Sara Varnado

So nice to meet you! First off, what’s your name? Tell our readers a bit about yourself—where you’re from originally and where you live now.

Hello, I'm Sara Varnado, originally from West Texas, where my family immigrated to live and work as small business owners. Over the years I've lived and worked all over the place during my spouse's military service, which gave me the incredible experience to learn how law is practiced differently in all corners of the country, including the Pacific Northwest, where I'm currently based.

Tell us one thing you love about where you live now.

I absolutely love living near the Cascade mountain range. I really believe the summers here are America's best kept secret, with 70 degree days, emerald green landscapes and fields of flowers. Coming from the plains of West Texas, this place looks like something out of a story half the time.

Tell us a little more about what your company does and how it started. How does it help your customers?

We are an immigration defense firm specializing in family and humanitarian based pathways for individuals and families. It started with the desire to provide boutique white glove service to our clientele at a time when the current administration was effectively working to eliminate the people we serve from the country altogether.

Our immigration system is no picnic even in the best of times, and expecting anyone to manage rapid hostile change when they are going through what is usually one of the biggest emergencies of their lives is objectively unreasonable. One of my favorite things about immigration law is how collaborative and supportive we immigration attorneys are of one another. We don't expect each other to go through this alone, so how can anyone going through the process for the first time be expected to manage that feat?

If someone wants to start a business, what advice would you give them?

The best business advice I ever received was that we do not rise to the level of our dreams but fall to the level of our systems, and I found it very helpful to take an extra two to three months to get all my systems and processes in order in the most automatic and cost effective way possible.

You are never going to feel one hundred percent ready, and at some point you just have to dive in and start, but systems once established are exceptionally difficult to change, especially when business picks up and you no longer have so much free time on your hands for restructuring.

What is one piece of feedback from a happy customer or client that you won't forget?

Hands down, the best part of the job is getting the pictures people send of their united or reunited family together at the end of a case. It makes everything worth it all over again. Those pictures you send your attorney mean the world to us and are our favorite gifts. It's the sort of thing you can look back on during difficult times to remember why you can't quit.

Where do you see your company in the future?

Well, we've honestly worked really hard to get to where we are now, and I would love to see more of the same. There's always more potential for mentorship to bring students in and train the next generation, so that's one area of development that's a lot of fun for us.

What is the biggest misconception about your industry?

For people with no experience, there is a belief that immigration infractions are crimes. We are absolutely not talking about crime when we are discussing immigration. It is a matter of administrative law, not criminal law. Imagine a child, a family or a parent being incarcerated indefinitely, fearing imminent danger, or at the very least the loss of everything they've ever worked for, over an infraction not in the penal code. That is usually what we are dealing with.

For people going through the system on their own for the first time and trying to educate themselves, at the beginning it can look like nothing more than a form or two that needs to be filled out. It's always a sad day when someone comes to us for help after they already tried to do something on their own and built a legal record against their case that cannot be undone once the error comes to light.

What has been one of your biggest struggles building your business, and how did you deal with it?

Marketing was without a doubt the biggest struggle. I figured out pretty quick that I needed to hand that hat over to a professional, and that was honestly the best decision I could have made. Every hour that I work on marketing is an hour that I'm both not doing my job and trying to do something that someone else is much more qualified for and effective at. It's natural to try and wear all the hats, especially at the beginning, and a big part of growth is learning what to let go of.

Who was your favorite music artist and athlete growing up?

Oh, I loved Eminem as a kid. Sports I didn't really come around to until later in life, but I loved watching the San Antonio Spurs with my dad. The NBA playoffs were one of his favorite things, and it became a family tradition for us to celebrate them together.

Any shoutouts you want to make?

Early in my career I had the great fortune of having the best boss and mentor a person could ask for. Nicole Murad with Murad Immigration out of Boulder, Colorado was a pleasure to work for, and I'm so lucky she took a chance with me and took the time to invest in training new lawyers. Everyone coming out of law school really needs their own Nicole.

Where can our readers learn more about you and your company?

You can check out our website at https://www.anewworldimmigrationlaw.com/ and across social media. I used to love giving updates on legal developments on social, but have pared back on posting updates recently because under this administration, law and policy change with such blinding speed that an update is often expired and actively unhelpful by the time someone finds it.

So feel free to give us a call or send a message so we can talk to you directly to get your questions and concerns covered!