I met RBG once at an event held at my law school. Her energy oscillated throughout the audience and you could almost feel her intelligence. Her presence commanded the room; it was almost regal. It was an intimidating, awesome, and memorable experience to say the least.
RBG was a true legend. She was one of the greatest women and legal minds this country has ever seen. She was a true champion of women's rights, equal rights, and justice. Her voice will be dearly missed by all.
Rest in peace your Honor.
#rbg #notoriousrbg #riprbg
We are grateful for every opportunity to serve our clients 🙏🏼
Inspiring Iranians
August 4 at 12:30 PM ·
Houtan Yaghmai was born in August of 1985 in Tehran, Iran. His family made the decision to leave Iran in 1988, towards the end of the Iran-Iraq war, as refugees in search of increased opportunities in North America. They initially settled in Toronto, Canada, amidst a large support network of other Iranians and family members who had immigrated earlier that year. This support system allowed Houtan to grow and maintain his deep connections with Iranian culture and further his passion in understanding the plight of many Iranians post-revolution, in addition to immigrants as a whole.
Houtan grew up with his sister Hasti, 18 months his junior, who was born with a rare genetic disease which was diagnosed upon their arrival to Canada by a specialist at Toronto’s reputable SickKids Hospital. Given her condition and special needs, she and Houtan developed a very close bond throughout their childhood that culminated in Hasti moving to live with Houtan in 2014 in Los Angeles. Houtan’s mother, Shideh, moved to the United States at age 16, finished high school stateside, and studied interior design at Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia, and later became a licensed medical esthetician in Toronto. Houtan’s father, Cyrus, graduated from the Tehran University of Medical Sciences as a medical doctor in 1981 and after immigrating, he had to repeat his medical education to be able to get licensed and practice in North America, attending the Medical College of Virginia and completing his residency at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine to become a cardiac anesthesiologist.
As such, Houtan was always inspired and encouraged by his family to study and expand his education in all areas, learning how to read music, play the piano and later the violin, becoming an avid tech geek, and, like many other immigrant children, simultaneously learning multiple languages, specifically, English, Persian, and French through an immersion program in which all his courses from preschool through high school were taught entirely in French. Further, as an Iranian-Canadian, and through the influence of his older cousin Alireza, Houtan developed a love for hockey and the Toronto Maple Leafs, soccer and Iran’s national team (Team Melli), the Olympics, and other international sports. This would, unknowingly to Houtan, become a primary focus of his later work.
Houtan left Canada to attend college in California at the University of California, Riverside, where he received a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration. Always told he was a good advocate and that he had an affinity for argumentation, Houtan began law school at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, California, in August of 2010. During his academic career at Thomas Jefferson, Houtan was granted a Jeffersonian Fellowship for his outstanding academic achievement. He has also served in numerous leadership capacities, including as Treasurer for the Student Bar Association and for the law school's Middle Eastern Law Students Association. Deeply committed to entertainment and the protection of creativity, Houtan focused his legal studies on issues related to intellectual property, and entertainment law. He served as a staff law clerk at Thomas Jefferson's Arts and Entertainment Law Project at the Small Business Law Center, where he has acted as a legal advisor on intellectual property and business-related issues to low-income artists, actors, dancers, writers, musicians, filmmakers, and related non-profit organizations.
In 2012, during his second year of law school and inspired by the true story of his father’s high school, Houtan began producing a feature documentary entitled “Alam High School” (FB: @AlamHighDoc). “Alam High School” turns a lens on the story of a co-ed institution, established in the conservative city of Mashhad, Iran in 1969, which was an elite, advanced, and iconic experimental school never seen before in Iran. The students of Alam High School were taught in English by young Americans who were former members of the Peace Corps. and Iranian professors and students from Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. Ten years later, in 1979, at a time when Iran as a country was undergoing many significant changes and facing an uncertain future, the lives of some of the brightest and best of Iran's future, the students of Alam High School, were also coming to a climatic change. Alam High School, one of the last symbols of the peaceful American-Iranian relations, was ordered to become a detention center for political dissidents after the Iranian Revolution. It soon held captive some of the very same students, who, months or years earlier, were being groomed to be the best Iran had to offer.
In 2013, after graduating law school and passing the bar exam, Houtan moved to Los Angeles to continue his work in entertainment law and film production, and co-founded an independent production company. He worked with Iranian comedian/director/actor, Max Amini, producing his Voice of America talk show entitled “Minutes with Max Amini” (2014), his Voice of America Nowruz special featuring singers Sattar, Kamyar, and Mehrnoosh (2015), and later his stand-up comedy special entitled “Max Amini: Authentically Absurd” (2015) which was recorded at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills and directed by Saturday Night Live alum Rob Schneider.
In the midst of those productions, and with Houtan as the driving force, his film “Alam High School” successfully raised over $70,000 in production funds on crowdfunding site Indiegogo in 2014 which peaked the interest of Sony Pictures Classics, a dominant figure in documentary films, whom later labeled the film “a painful, unknown, and important story” which greatly inspired Houtan and his team to continue developing the project. This included finding more former Alam High School students and teachers to interview, financing and producing additional film shoots throughout the United States in multiple cities and dozens of locations, gathering immense amounts of archival footage, research, transcribing over 100 hours of footage, and much more. Given the delicateness of the subject matter, the vast amounts of material, and the extended timespan the story covers, the film currently remains in post-production.
In 2015, Houtan shifted his primary focus back to law and founded Yaghmai Law Firm, APC (www.yaghmailaw.com). With his interests still deeply rooted in sports/entertainment, his Iranian culture, and his immigrant background, Houtan began practicing immigration law with a focus on extraordinary ability visas, i.e. EB-1 visas and O-1 visas, for athletes, artists, actors, entertainers and other individuals of extraordinary ability. Since then, Houtan has helped immigrants with extraordinary ability from Iran and around the world immigrate to the United States, including athletes who have won numerous Olympic medals, World Championships, and athletes from Iran’s own Team Melli, in various sports, such as, wrestling, karate, soccer, and others.
Through his work as an immigration lawyer helping Iranians and others immigrate to the United States, and as a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), Houtan has been and continues to be a vocal opponent of the current U.S. administration’s unfair, unjust, and racist immigration policies which continue to negatively impact American families on a daily basis. As a member of the plaintiffs’ bar and the Consumer Attorneys Association of Los Angeles (CAALA), Houtan has further expanded his practice to seek justice for injured victims and to act as a voice for those who need it most, like his beloved sister Hasti, who continues to be a daily inspiration and Houtan’s number one fan.
FYI
Justin Trudeau
July 16 at 2:59 PM ·
Update on our border: Non-essential travel between Canada and the US remains restricted. And as we continue to fight COVID-19, we have agreed to extend the current border measures by another 30 days - until August 21st - to keep people in both our countries safe.
Update on our border: Non-essential travel between Canada and the US remains restricted. And as we continue to fight COVID-19, we have agreed to extend the current border measures by another 30 days - until August 21st - to keep people in both our countries safe.
Let's see what's next...
APPLE.NEWS
Trump administration backs down on restrictions for international students — NBC News
After 4 very long and difficult years, the racist and misguided "Muslim Travel Ban" put into place by the previous administration has finally been lifted by President Biden on his first day in office #change #inauguration #presidentbiden #travelban #immigration
