Chris Richardson is a former U.S. Diplomat, an immigration attorney, and co-founder of the world’s first remote video immigration consulting technology company featuring former consular officers, Argo Visa LLC. He is also the General Counsel and COO of BDV Solutions, LLC, a Greenville-based immigration consulting company.
Richardson served in Nigeria, Nicaragua, Pakistan, and Spain as a U.S. diplomat. For his service, Richardson won several awards including Meritorious Honors Awards and a Superior Honors Award. He resigned from the State Department in 2018 and drafted an affidavit against the Muslim Ban which was cited by Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer in Trump v. Hawaii. He has advised both Democratic and Republican members of Congress and their staffers in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate on immigration, diversity, and foreign policy issues. Richardson served as the Chair of Pete Buttigieg’s immigration policy committee and worked on the Biden 2020 campaign immigration policy committee. Richardson has been featured in Mother Jones, Slate Magazine, Reuters, NPR, Embedded, All Things Considered, SCOTUS Blog, BBC, Georgia Public Radio, Intercept, and the Atlanta Journal Constitution. He has also been interviewed by the New York Times, CNN and CBS. Richardson has written several well-received opinion columns for the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Slate Magazine, Chicago Sun-Times, The Hill, and the Nation regarding immigration policy and the issue of diversity at the State Department. His column for the New York Times on race at the State Department was cited by presidential candidates and members of Congress as the reason an Office of Diversity and Inclusion at the State Department was needed.
He is a graduate of Duke University School of Law and graduated summa cum laude from Emory University in 2003. He is also the co-author of the Historical Dictionary of the Civil Rights Movement (2014) and lectured on the American Civil Rights Movement at universities and colleges across the globe. Former U.S. Diplomat, Immigration Attorney, & Founder of Argo Visa