Benjamin Hamilton

Why Immigration?

I get asked that a lot. I grew up a fourth-generation American in a suburb of northern Los Angeles. My roots are about as Western European as they come—mostly England and Norway. Nothing in my background screamed “immigration.” My family had been here for generations. My Spanish vocabulary began and ended with “¿Dónde está el baño?”

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Then 2001 happened. I signed up to serve a two-year mission and got assigned to Córdoba, Argentina—a place I could barely find on a map (and some of my friends genuinely thought was in Africa). After a two-month crash course in Spanish, I landed in Buenos Aires as a very green nineteen-year-old—equal parts excited and terrified, but mostly… lost.

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I spent those two years bouncing between big cities, open country, and tiny mountain towns. Argentina was stunning—beautiful mountains, rolling hills, endless skies, and people who could talk for hours over mate. Life moved slower, but in a good way. They knew how to savor it. I learned the language (both the good and the questionable words), picked up a deep love for fútbol (¡Dale Boca!), and ate my body weight in empanadas, choripán, and asado.

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But alongside all that beauty, there was struggle. Crushing poverty. Bureaucracy that made everything harder than it needed to be. Smart, hardworking people trapped by circumstance and a general lack of opportunity. I couldn’t fix Argentina, but I realized something important: America offered hope. It offered opportunity. And I wanted to help people reach it.

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My Own Immigration Story

Somewhere along the way, I fell for a girl from Río Cuarto—beautiful, grounded, and way out of my league. Plan A was to bring her on a tourist visa. That flopped. Plan B was a wedding in Argentina in 2004, followed by a honeymoon trip… to the U.S. Embassy. (Nothing says romance like waiting in line with stacks of paperwork.)

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After a few embassy “hiccups” (they lost some forms, naturally), we finally made it back to the U.S. in spring 2005. Eleven years later she became a U.S. citizen and today we’ve somehow accumulated four incredible kids and four cats who think they run the house.

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Becoming an Immigration Lawyer

After coming home, I graduated from BYU with a degree in History, worked a summer in Puerto Rico, another in San Francisco installing alarms, and eventually made my way to Texas. Like my dad and brother before me, I followed the family tradition of law school—though I took my own path at the University of Houston.

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I couldn’t take any immigration law classes because they were all taught in the evenings by adjunct professors—and I worked all three years of law school. But then I discovered the school’s Immigration Clinic. Students there handled real pro bono cases under professor supervision, and I was immediately hooked. I spent two years in the clinic, even won an asylum case, and that’s when it hit me: This is it. This is what I’m supposed to do.

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Today

Since then, I’ve spent a decade and a half practicing employment-based immigration law. I’ve worked with global tech companies, scrappy startups, and one-person dreamers with a laptop and a plan. I’ve done tours in big firms, small boutiques—even a year in Calgary, Canada (I now speak fluent “eh” and “sorry”).

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But my favorite clients? The investors, entrepreneurs, and creators who are building something new. The ones chasing the same opportunity that first brought my wife and me here.

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Because for me, immigration isn’t just paperwork. It’s people, stories, families, and opportunities.