Attorney-led compliance review and audit defense for employer-sponsored visa programs and federal wage-and-hour law.

If your company sponsors foreign national workers, the paperwork is only part of the picture. What matters in an audit, site visit, or investigation is whether your actual payroll matches your wage attestations, whether worksites and job duties still match what was filed, whether your pay practices hold up under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), and whether corporate changes along the way created obligations nobody caught. The Department of Labor and USCIS both check, and they check different things. We review that gap directly, grounded in experience conducting federal audit review from inside the Department of Labor.

H-2A and H-2B Program Compliance

H-2A and H-2B compliance carries its own enforcement track, and it moves fast. Attorney Emily Brown spent part of her federal career conducting legal review of H-2A and H-2B action audits for the Department of Labor’s Office of Foreign Labor Certification, along with related appellate litigation. That work now shapes how she reviews these files on the employer side.

Action audit response and defense. Direct representation if DOL has opened an audit of your H-2A or H-2B program, from the initial document request through resolution.

Pre-filing compliance review. A legal check of job orders, wage rates, and recruitment documentation before filing, so the case is built to withstand an audit rather than just clear certification.

Program-specific wage and recruitment audits. Review of actual wages paid, worker housing and transportation arrangements where applicable, and recruitment records against what was represented to DOL.

H-1B and LCA Operational Integrity

Filing an LCA or H-1B petition correctly is the starting point, not the finish line. Compliance has to hold up over the life of the case, through hybrid work arrangements, wage increases, and worksite changes.

We review:

Public Access File chronology and audit logs. We go through your PAF history and system timestamps looking for the kind of gaps or inconsistencies that stand out once an investigator pulls your audit trail, before anyone else sees it.

Hybrid and remote worksite alignment. We check whether current employee home and work addresses still match what’s on file for their active LCAs. Hybrid arrangements and unannounced moves are one of the most common ways employers end up out of compliance without realizing it.

Actual wage compliance. We compare real payroll data, including bonuses and step increases, against your wage attestations, so what employees are actually being paid matches what you told the government you’d pay them.

Retention-schedule review. We identify which PAFs, payroll records, and related documents have passed their required retention periods under both the LCA regulations and the FLSA so they can be purged on a documented, defensible schedule. Nothing gets held past what the law requires, and nothing gets discarded before it should be.

PERM Labor Certification Compliance

A certified PERM application can still be audited, and the burden falls on the employer to prove the recruitment happened the way the application says it did. DOL can request the full recruitment file, and employers must keep that documentation for five years from filing. An audit that turns up gaps can lead to denial, and in some cases DOL can require supervised recruitment on the employer’s future applications. We review PERM files with that standard in mind.

Recruitment documentation review. We check that ads, job postings, the Notice of Filing, and the recruitment report each match what was attested on the application, with the dates, content, and placement to prove it.

Job requirements and business necessity. We review whether the stated requirements reflect the actual job, not the sponsored employee’s resume, and whether any unusual requirement is documented and defensible.

Audit file readiness. We organize the recruitment file so that if an audit letter arrives, the response can be assembled within the deadline rather than reconstructed under it.

Cost and fee compliance. We confirm the employer, not the sponsored employee, paid the attorney fees and recruitment costs DOL requires the employer to bear.

FLSA Compliance and Wage-and-Hour Risk

The Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division enforces both the FLSA and the worker protections in the H-1B, H-2A, and H-2B programs, and an investigation that starts under one rarely stays there. Visa-program compliance and FLSA compliance are separate tests. An employer can pay the required LCA wage and still owe overtime, or meet the federal minimum wage and still fall short of an H-2B wage obligation. We review both together.

Exempt and non-exempt classification. Duties and salary-basis review for the executive, administrative, professional, computer, and highly compensated employee exemptions, including for sponsored workers whose LCA wage does not settle whether they are owed overtime.

Independent contractor classification. An economic-reality review of your contractor relationships under a federal standard that has changed repeatedly in recent years.

Overtime and regular-rate calculations. We check whether bonuses, shift differentials, and other pay are being included in the regular rate used to calculate overtime.

Hours worked and timekeeping. Off-the-clock work, travel and training time, and how remote and hybrid employees record their hours.

Deductions and first-workweek wage review. Charges for housing, tools, transportation, and visa-related costs can push effective pay below the minimum wage. This is a recurring issue in H-2A and H-2B programs, and one investigators know to look for.

