Jayda Cruz focuses her practice on U.S. immigration law and employee benefits. She advises employers and organizations on immigration, employee benefits, and executive compensation matters, helping clients navigate complex regulatory requirements and achieve their workforce objectives. Her practice encompasses ERISA compliance, fiduciary governance, business immigration, and strategic workforce planning.
Business Immigration
Jayda supports business immigration matters for employers, professional sports organizations, athletes, coaches, support personnel, and highly skilled professionals. Her immigration practice includes assisting clients with O-1, EB-1, P-1A, P-1S, and H-1B petitions, with a particular focus on extraordinary ability and sports-related immigration cases. She works closely with employers and beneficiaries throughout the immigration process, developing evidentiary strategies, preparing petitions and supporting documentation, drafting letters of support, and navigating complex regulatory requirements before U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and U.S. consulates. Jayda has experience representing professional soccer clubs, athletes, coaches, and support personnel, as well as engineers, researchers, executives, and other highly accomplished professionals seeking temporary and permanent immigration benefits.
Employee Benefits
Jayda advises a broad range of clients on employee benefits, executive compensation, and fiduciary matters. She assists plan sponsors with the design, administration, and compliance of qualified and nonqualified defined benefit and defined contribution plans, including plan design issues, compliance reviews, participant communications, and plan correction matters under programs offered by the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Labor. She also counsels governmental plan sponsors on federal tax, fiduciary, correction, and compliance issues, including matters involving plan participation, contributions, required minimum distributions, compensation limits, rollovers, and plan-to-plan transfers.
In addition, Jayda advises clients on a wide variety of health and welfare benefit programs, including cafeteria plans, tuition reimbursement arrangements, self-funded health plans, wellness programs, and fringe benefits. She helps clients navigate the complex regulatory landscape governing these plans, including ERISA, the Internal Revenue Code, the Affordable Care Act, ADA, FMLA, COBRA, and HIPAA. Her practice also includes advising fiduciaries on their responsibilities under ERISA, developing compliance policies and governance practices, and negotiating investment-related agreements with service providers. Jayda further assists clients with the design, implementation, and maintenance of executive compensation and incentive programs, including equity-based arrangements, and advises on employee benefits and compensation issues arising in corporate transactions, including mergers and acquisitions.
Prior to joining Robinson+Cole, Jayda was a tax associate in the legal department at a global accounting firm where she assisted companies with U.S. tax-related issues and worked on tax controversy matters.
