God and a Good Immigration Attorney: Four Important Considerations in Selecting Your Immigration Attorney

Immigration is a maddeningly complex and counterintuitive area of law. In addition to being complicated, immigration law involves dealing with a bureaucracy manned by government officers that are often poorly trained and almost always indifferent to the intricacies of individual cases. More than one client has come to me at their wit’s end and confessed: “I finally determined that the only way I was going to get through this is with the help of God, and a good immigration attorney.” Please consider the following in selecting an attorney to help you through the high stakes maze of immigration:

1. Meet your prospective attorney in person. Email and telephone communication are great mediums for exchange of information, but immigration cases are very personal and should require in-person meeting at least at the initiation stage to make sure your attorney is a good fit. Make sure you ask the questions that are important to you, and pay attention to how the attorney responds. Does the attorney listen to you? Or do they appear more intent on moving you out of the office so they can get to the next person waiting? Does the attorney look and act professional? While you are at the attorney’s office, look around. Is the officer professional? How are employees dressed? Is the office a professional workplace?

2. Do a bit of research. Before meeting a prospective attorney, research them. There is a lot of information out there. Google is a great resource. You should also look on websites such as AVVO.com that provide information on professionals including client and peer endorsements. Each attorney should also be admitted to a state bar. You can review the state bar’s webpage to see if the attorney has been disciplined for improper conduct. Finally, any immigration attorney who is serious about practicing immigration law should be a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA). Go to AILA’s website at aila.org to see if the attorney is a member.

3. Avoid the dabbler. Avoid “full-service” attorneys that claim to specialize in many areas of the law. Many attorneys who do “a little bit of everything” do not excel at any one area of law. The same is even truer when that one area of law is the ridiculously complex immigration law. You need an attorney that focuses on your type of cases to insure that you have an experienced attorney that can help you.

4. Don’t assume. An expensive attorney is not always a good attorney, and a good attorney is not always expensive. I have had consultations with individuals who were previously with another attorney, and who had hired that attorney because: “Since they were charging so much, I thought they must be really good.” This is simply not the case. Many bad lawyers charge high fees. The reverse is also untrue. Just because an attorney is a good, well-known and visible attorney does not mean that they are expensive.

Armed with your faith that comprehensive immigration reform on the horizon, do not wait, prepare yourself now by selecting a great immigration attorney with a wealth of experience and knowledge to guide you through the immigration process. By using the guidelines above you cannot go wrong.

If You Are An Immigrant (even a US Citizen), Here Are 9 Things You Should Know

Are you a Naturalized U.S. Citizen, Lawful Permanent Resident, Visa Holder, or an Undocumented Immigrant? We recommend you take the following steps to protect yourself in our current version of America. The last couple of weeks have reminded immigrants, even naturalized U.S. citizens, that they were not born in the United States. Our office has received countless phone calls, emails, and social media messages from people worrying about what their family’s future in the United States holds. Most people want to know what they can do now to protect themselves from what promises to be a wave of anti-immigration activity by the federal government. Trump's Executive Order on Interior Enforcement has some provisions that should make most Americans shiver. We recommend the following actions for each of the following groups: Naturalized U.S. citizens. In particular if you have a foreign accent, and you are traveling within 100 miles of any US Border (including the oceans

Seven Reasons Why the Georgia Legislature Should Repeal HB-87

Recently the Alabama Attorney General called on the Alabama State Legislature to repeal parts of Alabama's horrid anti-immigration law ( HB 56), because of the "unintended" consequences of the bill (frankly, what happened was not unintended). Because of the similarity between the two laws, Georgia's Speaker of the House, David Ralston was asked whether Georgia Legislature would repeal part or all of HB 87, Georgia own anti-immigration law. HB 87 has caused almost a half a billion dollars in damage to the Georgia economy (along with untold suffering in Georgia's immigrant communities) without any noted or reported positive effect. Speaker Ralston plainly stated that the Georgia Legislature would NOT do anything to repeal HB 87 . While it understandable why a politician would not admit that a pet bill he shepherded and pushed through the state legislature was simply bad law, it is also clear that Speaker Ralston is facing a challenge on his RIGHT in th

Why is USCIS Taking So Long to Renew DACA Work Permits?

If the calls to our office are any indicator, there are thousands of DACA recipients whose work permit applications were filed at least three months prior to expiration, who are still waiting for their renewed work permits. Without renewed permits, these individuals lose the right to work legally, the right to drive, and may once again accrue unlawful presence. The DHS published a notice in October 2014 advising DACA recipients that they could file their request for extension up to 150 days (5 months) prior to expiration. As with all things government, very few of the DACA recipients, who tend not to frequent government websites, knew about the memo and many did not file so far before expiration perhaps thinking that extending a work permit was a like extending a drivers license, its is done in a few minutes. As an experienced immigration lawyer will tell you, the USCIS does nothing quickly, and certainly does not worry that a person may lose their job or their driver's licens

Musings on Immigration

Search This Blog