Always interested in languages, Jeff Botelho realized that learning them could help open worlds—to new cultures, relationships, and his own family's heritage. After college, he wanted to be sure he could keep using his language skills and ultimately found a way to merge them with his desire to do something for the good of others. Find out how listening to the language of the heart and having a little faith can help guide you.
Guest Jeff Botelho, Dartmouth ’96, had always been interested in languages. In college, he studied history and Spanish. When he studied abroad and realized that his interest and skill in learning languages could open the world to him, he knew he wanted a career that would allow him to use those skills. He began working in consumer goods in Gillette’s Latin American group, first making his Spanish-speaking colleagues in Boston look good and then working for the company in Mexico. For as much as he was happy living in another culture and as fluent as he’d become, he found the Mexico City too big and so went back to his home town in Massachusetts.
He wanted to use his Spanish fluency, so he taught the language in Massachusetts schools. In time, he found he wasn’t actually speaking Spanish all that much and wanted to use his language skills in a more functional way. He went to law school and decided that he could use his languages practicing immigration law. He worked at a firm for a year but quickly realized that he could do much better at a more reasonable cost for his removal and deportation defense work. He started his own firm in 2009.
Just as language provides a connection to his clients day to day, learning Portuguese provided him with a deeper connection with generations of Botelhos (who had come from the Azores). There also came a time when his faith—which he hadn’t been very aware of for quite a while—became another way to forge a deeper connection to others, to himself, and to the greater world around him.
In this episode, find out from Jeff how listening to the language of the heart and having a little faith can help guide you…on ROADS TAKEN...with Leslie Jennings Rowley.
About This Episode's Guest
Jeff Botelho is an immigration attorney who has been practicing in his own firm in Hollywood, Florida, since 2009. He's fluent in Spanish and English and is also accomplished in his family's own Portuguese.
Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley
Music: Brian Burrows
Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com
Email the show at RoadsTakenShow@gmail.com
Jeff Botehlo: I started meeting people who had really serious problems with immigration. I needed help and I knew that it was never going to get rich doing it. The idea was just, I want to be able to have some degree of independence, help these people. I speak their language so I can use that, you know, and there was a certainly, definitely, a leap of faith there.
Leslie Jennings Rowley: Always interested in languages, Jeff Botelho realized that learning them could help open worlds—to new cultures, relationships, and his own family's heritage. After college, he wanted to be sure he could keep using his language skills and ultimately found a way to merge them with his desire to do something for the good of others. Find out how listening to the language of the heart and having a little faith can help guide you…on today's Roads Taken, with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley.
Today, I'm here with Jeff Botelho and we are going to talk about having the faith and keeping the faith I think. And so, Jeff, it's so wonderful to have you here.
JB: Great to see you, Leslie, and great to be talking to you.
LJR: So, Jeff, I start this the same way every time saying when we were in college, who were you? And when we were ready to leave college, who did you think you were going to become?
JB: Who was I? Very good question. I guess I can start by answering that by saying what I did in college. I played rugby. I was president of my fraternity, studied history. I studied Spanish and Portuguese, but I would say in general, I mean, I was kind of like a fun guy to hang out with and possibly a little bit misguided or meandering. I really didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. Probably was not so focused when it came to schoolwork. I mean, I did try hard and the classes that I took, but I didn't go on to graduate school right away. So, I mean, you could say fun and maybe a little confused.
LJR: Yeah, that sounds about right for a college person.
JB: And where did I think I was going when I graduated? I mean, I think my main goal when I graduated was to get a job. I did not want to go to graduate school right away and not use it. I was lucky enough that my father paid for college and I didn't want to, you know, even though I probably could have been a little bit more considerate in choosing schools and maybe saved him some money, I didn't want him to try to pay for graduate school or pay myself for graduate school and then not going to like, try to go to law school at that point or continue studying history. That was another thing: was I going to keep studying history and try to get a, like a PhD? And I was always kind of a people person. So I couldn't picture myself researching and writing books or thesis is like a, for another three or four years or however long it would have taken to get my doctorate.
So I had to get a job. And so I looked for a job where I could use the little Spanish that I knew coming out of school. And I ended up getting a job with Gillette in their Latin American group. So I was able to get a few interviews. I had a few interviews and I entered into this management program where I was going to work with the Latin American group in Boston with the idea that eventually I would go to someplace in Latin America.
