Defending Visitor and Student Visa Adjustments After the May 2026 USCIS Discretion Memo

Elina Magaly Santana, Shareholder | Santana Residency Law PA

Elina Magaly Santana is a Shareholder and Co-founder of Santana Residency Law, P.A., and the firm’s lead immigration practitioner. She represents foreign nationals in affirmative petitions before U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and defends clients in proceedings before the U.S. Immigration Courts. Her practice spans family- and marriage-based residency, naturalization, acquired and derivative citizenship, deportation defense, and appeals, and she is dedicated to representing the immigrant community nationwide. She is admitted in the State of Florida, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

• Education & Credentials

Attorney Santana earned her Juris Doctor from Boston University School of Law, where she served as an editor of the Public Interest Law Journal. She completed her Bachelor’s degree in Sociology and Spanish Literature at New York University, graduating with high honors. During law school, she served as a judicial intern at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida under the Honorable William C. Turnoff in Miami. She is fluent in English and Spanish.

• Recognition & Leadership

Attorney Santana is the past Chair of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) South Florida Chapter and is recognized by Super Lawyers. She also serves as a Board Member for Capital Good Fund, reflecting a sustained commitment to leadership both within the immigration bar and in the broader community.

• Professional Involvement

She serves on AILA national’s USCIS case assistance committee, annual conference planning committee, distance learning committee, and AI conference committee. She is an administrator of the “Nerdy Immigration Lawyers” Facebook group and manages more than twenty immigration-focused NIL WhatsApp mentoring groups that connect thousands of attorneys across the country. Attorney Santana frequently speaks at conferences on substantive areas of immigration law and teaches trial skills at events nationwide.

• Experience

Attorney Santana handles the full range of affirmative and defensive immigration matters, including family- and marriage-based residency, naturalization, acquired and derivative citizenship, asylum, cancellation of removal, and waivers, as well as appeals of previously denied cases. She has represented detained clients in bond proceedings and reasonable and credible fear interviews, and has secured stays of deportation for clients with humanitarian grounds against return. She travels extensively for her clients, having appeared in courts nationwide, including Miami and Orlando, FL; Hartford, CT; New York and Buffalo, NY; Charlotte, NC; San Antonio and Harlingen, TX; Atlanta, GA; Cleveland, OH; San Francisco, CA; Newark, NJ; Philadelphia, PA; Tacoma, WA; and Kansas City, MO. The child of Cuban immigrants who arrived in the 1960s and a Miami native, she brings a personal connection to the families she serves.

Jesse E. Goldfarb, Shareholder | Nilan Johnson Lewis PA

Jesse E. Goldfarb is a shareholder at Nilan Johnson Lewis PA, where he counsels corporate employers on their immigration needs and balances their business objectives against regulatory compliance. Although his immigration knowledge is broad, he concentrates on serving higher education institutions, agricultural manufacturers, engineering and information technology companies, and multinational organizations. Jesse pairs technical command of business immigration with communication and responsiveness, advising clients on both their short- and long-term goals while setting best practices that prevent adverse immigration consequences. His practice sits within the firm’s Labor and Employment and Corporate Immigration Law groups.

• Education & Credentials

Jesse earned his Juris Doctor, cum laude, from the University of Minnesota Law School in 2018. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, magna cum laude, from Kenyon College, awarded in 2013. He is admitted to practice in Minnesota.

• Recognition & Leadership

Jesse was elevated to shareholder at Nilan Johnson Lewis, reflecting his standing in the firm’s corporate immigration practice. Within the American Immigration Lawyers Association, he serves as USCIS Liaison for the Minnesota/Dakotas Chapter, a role that places him in direct engagement with the agency on behalf of the local immigration bar.

• Professional Involvement

Jesse is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) and its Minnesota/Dakotas Chapter, where he holds the USCIS Liaison position. He is an active presenter on business immigration topics, having delivered “Life in the Slow Lane: Employment-Based Immigrant Visa Backlogs” at the 2022 AILA Upper Midwest Immigration Law Conference and “PERM Basics” at a 2023 AILA Minnesota/Dakota Chapter CLE. His community work includes asylum and humanitarian representation, involvement with Project Success, and engagement with Shir Tikvah Synagogue.

• Experience

Jesse handles the full range of corporate immigration matters, including nonimmigrant visa petitions (H, L, O, TN, E, and B-1), immigrant visa petitions, PERM labor certification applications, extraordinary ability petitions, national interest waivers, adjustment of status applications, consular processing, J-1 waiver applications, I-9 compliance, and administrative responses. He represents employers across a wide set of industries, including airlines, food and beverage, agriculture, information technology, engineering, healthcare, and higher education. Before practicing law, Jesse worked with math students in Boston and developed education curriculum in India—experiences that shaped the client communication and responsiveness that define his practice today.

SESSION 1 – Adjusting Status from a B-1/B-2 Visa Under New Discretionary Rules | 1:00pm – 2:00pm

PM-602-0199 lets officers deny I-485 adjustments from B-1/B-2 visitors on discretionary grounds, even immediate relatives. This session decodes USCIS’s balancing factors and equips attorneys to build equity packets, answer RFEs and NOIDs, and weigh consular alternatives.

BREAK | 2:00pm – 2:10pm

SESSION 2 – F-1 Visa Adjustment of Status Under the New Discretionary Framework | 2:10pm – 3:10pm

Because F-1 carries no dual intent, PM-602-0199 and the proposed fixed I-94 rule sharpen denial risk across the OPT and H-1B pipeline. Attorneys will master USCIS’s discretionary factors, assemble defensible profiles, counter RFEs and NOIDs, and time consular alternatives.