On Thanksgiving, many people take stock: what worked this year, what turned out differently than expected, and what cannot stay the same.

In migration it is the same: it is not just about “having a visa”, but deciding what place you want your life project in United States to occupy in 2026 and what legal steps you are going to take to get there.

Today the context is competitive: every year, around 140,000 employment-based immigrant visas are approved, within a universe close to one million new permanent residencies, which makes employment categories especially disputed.

At the same time, most Green Cards are still granted through family, and up to 50,000 visas per year are allocated through the diversity program.
In that scenario, these 7 legal decisions can make the difference for your 2026, covering investment, talent, employment, family, and corporate structure.

From temporary visa to residency plan

The first decision has to do with the core question: do you want to keep chaining temporary visas together, or do you need a plan that actually talks about residency? Many people live comfortably with a work or investment visa, but every renewal comes with the same feeling: what happens if the rules change, if the company stops sponsoring, if the officer demands more evidence?

Others, instead, sit down with their attorney to design a multi-year route: maybe today they are on H-1B, L-1 or a similar category, but the real goal is to prepare an EB-2 NIW, an EB-1 for extraordinary achievements, or an employment-based green card. The shift is not only legal, it is mental: stop thinking in terms of “surviving the next expiration date” and start thinking about where you want to be, in migration terms, in 2026 and 2030. That clarity is what turns each filing into a step inside a plan, and not into an emergency reaction.

Investment and structure: it is not just “entering the market”

Thanksgiving usually coincides with fiscal year-end, partner meetings, and accounting adjustments. For the international investor, the question is not only “do I enter the market or not?”, but “under what legal vehicle, with what type of entity, and with what migration strategy?”.

Visas such as E-2 or E-1 allow you to live in and operate a business in United States, and investment-based residency programs require minimum amounts and job creation. At the same time, the way you structure your company – LLC, corporation, partnership, trust, family holding – impacts your liability, your taxes, and your migration options.

It is like deciding whether your team will play as a club, a franchise, or a national team: the players may be the same, but the rules change. Someone who buys a business in their personal name, without tax or estate planning, can end up exposed to lawsuits, double taxation, and difficulties proving the legitimacy of their funds. The same project, structured through an appropriate LLC, clear shareholders’ agreements, and alignment with the family and estate strategy, opens real doors to investment processes and to future residency.

Talent and employment: from résumé to evidence file

For those who live from their professional, scientific, athletic, or artistic talent, the Thanksgiving question may be: does my track record exist only on my résumé, or also in a solid evidentiary file?

In categories such as EB-1, EB-2 NIW, O-1, or P-1, the winner is not the one who “does the most”, but the one who best documents what they do. Publications, awards, project leadership, service as a judge, contracts in professional leagues or relevant productions: all of that exists in real life, but does not always exist in a case file. Many very strong professionals arrive at the first consultation with a typical phrase: “I have a trajectory, but I do not know if that counts as extraordinary ability.” What is usually missing is not merit, but organization: gathering letters, impact metrics, reviews, press coverage, and evidence that what you do has national or international reach.

It is like a well-edited sports documentary: statistics, key plays, and testimonies do not appear by chance, someone selected them. Deciding that 2026 will be the year you start building your talent dossier – even if you file the petition later – can be the difference between continuing to accumulate scattered achievements or starting to build a real case.

In the employment arena, something similar happens. Many people spend years on H-1B, L-1, or TN without asking themselves the uncomfortable question: “What is my company’s long-term plan with me?”. Scrutiny over employment-based petitions has increased: more requests for evidence, more attention to the real conditions of the job, more detail in the description of duties. For someone who is already inside the system, that context can be a threat or an opportunity. It is a threat if you only think about renewing status every so often. It is an opportunity if you work with Human Resources and the legal team on a concrete plan to transform that employment relationship into a residency path: starting a PERM for EB-2 or EB-3, assessing whether the role fits a future EB-1C as an executive, reviewing whether the profile could also qualify for talent-based categories.

Family, assets, and a 360 migration project

Family remains one of the most important paths to obtain residency. Every year, hundreds of thousands of family petitions are filed, and approvals remain high for spouses, parents, and children of citizens. But not all family relationships have the same timelines or stand in the same lines. Spouses, parents, and unmarried minor children of citizens do not compete for annual caps; adult children, siblings, and relatives of permanent residents are subject to preference categories and the timelines set by the Visa Bulletin.

That is why one of the most important points in any year-end review is to define whom you are going to petition first, who is at greater risk of “falling behind in line” due to age or other circumstances, and how that strategy is coordinated with other processes in the family unit. On Thanksgiving, families gather around a table; using that moment to have a realistic conversation about timing, priorities, and documents is a much more powerful decision than it seems.

Alongside family issues are corporate and wealth-planning decisions. More and more migrants – and business families – combine their migration project with entrepreneurship, real estate purchases, creation of investment vehicles, and partnerships with local partners. And yet, they do not always review whether the structure they are using today is the one that best protects them tomorrow. Type of entity, shareholder agreements, liability for debts, coordination between the structure in their home country and the structure in United States, use of trusts or wills for succession planning: all of this is often postponed “for later”. The problem is that the business grows faster than the structure. It is like building a ten-story building on the foundations of a one-story house.

The underlying decision is to stop seeing each filing as a separate piece and start building a 360 migration plan. Most real migration stories are not linear: one person arrives as a student, later moves to a work visa, and eventually combines talent with a job offer; another starts with investment and later decides to file family petitions; a third moves between several countries before consolidating residency. If you look at each stage in isolation, it may seem improvised; if you look at it with perspective, you see that there were strategic decisions along the way… or that they were missing.

Ending the year with intention, not just gratitude

Using Thanksgiving as a turning point means sitting down to answer simple but profound questions: what do I want to have changed in my migration situation by Thanksgiving 2026? Am I in the right category, or would it make more sense to explore talent, investment, or employment? Is my family integrated into the plan? Are my companies and my assets aligned with my migration strategy?

From there, the attorney’s job is not to “suggest a standalone filing”, but to help draw a multi-year roadmap and place each process at the right moment. In the end, Thanksgiving is not just a date on the calendar, but an opportunity to decide what you want to be grateful for next year: whether for having stayed afloat with renewals, or for having taken concrete steps toward stability, legal security, and a coherent project in United States. Laws, policies, and governments can change; what should not remain static is your strategy.

At LOIGICA we work precisely at that intersection between investment, talent, employment, family, and corporate structure. If this Thanksgiving made it clear that you need something more than renewals and isolated filings, this is the moment to turn that reflection into a concrete plan.
We suggest a legal and migration diagnostic focused on 2026, where we review your current situation, your residency goals, your business and family reality, and map out a realistic roadmap together.