Most of what's happening in immigration right now isn't showing up in the headlines. In our first full episode, we sit down with two women who've spent decades in the trenches of immigration law: Heather Cruz, owner of Sivaraman Immigration Law, and Meghan Deutsch-Blanco — one focused on employment-based work with universities, medical practices, and rural schools, the other on families, humanitarian cases, and citizenship.

Together they walk us through the story you're not being told — the Ukrainians whose work permits aren't being renewed, the Venezuelans losing Temporary Protected Status, the surprise $100,000 H-1B fee, and what happens when the people who came here "the right way" wake up to find the rules changed overnight.

Get comfortable, take your shoes off, criss-cross applesauce, and let's get into it.

Guests Meghan-Deutsch Blanco (deutschblancolaw.com) and Heather Crews (sivaramanlaw.com) counsel individuals and businesses from around the world in immigration law cases.

Legal Magnolias is a podcast from Magnolia Legal in Durham, North Carolina — hosted by Sonya Linton and Maggie Davis.

Follow the show on LinkedIn and Facebook. Learn more about the firm at magnolialegal.com.

Enjoying the podcast? Please leave us a review — it genuinely helps other women lawyers find us.

Produced by Sara Hofman (McNeely Web Design)

Welcome to Legal Magnolias — a podcast about the women lawyers taking up space, one conversation at a time.

In this quick prologue, hosts Sonya Linton (estate planning attorney) and Maggie Davis (real estate attorney) — law partners at Magnolia Legal in Durham, North Carolina — share the origin story of the show. It starts at the North Carolina Association of Women Attorneys dinner, where Dean Nikia Davis lit them on fire with a challenge: stop waiting for permission, and take up the space you've earned. She held up an image of a pregnant Statue of Liberty, knee-deep in the muck and still lifting her flame, and asked the room: what is your flame?

That night — plus Sonya's signature "yes, and" — turned into this: a Season One of deeply nerdy (never boring) conversations with feminist legal voices doing exactly what Dean Davis called out. Taking up space. No asking permission. No apologies.

So get comfortable, take your shoes off, criss-cross applesauce, and let's get into it.

New episodes coming soon. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss one.

Legal Magnolias is a podcast from Magnolia Legal in Durham, North Carolina — hosted by Sonya Linton and Maggie Davis.

Follow the show on LinkedIn and Facebook. Learn more about the firm at magnolialegal.com.

Enjoying the podcast? Please leave us a review — it genuinely helps other women lawyers find us.

Produced by Sara Hofman @ McNeely Web Design

Music by Everyday Knife Fight | Chapel Hill, NC