Meet Yalda Hajavi

Ms. Yalda Hajavi is the founder and principal attorney of YH Global Immigration, PLLC, which she established in 2023 to give individuals, families, founders, and employers a focused immigration practice built around careful first contact, organized records, and direct attorney review.

From an immigrant to immigrants

Yalda immigrated to the United States from Iran at age eight. Learning a new language, watching her family rebuild, and becoming American herself shape how she practices today: she explains the process plainly, treats every record as part of a person's story, and keeps clients oriented at each decision point instead of leaving them to guess what happens next.

Employment-based practice

Her employment-based work covers EB-1A (extraordinary ability), EB-2 National Interest Waiver (NIW), O-1 (extraordinary ability and achievement), H-1B specialty occupation, L-1 intracompany transferee, TN, E-1/E-2 treaty, and EB-2/EB-3 with PERM labor certification matters. She works directly with founders, researchers, executives, artists, employers, and HR teams on temporary work authorization, sponsored green-card paths, and self-petitioning green cards.

Family, citizenship, and humanitarian matters

Her family-based practice covers marriage-based green cards, fiancé(e) visas, family preference petitions, adjustment of status, and consular processing. Citizenship work covers naturalization eligibility framing, travel and residence questions, and good-moral-character review.

Yalda also takes affirmative asylum and humanitarian matters where careful first contact, sensitive-fact handling, and one-year-deadline awareness matter. The firm's J-1 waiver practice covers the two-year home residency requirement and the major waiver bases, including no-objection, interested-government-agency, exceptional hardship, persecution, and Conrad-30 placements.

Earlier practice and education

Before founding the firm, Yalda practiced commercial litigation at Duane Morris LLP, where she also handled substantial pro bono asylum matters, and then practiced immigration law at Haynes Novick Kohn Immigration, handling employment-based and family-based matters. She holds a Juris Doctor from Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law and is admitted to practice in Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia.

Bar leadership and community

Yalda is the former chair of the American Immigration Lawyers Association's Diversity and Inclusion Committee (Philadelphia Chapter), Vice President of the Iranian American Bar Association's D.C. Chapter and an IABA National Representative, a board member of the Villanova Law Women's Network, and a member of the Women's Bar Association of D.C.