Orlando Ortega-Medina

Attorney at Law (California)
London, United Kingdom
United States Immigration and Consular Law

Orlando is the Senior Associate and founder of Ortega-Medina & Associates. He has been representing clients on a worldwide basis in the fields of U.S. business immigration, nationality and consular law since 1993. Orlando holds US, UK and Canadian nationality and has practiced US business immigration in all three countries.

Orlando travels frequently to consulates throughout the European Union, Canada, and Latin America to personally assist his clients on a variety of visa-related matters. He is also available to counsel foreign enterprises in the establishment, planning and growth of their newly established US business operations, should they choose to locate in the state of California. As of late, Orlando’s clients frequently call on him to assist them in clearing the procedural hurdles of extreme vetting arising from recent travel to Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, or nationality in one of these countries.

In 1991, Orlando received his Juris Doctor degree from Southwestern University School of Law. He also earned a Certification in EU Legal Systems in 1990 from the University of Madrid, and his B.A. from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1988. Orlando is admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court and The United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

Orlando has been interviewed on the Al Jazeera Media Network regarding the Trump Administration’s immigration-related Executive Orders, and has appeared in written publications discussing complex business immigration and EU-USA specific issues. He has been recently featured in The Atlantic discussing the O-1B visa category. Additionally, his articles have appeared in International HR Advisor, Human Resource Professional, National Journal of Human Resources Management, The Canadian HR Reporter, Construction Professional Magazine, HG.org, BritishExpats.com, and EzineArticles.com.

Orlando is also an author of literary fiction. His short story collection Jerusalem Ablaze: Stories of Love and Other Obsessions was shortlisted for The Polari First Book Prize (2017). In 2018, he was named the Marilyn Hassid Emerging Author for the Houston Jewish Book & Arts Festival. His novels The Death of Baseball (2019) and The Savior of 6th Street (2020), both published by Cloud Lodge Books, are available worldwide in print and ebook.  His forthcoming novel The Fitful Sleep of Immigrants will be published in April 2023 by Amble Press.