Melanie Walker

Practice Areas

For this attorney's full bio, please go to https://www.bakerdonelson.com/melanie-c-walker.

Melanie Walker assists clients throughout the world with their business- and family-based temporary and permanent immigration status needs, with a significant portion of her practice focused on transferring key team members to the United States for global organizations.

As a shareholder in the Firm's Global Immigration Group, Ms. Walker provides strategic guidance and immigration counseling services to companies and their employees. These services include business immigration through investment and trade (E-1/E-2); labor certifications/PERM (including Special Handling and Supervised Recruitment cases); non-immigrant and permanent resident petitions for religious workers (R-1/I-360); Blanket L and individual international transferee programs (L-1), including new office L-1 petitions; specialty occupations (H-1B, TN, E-3) and multinational manager petitions (EB-1); naturalization applications; immigrant and non-immigrant visa processing; and other consular representations, including expedited processing through consular posts and USCIS. She has successfully challenged specialty occupation denials in federal court. Ms. Walker's work with individual clients includes not only employment-related filings, but numerous petitions for family-based immigration benefits through marriage or adoption, including experience in obtaining permanent residency for qualified individuals under provisions of VAWA and as victims of criminal activity through the U-visa classification. She has advocated on behalf of her clients to achieve resolution on unduly lengthy filings, including interacting with governmental liaisons and, in some cases, pursuing mandamus actions.