Qualifications:

• Board Certified – Immigration and Nationality Law, Texas Board of Legal Specialization.

Carolina Ortuzar-Diaz is a Partner in Monty & Ramirez LLP’s immigration division, where she handles a variety of family-based immigration matters and employment-based immigration matters.

Carolina handles immigration court removal proceedings and appeals in circuit and federal court and before the Board of Immigration Appeals, as well as administrative proceedings with U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Carolina has been practicing immigration law since 2009. Her experience includes a variety of family-based immigration matters, including representation in immigration court removal proceedings, handling immigrant and non-immigrant visa processing, consular processing, family-based petitions, citizenship, naturalization, waivers of inadmissibility, violence against women (VAWA) petitions, asylum and the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act. Carolina also counsels employers in employment-based immigration, including nonimmigrant and immigrant visas, permanent residency, and citizenship.

Previously, Carolina worked as an immigration attorney for a busy immigration law firm in Houston, where she represented clients in immigration proceedings and handled all type of family-based immigration matters. She also worked as a law clerk for Abraham, Watkins, Nichols, Sorrels & Friend in Houston. While in law school she completed an Internship for the First Court of Appeals in Houston, Justice George C. Hanks, Jr., in 2007.

Admitted to Practice

• State Courts of Texas
• Board Certified – Immigration and Nationality Law, Texas Board of Legal Specialization

Professional Activities

• Hispanic Bar Association of Houston
• American Immigration Lawyers Association
• Board of Directors of The Alliance

Articles and Awards

• Best Lawyers®, 2024
• Columnist, La Semana (Weekly Immigration Column “La Frontera de La Ley”)
• Foundation for Democracy, “Historical Evolution of the Division of Government Process in Chile,” 1995
• Foundation for Democracy, “General Principles That Should Preside Over a Right to Privacy Law in the Technological Era,” 1996

Education

• South Texas College of Law, J.D., 2009
  • Editor-in-Chief, Currents, International Trade Law Journal
• University of St. Thomas, M.B.A. (Concentration in Finance), 2003
• Catholic University of Valparaiso, Chile , J.D., 1997

Languages

• English
• Spanish