LJR: Yeah. Which you did for a little bit.
JB: I did. I did. I worked for Gillette for about four years. A year and a half in the US part of Gillette, learning like merchandise sales, merchandising, sales planning, you know, and just the sales operations. And then after that, I went into work for the headquarters for the Latin American group and the Prudential Tower.
And my boss was from Argentina. And I had contact with all of the people in the different markets. So I had to start learning the different accents for the different countries and really had to practice my Spanish and figure out what people were saying. Because one thing is what you learn in books and what you learn in the standard Spanish. And another thing is to learn the different accents and ways of saying things in different countries. So Yeah. And my value, there was, I was the one who spoke the best English. So I reviewed all the PowerPoint presentations for my boss, and they would always compliment him on his English and he would come back and say, oh, Jeff, thank you so much. Thank you so much for reviewing my PowerPoint. That was my value inside The Prudential in the Latin America group. And then eventually they sent me to work in Mexico and I worked in Mexico in Monterrey and the Northern part of Mexico for about six to eight months where I did sales. I did direct sales to stores in Monterrey.
And then they sent me to Mexico City where I did like a little bit of everything within the sales group, but that was just a little too much for me. Mexico City was a little bit too much for me. I was 24 years old, but I learned tons. I mean, but that was my idea. My main goal, my personal goal, when I went to Mexico. Okay. I learned some Spanish at school. I had very good basis, good training. I want to become a hundred percent fluent in Spanish, whether it's Mexican Spanish, which is what I learned, or wherever, I want to become 100% fluent or that it would be confusing for someone from there to figure out where I was from.
And by the end, I had met that goal. I mean, it kind of happened because it was painful. I mean, there were three or four months when I first was down there. I would come home from work every day and I would have a headache splitting. Because your brain changes when you have to learn how people actually speak and all of the different expressions. And, but by the time I left about a year and a half later, I mean, I remember one time I got stopped by a cop in the school zone or something. I didn't realize it was a school zone and he pulls me over and he says, you know, you're in a school zone, you got to slow down and what's going on.
And so I explained to him, well, I didn't realize, you know, that we were in a school zone. I'm sorry, you know. And I'm talking in Spanish. What is this, okay like, are you mixed? Are you like your father's Mexican, your mother's American or what? He's like, where are you from? Because you're, you sound like you're Mexican.
And I'm like I'm from the United States. He's get out of here. He was like, you know, have a, have a good day. That was it. So that's kinda when I knew I had made it, you know?
LJR: Oh, that's awesome. So your head's hurting, Mexico City is a little bit too much for you, and then you decide to take a different tack.
JB: Yes. I took a couple of different tacks. It's a meandering. My whole life has been a meandering. The first thing I did, I said, okay, well, I was in Mexico City. You're a mile and a half up, a lot of smog, lot of people, 26 million people. And I'm from the south shore, Massachusetts town of about 35-30,000, a little bit too much for me.
And I came back and I said, what do I know now? I know how to speak Spanish. Okay. So let me go back and I'll go back to my hometown and I'll teach Spanish and maybe I'll coach some football and baseball. So that's what I did. I went back to my hometown. I got my certification in Massachusetts for Spanish and to teach. And within like two months of leaving Gillette, I was teaching summer school in Marshfield, Massachusetts. I started coaching. I taught Spanish for one year there. I coached football and baseball, which I loved. I absolutely loved. And then I realized after awhile that I was kind of losing some of my Spanish; I wasn't speaking as much Spanish and I really didn't want to lose that.
So I went to a fair, I think I went to a fair for to teach it for private schools where I learned about some different private schools. And then, then I got a job working at Episcopal High School in Houston, Texas, doing the same thing. I was teaching Spanish at first. Then I taught world cultures, which is history for ninth graders, coaching the football and baseball.
And I loved teaching. I loved it. But there was a, there was a point where I kind of was trying to decide, what am I going to do? Am I going to keep teaching? I'm going to try to like, get a master's in education or something. And for me, I just kind of felt like I wanted to maybe use my Spanish more in a functional way.
And I had an idea that I thought I might want to help immigrants because people in Mexico had been so great with me when I was down there. And I wanted to kind of do a good job where I can, you know, make the transition for people easier. And so that was an idea that from back in the day, I had no idea what being an immigration lawyer was all about, but I just, that was kind of like this idea, you know?
