields are unhappy with tariffs and other policies. "These are people who are very upset and people who are unhappy and people who lost their jobs," he notes. "Part of the issue is that there is a lack of appreciation for that."
Even if policies suddenly reversed, damage may be lasting. "It's going to take a lot longer than just a few months to turn things around because people are worried what's going to happen next." Uncertainty undermines confidence in the United States as a destination.
Yet Rosen maintains his foundational belief: "The United States of America is the greatest country." People come not just for practical opportunities but for something harder to quantify. "It's also the idea of whether it's the American dream, specifically, or if it's just the idea that you could achieve almost anything, that if you work hard enough or you put your mind to it, or you find the people." No matter what other countries offer, "there is not another country like the United States."
Final Reflections from Adam Rosen: The Importance of Attitude in Immigration Law
As the conversation draws to a close, Rosen returns to his core message about perspective. "I think attitude will make a big difference," he emphasizes. He's quick to clarify he's not suggesting that smiling will make everything "okie dokie and there are going to be no problems." Rather, "how you confront the problems or consider the problems is going to impact what solutions you see, not only just how your life is."
Beyond identifying solutions, attitude affects wellbeing. "Who wants to live in misery for months on end?" he asks. "Not only is it just unpleasant, I think it's just completely unhealthy." Whether feelings of dislike are personal and illogical or completely reasonable, "it's just not a healthy way to live. It's not a positive way to live for yourself."
For immigration attorneys, immigrants facing uncertainty, and businesses navigating policy chaos, Rosen's message offers a counterbalance to prevailing despair. The challenges are real, the frustrations valid, the concerns legitimate. But the choice of how to face them remains, and that choice matters more than many realize.
In an industry often consumed by worst-case scenarios and defensive positioning, Adam Rosen's approach at Murthy Law Firm stands as a reminder that legal excellence and strategic optimism aren't mutually exclusive. They might even be interdependent. After all, as he's learned through years of digging through regulations looking for space to work within them, sometimes the difference between finding a solution and missing one lies not in the law itself, but in whether you believed a solution could exist in the first place.
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