Making American Dreams While Building the American Dream

Attorney Alexandra Lozano radically reinvented the law firm to create opportunity for clients, herself, and small businesses from coast to coast.

- By Kevin J. Ryan

IN 2016, IMMIGRATION LAWYER ALEXANDRA LOZANO DECIDED TO TRY A CASE THAT SEEMED HOPELESS.

The client, an undocumented Mexican immigrant from Monterrey, Mexico, named Manuel, had been living in the Seattle area since coming to the U.S. in 2001. He'd gotten an off-the-books job washing dishes at a social club downtown and worked his way up to management. He'd briefly returned to Mexico to visit his family and then reentered the U.S. illegally a second time, which made him ineligible to earn authorized status. Several immigration lawyers told him that his case was unwinnable.

But Lozano chose to accept his case. She had learned that Manuel had previously been in an abusive relationship with a woman who was a U.S. citizen. And under a provision of the Violence Against Women Act, undocumented women who had been abused by their spouses were eligible to obtain work permits and green cards in the United States. Reading the law closely, Lozano believed it could be applied to men in similar situations. When a judge agreed, Manuel won authorized status, giving him the ability to secure a job with benefits and travel freely to see his family in Monterrey.

"Sometimes you need to approach things differently than everyone else does," says Lozano. And in this instance, her novel approach would affect her life in ways she couldn't have anticipated.

Today, as founder of Seattle-based Alexandra Lozano Immigration Law, the 38-year-old helps immigrants win authorization by way of green cards, work permits, permanent residency, and citizenship. Often, she uses rarely applied provisions from niche areas of American legislation to win her cases. So successful has she been at this that her clients have taken to calling her la Abogada de los Milagros-the Lawyer of Miracles.