And so I applied to law schools after three years teaching down there, I applied to law schools, got like a 75% scholarship to this small school down here in Miami, St. Thomas. So that was going to make a difference in terms of how much debt I would have to take on, you know. I had to decide between there and a few other schools, including University of Miami, which was offering a lot less. And so it would have been a lot more, I would have had a lot more debt coming out. So I came to St. Thomas, you know. I went to St. Thomas and study there the three years of law school. I did pretty well. I mean, you would hope that I would do well, but I worked hard and I did well. Yeah. And then I worked for a couple of firms when I first got out.
And then after about two years, I was working at a firm and I left after about three months and I said, I'm going to try to do this on my own.
LJR: The immigration practice and immigration.
JB: Yeah. I had done some civil litigation from the plaintiff's side for employment stuff. I worked for them for that firm for, they were in Fort Lauderdale. I worked with them during law school and then for one year after and then decided that I wasn't the suing kind. I wasn't great at suing people. It wasn't really like my, it wasn't really in my DNA to be, you know, filing lawsuits. And so I decided to take a job in an immigration firm to learn more about it, even though I had had some experience during law school, I had interned with a place. And so I had, I worked for two different firms. And then finally, after the second one, I said, okay, I'm going to try to do this on my own.
LJR: That's a big leap when basically three years before that you weren't really sure what immigration law was. It was just an idea.
JB: Yeah. It was a big leap, you know, what helped me? I mean, it was like, it was one of these firms that has kind of an awful reputation. They have a reputation for just kind of bleeding people dry with how much money that they charge. But the thing about that firm is it was removal defense. It was deportation defense. And so I started meeting people who were in, had really serious problems with immigration, you know, and needed help. And because I was exposed to those people, and then I started going to immigration court, which is an administrative court—it's not like a real article three court—but I really, I liked it, going to court. I liked making the arguments in front of the judges, immigration judges. I liked, you know, the clients for the most part. I thought that they were honest people who were working hard. And when I saw how much, how they're kind of getting exploited by this other big firm, I said, well, if I can just pay attention to their cases, if I can give them good service and let them know that they have one lawyer who is, who knows what's going on with their cases. I think even if I charged like a quarter of what these other people charge, I mean, I can make a living and they'll be happy and I can provide a good service to them, you know? And that was the idea, the idea wasn't like, I mean, I knew that I was never going to get rich doing it.
You know, that wasn't the idea, [it] was just I want to be able to have some degree of independence, help these people. I speak their language so I can use that, you know, and there was a certainly, definitely a leap of faith there. Because it wasn't just, it wasn't like I had a bunch of money saved up because I had worked for like some big firms and had put away $50,000. I mean, I had nothing at that point. I mean, I probably had 500 bucks in my bank account. I spent like $250 on a printer. I needed a printer. And it started out of the house. We had to get, we had to put some phone lines in the house I was in. I was at this little apartment. It was like an apartment building with no insulation.
So we started the office and had wood floors and, you know, Hollywood, Florida had like 14 windows on this. We're on the second floor, 14 windows. It was like 85 degrees in there. We had window AC units. We didn't have central AC. My wife has a picture of me like sitting, sitting at my desk in my underwear ‘cause it was so hot. So that's how we started, you know? And then after about three months you know, I think I had a few clients who came with me from the other firm that I was with. After a few months, I got a very tiny office in downtown Hollywood. It was like a closet. I had a view of the hallway. I had a window to the hall. And then finally we went to the one that, where it had a view of the street. And then we moved into a, like a little, we were at first I shared some space with another attorney, a criminal attorney. And then finally, a couple of years ago, we were able to buy, you know, a small office. Nothing big, but we have enough space for the that's my assistant and my wife who works with me. It's been, it's gonna be 12 years in July, July 15th.
LJR: Wow. And you certainly have made a living for yourself and done a lot of good and I'm sure there is no shortage, sadly I think, of clients for you, right? And with all the changes daily.
JB: Yeah. Yeah, there are a lot of clients. There's a lot of potential clients.
