Hi,
I’m a US citizen and have been legally residing in Spain with a non-lucrative visa for the past 4 (this would be my 5th) year.  I successfully prepared my initial residency application and all subsequent residency renewals by myself, so I’m pretty familiar and comfortable with completing the standard required forms and supplemental documentation.

This year is slightly different, as my work situation has changed slightly.  Up until this year, I had been pretty fortunate in that my employer allowed me to work remotely from Spain for 50% of the time so that I could maintain my residency.  However, that changed this year and I won’t be able to stay the requisite 6 months in Spain.  I contacted my local Extranjeria office by email and asked if it would be possible to petition for an exemption to this 6-month requirement, and they sent me a link to the law.  I actually read the law, and confirmed with Extranjeria via email that there is the following clause to the 6-month requirement (see below, rough translation:  the 6 month requirement can be waived if you’re outside due to research or humanitarian effort for an officially recognized NGO/non-profit/etc.).
“Para que no se aplique este criterio, el organismo para el que trabaje tiene que ser:  una ong/asociaci?n/fundaci?n inscritas en el registro y reconocidas oficialmente de utilidad p?blica como cooperantes, y que el trabajo que usted realice sea investigaci?n/cooperaci?n/ayudahumanitaria. Si el trabajo que va a desempe?ar cumple estos requisitos, no se le aplican los seis meses.”

Now, I work for a biotech company in R&D, and am involved in analyzing clinical data for several potential new drugs, including some cancer therapeutics (so I definitely qualify for the research aspect).  While the company I work for is not an “ong/asociaci?n/fundaci?n”, I believe they may have a fundaci?n in Spain, so I was hoping to argue that I work for their parent company in the US.

I emailed Extranjeria with this information, and asked whether I could qualify for the exemption and what additional documentation I would need to include.  Their reply was that they can only provide general information and cannot answer specific questions via email.  Boo!  So I went to the Extranjeria Information office in Madrid (apparently, now there’s only 1 office that handles Information requests).  The lady that I spoke with acted as though I was keeping her from going on her coffee break and pretended not to understand (or perhaps refused to understand) anything that I was saying.  Then I even showed her the emails that I had received from Extranjeria, at which point she went from being petulant to having a deer in headlights look.  She didn’t even seem to know what a non-lucrative visa was, and told me that I should contact Extranjeria via email because she didn’t know what to tell me.  I patiently explained that I had come in person because I had emailed Extranjeria and they had said that they don’t answer specific questions, but she insisted that I had to contact them via email, *sigh*.  Seriously, the whole situation felt like an Almodovar remake of a Fellini movie.

/end rant

So, rather than going for another swim in what appears to be a sea of futility, I was wondering if anyone could recommend a REPUTABLE immigration lawyer, and ideally one that has dealt with these kinds of situations in the past. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
R