Selecting the Right Immigration Practitioner
Hiring an immigration practitioner is an important decision. If you make a good choice, you should be able to live and work in the United States for the rest of your life. Make the wrong resolution, and you may waste thousand of dollars and the opportunity to obtain the visa you deserve.
The primary role of an immigration practitioner is to develop a strategy that will result in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS – formerly the INS) granting you the visa best suited to your situation and background. Since you are unfamiliar with the law and the practices of the USCIS, it is difficult to know whether the strategy proposed by one immigration practitioner is better than a strategy proposed by another.
You may want to ask the following questions to help determine if he or she deserves your trust and business:
- Does the strategy being proposed make sense to you? You may not be a lawyer, but you are a reasonable, intelligent person! If the strategy doesn’t seem right to you, it may not be.
- Will he or she give you the references immediately on request?
- Does he or she practice exclusively in the area of immigration law? Immigration law is very specialized and the best practitioners focus entirely in this area
- How long has the practitioner been involved in immigration work?
- What is his or her background in the field? How experienced is the support staff?
- What kind of cases has the immigration practitioner handled? Does he or she have experience in, and good reputation with the type of assistance you need?
- Has the practitioner worked with a variety of different ethnic groups? Practitioners who limit their experience to only one nationality tend to propose solutions common only to that group
- Paralegals are an integral part of the practice of immigration law. The top firms only employ legal assistants or paralegals with considerable experience in immigration law.
- Is the attorney a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association AILA? Membership in this organization is a minimum requirement because all the members are kept abreast of the latest developments in immigration law.
Select with care. Your decision might determine whether you can legally spend the rest of your life in the country of your choice.