There are a lot of minutiae, a lot of little, little things to try to follow up on cases. I have not expanded like I've seen some other immigration firms do. I've kind of chosen to keep it small and know what's going on with all my cases. My assistant who's from Ecuador, she does help me a lot. My wife helps me with making sure that there's the payments are coming in and that our bills are being paid. But all of my clients—and I wouldn't recommend this as a marketing strategy, I'm not saying that this is the way you need to do it—but all of my clients have come from word of mouth.
Yeah, we haven't changed the phone number in 12 years and the phone is always ringing. And I think that one of the things that we do that I have decided to do is that we pretty much screen everyone before we have them come in for a consultation. We screen everyone and we try to figure out if there's going to be something that I can do for them before we even have them do a paid consult. Now probably business-wise, it doesn't make much sense, but for me, I feel better about it because I don't have people going in there and paying, unless there's something, at least even if it's just to get a copy of their file and review it, you know, that's something that I can do for them.
LJR: Yeah. And I can imagine those first couple of years after law school and having. You know, spoken Spanish at high school level, like it might've been rocky. But now you're completely fluent. And I see actually you say you're trilingual with a little Portuguese. Does that come from home? There's an H in the middle of your name.
JB: Yes. E-L-H-O is always going to be a Portuguese last name and pronounce Leo, but in the United States, Pronounced hotel because we, you know, it would be a little bit confusing for people to say, look Dalio. You know my father is a hundred percent Portuguese, but doesn't speak any Portuguese. My grandparents were both born here in the United States in new Bedford, Massachusetts.
My great grandparents came from San Miguel Azores. So the Azores, San Miguel Azores. They all came from one island. And my grandmother spoke some Portuguese, she spoke good Portuguese. I learned it because I was interested in figuring out like maybe how my ancestors spoke, you know, but I've always liked languages.
I mean, in Spanish class, in high school, I always liked it. And for me, when I went to Spain—because I studied abroad in Spain—once I started meeting the people and making friends, I realized that it just completely opened up the world to me. Like I felt I could talk to anybody. I could learn so much about different ways of life.
To me, it was just so cool to be able to open up the world and be able to talk to different people and learn different things. One of the coolest things that I learned like in Mexico, you know, you would talk to people from all different educational levels, like people who had it, wasn't like you had to be talking with somebody who was the upper crust or whatever
Like you're talking to regular people in the street, they would all have the greatest stories and the funniest, you know, just expressions and so clever. So like ha. And the poorest people are the happiest people you ever met, you know? And so, you know, I think learning a new language can be so cool. You know, it just opens up your world, but it takes work. I mean, it takes a lot of work. I really liked it. So it didn't seem like much work to me, but I thought it was, it was awesome. And Dartmouth was the beginning of that. That was the, that was one thing about Dartmouth that really, they did a good job at.
LJR: Yeah, for sure. Even if we had to get up way too early to go to those drills.
JB: Oh, yeah, you were half asleep during those things.
LJR: Maybe it's the brilliance of it. You're just kind of getting it in your sleep.
JB: Yeah. It became like a reptilian reaction, like, you know, just to answer right away, you know, the change of the verb.
LJR: Exactly. So Jeff, not only this kind of language, opening the world to new ways of thinking and being, and tying back to your own family culture and that sort of thing, you have told me about your kind of religious upbringing and how you're finally coming back to that.
JB: Yeah, for sure. I mean probably around the time I was 28, I actually was married first when I was 28 and I actually had to go through this whole process of an annulment because when I married my current wife, I had to wait three years because I had to get divorced and then go through an enrollment process and then get married in the church, which we were able to do in 2013.
But when I was 20, yeah. And I was preparing for this, the first marriage. It didn't end up working out. I had to answer questions from this priest and this in South America. And they asked me questions about how God had worked in my life. Yeah. You know, it kinda made me think about stuff that I really hadn't really thought about it, you know, consciously before that time. But then I started, you know, to think about it and I've had some experiences in my life. I am not like by any means perfect at all or any kind of a saint, but I have had some experiences where I realized that I made decisions that were not necessarily selfish, that we kind of thinking of something bigger than myself and what I immediately wanted that God, for lack of a, you know, for lack of a better term, you know, encouraged me.
