TOP 25
Parisa Karaahmet
Fragomen Worldwide
Prior to joining Fragomen, Parisa
Karaahmet served as an Assistant
District Counsel and Acting Deputy
District Counsel for the Immigration
& Naturalization Service, New York
District. At Fragomen, she leads a team
that specializes in individual and complex
immigration matters and manages
corporate accounts. Her area of specialty
H. Ronald Klasko
Klasko Immigration Law
Partners LLP
Recognized among the nation’s most
influential immigration attorneys, Ron
Klasko brings over 30 years of immigration law experience to all his cases.
As cofounder and managing partner of
Klasko Immigration Law Partners, LLP
in Philadelphia, Klasko leads a team of
attorneys who work on a full range of
immigration law issues, 10 of whom
IMMIGR ATION AT TORNE YS
includes advising clients with respect
to criminal and other inadmissibility
grounds, employer sanctions, E-verify
and I-9 compliance and enforcement.
Additionally, Karaahmet leads a team
that specializes in EB-5 immigrant
investor and entrepreneurial visas, and is a
member of the firm’s Worldwide Investor
Group. She is also a member of Invest in
the USA’s Editorial Committee and writes
and presents extensively on EB-5 related
issues.
On the corporate compliance advisory
group side, Karaahmet represents a variety
of large, mid-size and smaller companies
in their immigration matters, including
those in the financial services, medical,
pharmaceutical, retail and technology sectors. She also regularly advises academic
institutions and non-profit organizations
in their immigration matters.
Karaahmet said the EB-5 field has
changed significantly in the past few
years. “The number of stakeholders has
proliferated, but in general, I find that
most players have become more sophisticated and better educated about the world
of EB-5,” she said. “Recent events have
demonstrated that compliance and ethics
should be hallmark of every practitioner’s
approach to this field.”
Karaahmet said her EB-5 practice
primarily focuses on representing individual
investors in their immigration filings, and
she said she generally avoids representing
a project and individual inv estor in the
same transaction to avoid the appearance of
conflict.
Karaahmet has been a faculty member/
presenter for the Judicial Institute at Pace
University and a guest lecturer at Cardozo
Law School and is a frequent speaker
at national conferences on a variety of
immigration topics such as EB-5 immigration compliance, I-9 business immigration
matters, and criminal immigration issues.
Karaahmet has chaired conferences and
presented at panel events sponsored by the
Practicing Law Institute (PLI), the American
Bar Association (ABA) and others.
work exclusively on representing EB-5
investors or regional centers and project
developers.
Klasko has built up his EB-5 expertise
over the life of the program and it is this
long-term perspective that gives him
unique insight into the evolving field,
changing USCIS policies and exciting
developments.
Klasko enjoys getting involved on the
ground floor of projects and making
an impact, improving practices, and
crafting creative and effective ways to
interpret the law. Embracing the spirit
of the program, Klasko is rewarded by
seeing projects come to fruition that
otherwise would not have, were it not
for EB-5 capital. Similarly, he recognizes
that EB-5 is often the only immigration
route available to immigrant investors.
Because EB-5 is both an immigration
and a development program, Klasko
says it is essential to understand EB-5
law and policy, as well as deal structure
on a detailed level. After the deal is
done, however, the job is not over, and
Klasko and his firm have established
a compliance team—complete with
auditors, software, and monthly reviews
of regional center operations—to ensure
that their regional center clients are
adequately prepared for the filing of
investors’ I-829 petitions and developers’ I-924A petitions.
Often cited as an authority on
EB-5 matters, Klasko is routinely
invited to speak at conferences, and he
is recognized as a leader in the EB-5
community. Chair of AILA’s EB-5
Committee for four of the last five
years, Klasko previously served as the
national president for the organization.
He has been invited by the U.S. House
of Representatives Committee on the
Judiciary to testify on immigration
reform and is one of three attorneys to
be honored with the AILA Founders
Award for his contributions to immigration jurisprudence.
Continued to page 40
WWW.EB5INVESTORS.COM
39