Over the past 19 years, while Adrian Halpern has lived and worked on the same end of the same narrow, shaded street in the same town where he went to college and law school, the world has come to him.

Photography from the Middle East, paintings from Russia, a candlestick forged from hot iron by one of Mexico's best metalworkers all crowd Halpern's law office on the first floor of a McCauley Street house in Chapel Hill and his apartment upstairs. The signatures on these fine works include the names of some of his clients, people who have come to America in the hope of finding a place for their art.

Halpern specializes in family- and employment-based immigration law. He has handled a number of cases for renowned artists but also has sought citizenship or permanent residency status for computer systems analysts, biostatisticians, scientists and others -- people at the top of their professions, with something to offer an adopted country.

"You wouldn't believe the hoops they try to make us jump through," Halpern said of his dealings with immigration examiners.

Halpern has long known the feeling of alienation.

His father is the son of immigrants from Eastern Europe. His mother came to the United States from Argentina at age 21. His parents settled in Charlotte and raised three children there, all bilingual.

"Growing up in Charlotte in the 1960s and '70s and speaking Spanish was sort of like being from Mars," Halpern says.

He took his first trip abroad at age 10 when he went to Barcelona for six weeks to visit his uncle, a diplomat. At 14, he spent a month in Guatemala. At 46, he has been overseas nearly 100 times. His wife, Vera, is from Russia.

Halpern admits he is fascinated with other cultures but says there are practical reasons to make it easier for those who want to live and work in the United States to do so legally. They could use real names and addresses. They could pay taxes. And they could supplement an American-born work force that is aging out faster than it's being replaced.

Current immigration law is having another economic effect, Halpern says: Quotas limiting the number of skilled workers who can come here from other counties, coupled with a dearth of qualified American workers in some fields, leave some U.S. corporations with little choice but to build operations overseas.

"We have a right to control our borders," Halpern says. "The question should be, 'What makes the most sense for America?' And I think that current immigration laws are broken."