Located in the heart of the downtown Chicago Loop, Maria Baldini-Potermin & Associates, P.C. specializes in immigration law, including complicated cases.  With a focus on seeking justice under the law, the firm strives for excellence in every matter.

Attorneys Maria Baldini-Potermin, Kevin Raica, Eric Berndt, and Gretchen Ekerdt represent noncitizens in deportation defense, family-based immigration, employment-based immigration, asylum, consular processing, waivers of inadmissibility, citizenship and naturalization, federal court litigation and appeals, including petitions for review before the U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals and petitions for writs of certiorari before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Deportation/Removal Defense and

Immigration Consequences of 

Criminal Convictions

A frequent lecturer on deportation/removal defense, Ms. Baldini-Potermin is the author of Immigration Trial Handbook published annually by Thomson West.  She also serves as an expert author-consultant for Interpreter Releases, the leading weekly immigration periodical.  Her article, Past Persecution, Mental Illness and Humanitarian Asylum: Creating the Record to Win the Claim, published in 86 Interpreter Releases 261 (1/26/2009), © Thomson West, is included in the new section on mental health in removal proceedings (4/23/2010) for the Executive Office for Immigration Review's Immigration Judge Benchbook.

Ms. Baldini-Potermin has written extensively on the area of immigration law and crimes.  Her writings include manuals on the effects of criminal convictions for noncitizens in Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, and Wisconsin and articles for the Indiana Defender.  She is the author of Defending Non-Citizens in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin (2009), the definitive work on immigration law and crimes within the jurisdiction of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.  Ms. Baldini-Potermin is also the update editor for Immigration Law & Crimes, by the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, Dan Kesselbrenner, and Lory Rosenberg.  She is the author of a chapter in A Judges Guide to Immigration Law in Criminal Proceedings (American Bar Association, 2004).    

Employment-Based Immigration Cases

Attorneys Kevin Raica and Eric Berndt specialize in employment-based immigration cases.  They have extensive experience with nonimmigrant and immigrant visa petitions and applications before the U.S. Department of Labor, the USCIS and the U.S. consulates and embassies.

Attorneys Raica and Berndt represent employers interested in sponsoring foreign nationals for temporary work visas and/or permanent residency.  In addition to direct immigration services, they also advise employers in establishing I-9 compliance procedures and  provides guidance on documentation and employment eligibility issues that arise in the hiring or re-verification process.

Family-Based Immigration Cases

All of our attorneys handle the various types of family-based immigration cases, including immigrant visa petitions, adjustment of status for permanent residence, consular processing for immigrant visas, joint and waiver petitions to remove conditions of residency, classifications under the Child Status Protection Act, self-petitions under the Violence Against Women Act, and visa petition appeals.