Dr. Marc Anthony Santamaria, S.J.D., is a lecturer at UC Berkeley School of Law, where he teaches LL.M. Legal Research and Writing, and the founding attorney of Santamaria Law Firm, P.C., a San Francisco immigration law firm. He brings more than thirteen years of practice experience to the classroom, having represented clients in family-based immigration, business and investor visas (E-2, L-1, EB-5), employment visas (O-1, H-1B, TN), humanitarian relief (asylum, U Visa, VAWA, SIJS), removal defense, and federal habeas corpus litigation.
Attorney Santamaria utilizes unique firsthand experience with his wife as a marriage green card sponsor under INA § 245. He engineers E-2 Treaty Investor structures compliant with Matter of Ho standards, leveraging an advanced background in tax law to provide “tax aware” cross-border capital tracking and pre-immigration planning. For immigrants detained by ICE, he files bonds, habeas corpus petitions, and temporary restraining orders under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 in the U.S. District Courts for the Northern and Eastern Districts of California.
Attorney Santamaria previously taught removal defense as a professor in the Immigration Law Clinic at San Francisco Law School, where he directed an externship program he developed pairing J.D. students with Ph.D. psychology students to prepare psychological evaluations for asylum, VAWA, and U Visa clients. He also teaches English as a Second Language to beginner-level adult learners at City College of San Francisco and coordinates the Refugee Concerns Interest Group at CATESOL (California Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages).
Attorney Santamaria is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and has been licensed to practice law in California since 2012. His S.J.D. dissertation, “Why Immigrants Benefit the United States Economy and the Legal and Tax Issues Chinese, Filipinos and Vietnamese Face When Immigrating to the U.S.,” examined the positive economic contributions of immigrant communities. He speaks English, Tagalog, and studied Mandarin in Taiwan, and his firm serves clients in Spanish, Portuguese, and Vietnamese as well.
Education
B.A. in Legal Studies, UC Berkeley (2004)
J.D., San Francisco Law School (2011)
M.A. in TESOL, University of San Francisco (2014)
LL.M. in Taxation, University of San Francisco Law School (2015)
S.J.D. in International Legal Studies, Golden Gate University School of Law (2016)