10 years down the lane, Alan Dobson proudly says that walking out the doors of the dry, corporate agency to set up his own immigration practice was the best decision he ever made. "I was tired of working for faceless corporate clients. I wanted a more personal involvement, where I could work with individual clients, meet them face to face and help them solve their issues," says Dobson. In 2004, Dobson and his attorney partner Robert Ridings, set up DC Metro Immigration firm in Arlington, VA, to provide exclusive immigration services, with a goal to make a difference within the immigrant community.

Under Dobson's leadership, DC Metro practices full-time immigration law and cases mainly related to family and employment issues. The firm's exclusive family immigration matters include, family petitions for U.S. citizens, green cards based on marriage to U.S. citizens, and responding to embassy visa denials for spouses of U.S. citizens and permanent residents, including notices of Intent to revoke family petitions, as well as citizenship and naturalization. The firm also assists numerous students in reinstating their F-1 status, change to F-1 status and motions to reopen denied reinstatements.

"Law firms constantly struggle to work with changing administrations and reforms. With the Real ID Act and Patriot Acts coming to picture post 9/11, there have been significant changes in the law. This has had great impact on 11-12 million immigrants living in the country and the fight to grant them citizenship has become a challenge," notes Dobson. For this, DC Metro keeps a keen eye on the immigration atmosphere, bringing feasible solutions to those staying in the country unlawfully. The Attorneys at the firm are relentlessly diligent in the services they provide maintaining a friendly, respectful relationship with their clients.

Dobson observes a drastic change in the client's expectations when it comes to choosing their attorney. While the clients chose lawyers through word of mouth or direct contact 10 years ago, today they prefer to choose the attorneys based on ratings and reviews on the internet. DC Metro is in the forefront of equipping themselves with these changing needs of clients. The firm allows its clients to access their case files and contact the attorneys securely and directly through its website. "Online is a new paradigm to meet prospective clients. The clients we help, boost our business by posting their success stories and testimonials on our website. This in turn helps other perspective clients to relate their problem to these cases and through that, they contact DC Metro for help," says Dobson.

Over the years, the firm has represented many immigrant cases including, students with optional practical training requests for evidence and reinstatement applications, families filing for their relatives, deferred action for childhood arrival cases, religious workers, green cards for spouses, parents, or children of U.S. citizens, H-1B petitions and transfers, self-petitions for abused spouses of the U.S. citizens, EB-2 and EB-3 based employment petitions, and many others.

Going forward, Dobson hopes to see the U.S. Administration coming up with better policies to improve immigrants' status, which would lead to better employment opportunities, as there is a dire need for skilled workers in the country. "A positive reform of employment immigration visas would indeed help the U.S economy," says Dobson. In the meantime, DC Metro will continue provide its services to the benefit of the immigrant communities across the U.S.