FLSA recordkeeping. We compare your payroll and time records against federal recordkeeping requirements and build them into your retention schedule.

Self-audit and PAID program evaluation. If a review turns up back wages, we assess whether resolving them through the Wage and Hour Division’s Payroll Audit Independent Determination (PAID) program makes sense for your company, and structure the self-audit through counsel before you decide.

USCIS Site Visits and Petition Compliance Audits

Approval isn’t the last time USCIS looks at your petition. Officers from USCIS’s Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate (FDNS) conduct unannounced site visits to confirm that the job, wage, worksite, and employer described in a petition match what’s actually happening. Some petitions are selected at random. Others are targeted based on risk factors such as third-party placements or inconsistencies across filings. H-1B, L-1, H-2A, H-2B, religious worker, and EB-5 petitions are all subject to site visits.

The stakes have gone up. USCIS regulations now allow it to deny or revoke an H-1B petition if the employer doesn’t cooperate with a site visit, and since October 2025, USCIS has its own special agents with federal law enforcement authority. A discrepancy an officer notes during a visit doesn’t stay in that visit. It can resurface in a request for evidence, a revocation notice, or your next petition.

Petition-to-reality audits. We compare your filed petitions, support letters, and LCAs against each sponsored employee’s current job title, duties, pay, reporting line, and worksite. Where they no longer match, we identify whether an amended petition or other corrective step is needed before an officer finds the gap.

Third-party worksite and remote employee review. For employees placed at client sites or working remotely, we confirm the petition record reflects where and for whom they actually work, and that your company can document its role as their employer.

Site visit protocols and team training. We write the standard operating procedure for when an officer shows up unannounced: who greets them, who speaks for the company, which documents are ready, and when to call counsel. Then we train your front desk, HR, and managers on it.

Sponsored employee preparation. We walk sponsored employees and their managers through the questions officers typically ask, so their answers are accurate and consistent with what was filed. Accurate, not rehearsed.

Post-visit response. If a site visit leads to a request for evidence, notice of intent to deny, or notice of intent to revoke, we prepare the response. If USCIS revokes, we evaluate whether the decision can be challenged in federal court.

Corporate Restructuring and Successor-in-Interest Adjustments

Mergers, asset purchases, and entity changes can reset a company’s visa and wage-and-hour compliance posture without anyone flagging it. Catching that takes someone reading the actual deal, not just the filings.

M&A visa and wage-and-hour risk assessments. Before a deal closes, we review the target company’s H-1B, H-2A, H-2B, LCA, and PERM portfolio, along with its FLSA classification and pay practices, and put a number on what you’d actually be inheriting.

Successor-in-interest determinations. We analyze whether a specific asset purchase, tax ID change, or entity restructuring triggers successor-in-interest obligations under DOL and USCIS rules. This isn’t always obvious, and getting it wrong has consequences.

Amended LCA and petition triggers. When a corporate change requires an amended filing, we move fast, so status isn’t put at risk for the employees your business depends on.

Federal Audit Defense & Enforcement Readiness

DOL Wage and Hour investigation defense. Direct representation through an active H-1B, H-2A, or H-2B compliance review, from the first document request to resolution.

USCIS FDNS site visit protocols. We write the standard operating procedure and train your team so they know what to do — and what not to say — if an officer shows up unannounced.

Good-faith compliance documentation. If an error turns up, we prepare the legal memoranda documenting your compliance efforts that can support a mitigation argument later.

About the Attorney

Emily C. Brown, Esq. founded Elevate Justice U.S. Immigration Law, PLLC, a fully virtual firm representing employers nationwide. Before starting the firm, she was an attorney at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, where she litigated federal district court matters, and at the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of the Solicitor, where she conducted legal review of H-2A and H-2B action audits and handled H-2B integrity audit appellate litigation for the Office of Foreign Labor Certification.

That work gave her a firsthand look at how federal agencies build a case file and what they’re looking for when they review one. In private practice since, she’s completed H-1B specialty occupation petitions and I-9 compliance review. That experience now shapes how she reviews a company’s H-1B, H-2A, H-2B, LCA, PERM, and wage-and-hour records before the government does. The point of all of it is the same: know how a file actually gets read in an investigation, not just whether the paperwork is technically complete.

Our Pricing

Attorney fees cover the full scope of legal services: strategy, compliance review, documentation, representation, and follow-through. Government filing fees, third-party costs, and travel expenses are separate and quoted in advance. All matters begin with a written fee agreement before work starts.