I had a mystical experience. One time I had a mystical experience. So when I was in Houston, I had a girlfriend who I really loved who had basically told me that if she was gonna stay with me, that she would not have any kind of a relationship in her church, she wouldn't go to church. She was a Jehovah's Witness. And at a certain point I was going to, you know, have her move up to Houston with me and everything. And there was a part of me that said that this is just wrong. I mean, if I'm not going to be able to marry her in her religion or, and she won't be able to call it debate a relationship with God, however, she feels that that's the way to do it. That is just not right. You know? Cause I will be acting as an obstacle to her relationship with God, which is, you know, really important.
And I mean, you're talking about a guy who was not really thinking about this stuff, but it just, there was something about it that just made me realize that it was a wrong thing to do. And, I mean, I broke up with her. I broke up with her and before she made that decision and it like almost killed me, you know, it was like one of those things where it was so painful to me, it went against everything that I felt like that I wanted and I had to stick with it. You know, I had to follow through with it. For the good of everybody, you know. And not long after that, I was going for a run. I had finished a run in the park in Memorial Park in Houston. And I was kind of going through this like hellish time, you know, and I hadn't experienced, I had a, for lack of a better word I mean, mystical experience where I felt a force, like I was walking after I had run a forest, kind of just go right through, through my whole being. The only way I can describe it was like a feeling of love. Like the force of love. I felt like it was like the force of creation and it was like a consoling feeling. It was like it was like God telling me, you know, “It's okay. You know, you're doing the right thing and I have some great things in store for you.” You know, that type of thing. It wasn't, it wasn't like God spoke in my, you know, in my ear, like you know, like some, some people say, God told me this, like with specific instructions, it was just this this encouragement.
And it was like a light in my life. It was like a memorial in my life that there's something bigger than all of us. And it was a push for me to learn more about my religion and spirituality and to try to grow and to try to cultivate that, that spiritual connection to God in a more consistent way. So that was the beginning of it. I think that was probably when I was around 26, 27.
LJR: And that's when you're teaching, but have this idea of the immigration law in the back of your head.
JB: I was teaching and I was in my personal life, honestly, a little bit lost. That's the truth, you know, and I was not, I wasn't being consistent with any kind of religious routine. I wasn't, I would go to church every once in a while. Kind of always in my mind being like, what's this all about? Like, I know I was brought up Catholic. I did CCD, but completely fell away from it. As I got older, you know, between college and the first few years after school
And now, I mean, I learned a lot. I mean, I, yeah, I, don't—not to get into any of the political stuff because I don't think of it as a political thing at all. I think that, you know, religion can be a good structure to cultivate that relationship with God. I think that we're all called to be ourselves in the world, to be a word spoken by God in the world and to share love with other people, especially the people or you know, in the worst situations, keeping in mind that, you know, this life is temporary. You know that, especially with COVID, we've realized that, you know, this is, this could be, you never know when, when could be your last day, you know, so we have to plan for the future.
And it's not just about thinking of the reward that you're going to get. Hopefully you'll go to heaven, you know, but to live life in a fuller way, not just for ourselves and for what we can get from one day to the next, but to open ourselves up, too. You'll be happier.
LJR: Yeah. Yeah. And it sounds like you've been able to do that and align not only that personal life, but your professional one and that you are doing something bigger than yourself for more than your own needs and desires. This is you're part of a much bigger plan, if you will. So I think you're doing it right.
JB: Thanks, Leslie. I appreciate that. On a good day that's what you say. On the bad days, you're going crazy and saying, what did I, what have I gotten myself into on a good day? You know, you realize that.
You know, you just have to keep pushing forward and always, you know, ask God for help, you know, and don't be afraid to admit, you know, that you can't do it all. You can't do it by yourself. You need that strength. You need that holy spirit, you know, that, you know, to help you to do a hard job. Yeah.
LJR: Yeah. Well, you're, you're making it look a little easy and that fit you're in the right place for the right time. And so I'm sure we can all thank you for your service and thank you for sharing this story with us.
JB: Sure. Well, thanks so much. It was a pleasure, Leslie.
LJR: That was Jeff Botelho, an immigration attorney who's been practicing in his own firm in Hollywood, Florida since 2009. He's fluent in Spanish and English and much more proficient in his family's Portuguese tongue than I am.
As Jeff noted, language can open up the world. And I think the same can be said of story. I'm so appreciative of the classmates of mine who've been sitting down with me to share their stories on this podcast. I'd also be grateful if you could help spread the word about the show to others, either through leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, or just asking a friend to join me, Leslie Jennings Rowley, for future episodes of Roads Taken.