BusinessTN

Immigration attorney Robert Divine had a perfectly good life in Chattanooga as a member of Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz. He didn't need to give up his substantial salary to become a policy maker in Washington, D.C., for one of the nation's biggest bureaucracies. But that's exactly what he did in 2004 when he accepted the appointment of President George W. Bush as the first Chief Counsel of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the world's largest immigration services agency (housed within the Department of Homeland Security).

Regarding his appointment to the most important government job an immigration lawyer can have, Divine says, "I told the director, 'If you think I'm the right person for the role, I'm willing to do it, but I want you to know what you're getting--I can't stand it when the rules aren't clear because nobody knows what to do, and I'm just going to bug people until the rules are clear. And I also can't stand it when people are chasing their tails, and I'm just going to bug people until the process is efficient.'"

Once in place, Divine set about trying to untangle the nation's immigration laws, many of which are unclear. But when the USCIS director resigned to become ambassador to Spain, Divine was asked to run the entire agency until another Senate-confirmed person was selected. For the next six months, Divine was essentially CEO of a $2 billion, 15,000-employee operation that was, at the time, in the national spotlight. His promotion came right about the time the real debate got started in America regarding whether or not to legalize 15 million American aliens.

No doubt workers in the immigration service were relieved to be working for someone who understood their issues and for whom not every briefing had to be Immigration 101. Divine is diplomatic when asked if such a statement is true. "It was no doubt pleasant for these folks to have someone running their agency who knew their world--who knew their law, policies and procedures. You could get in a little deeper to what needed to get done," he says.

Divine's work in helping move the agency forward could go a long way toward shifting the debate over immigration. After all, a primary argument used by anti-immigration advocates has always been to wag the finger at the inefficient USCIS and question how, if the agency can't take care of the cases it's already got, can it be charged with processing all these new legals and making sure they aren't bad guys? Under director Divine, among other accomplishments, the agency developed a "transformation of agency" plan to completely revamp the agency's technology systems and business processes. Though not yet a completed project because it involves a major acquisition of services from vendors, that work is the basis of a big contract being set up right now to hire an IBM or Accenture to lead that effort. "People are really excited that someone got in there and made decisions," Divine says.

Divine later spent another six months in Washington as Acting Deputy Director of USCIS before returning to practice at Baker Donelson in Chattanooga. He continues to revise and annually update his book Immigration Practice, a 1,600-page practical treatise designed for immigration lawyers.