MELISSA HARMS, PRINCIPAL

Melissa Harms, has been practicing immigration law for more than two decades. She began her legal career practicing employment law at Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker before joining an immigration firm to combine her interest in legal advocacy with her desire to affect social change. 

Along with her immigration law team, Ms. Harms has been a strategic legal partner for small start-ups, multinational corporations, large public universities, private research entities, providing counsel for her clients on all facets of immigration law. 

Ms. Harms has taught courses on immigration law through both California State University and the University of California for human resource professionals. She has served in many leadership roles with the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) during her twenty-year membership and currently serves on the AILA national Technology and Innovation committee as Chair of Government Collaboration. She also routinely speaks on immigration law at numerous local and national venues, including AILA national conferences, the Worldwide Employers Relocation Council annual conference, the Bay Area Mobility Management annual conferences, the National Association of International Educators (NAFSA) national and regional conferences, Employers Advisory Council, the Marin County Bar Association, UC Davis Wine Law symposia, and has been interviewed by BBC TV as an expert on immigration issues.

Ms. Harms graduated from Duke University with a Bachelor of Arts in History and Public Policy and earned her law degree from the University of Georgia, where she served on the Editorial Board of the Georgia Law Review.  She spent a year as a visiting scholar at the University of California, Davis School of Law.

JENNIE LIU, OF COUNSEL

Jennie Liu has been practicing immigration law for over a decade at various firms in the San Francisco Bay Area  She has experience in the full range of both employment-based and family-based immigration cases, including nonimmigrant and immigrant visas.  Her employment-based experience includes H-1B, TN, L-1A/B, E-2, E-3, J-1 trainee/intern, O-1, and R-1 nonimmigrant applications, as well as PERMs, I-140 immigrant petitions (including EB-1A/B/C and NIW), I-485 adjustment of status applications, and consular processing immigrant matters. She has worked with a wide range of clients, including start-ups, large technology corporations, universities and small nonprofit organizations.  

Ms. Liu's family-based immigration experience includes K-1 fiance(e) visas, I-130 immigrant petitions, consular processing, and I-485 adjustment of status applications.  She has also prepared N-400 naturalization/citizenship applications, TPS applications, DACA applications, I-601 and I-601A waiver applications, and I-360 special immigrant visa petitions.

Ms. Liu has been a member of the California State Bar since 2004, after graduating Order of the Coif (top 10% of her class) from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, where she was active in the Asian Law Journal.  She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy from Stanford University.  After law school, Ms. Liu served as a judicial law clerk to a federal judge in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of California.   She is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) and speaks Mandarin Chinese.

JACQUELINE TURNOVSKY, CASE MANAGER

Jacqueline joined Harms Immigration Law in 2013. She has over twenty years of experience as a paralegal in immigration law and has worked on a wide range of cases, including employment-based, family-based, naturalization, asylum, and immigration court cases.

Jacqueline has personal experience navigating the U.S. immigration system having immigrated to the U.S. and later becoming a U.S. citizen. She earned a Bachelor’s degree from Reed College and a Master’s degree from the University of Virginia, both in French Literature.