Rishi Oza
By Rishi P. Oza
Everyday, I speak and meet with clients from around the world asking a variety of questions on a range of immigration-related topics. On a daily basis, I cover topics ranging from F-1 visas, employment related questions for nonimmigrants and immigrant visa holders, citizenship, asylum and even the occasional consultation for someone in removal proceedings.
Regardless of the topic, a common question that I am frequently asked is “Do I need an attorney for this process?” This question has bedeviled attorneys who need to balance the potential pitfalls associated with the immigration field, as well as the needs of their practice (i.e. their business), alongside providing the best advice to a client that serves, not the attorney’s interests, but the client’s interests. The easier answer – it depends.
The truth of the matter is that no one is required to have an attorney represent them in any particular legal matter. A client always has the right to represent themselves (what attorneys call pro se representation). However, as with all professional matters, attorneys bring expertise, understanding and perspective to bear on any situation in which they are involved. I understand what you may be thinking – “This sounds incredibly self-serving. Why wouldn’t an attorney write an article stating that they are needed.” However, I tell all my clients the same thing – you don’t have to have an attorney, but in my experience, it’s usually a good idea.
If you think about this question in the same context as other professionals, the answer makes sense. You can fly a plane by yourself, conduct surgery on yourself and even change your own oil on your car. Nothing about any of these situations requires you to hire a pilot, surgeon or mechanic respectively, but assuming that you don’t have the skills of these professionals (and want to avoid a plane crash, medical catastrophe or replacing your car’s transmission), we generally consider hiring professionals to be the prudent course of action. When you consider substituting the complexity of the immigration system, commonly considered the second hardest legal practice area behind tax law, the benefit of seasoned immigration counsel is well-worth the cost.
Sadly, the complexity of the immigration system does not need to be so. The process of getting a visa or navigating removal proceedings can commonly require a single individual to have to interact with multiple governmental agencies, many of which have no clue what the other agencies do. For example, should a company want to sponsor an IT professional from India for a green card, that company could possibly have to interact with three different governmental agencies: the US Department of Labor (for the labor certification or “PERM” process), the US Department of Homeland Security (for submission of the I-140 immigrant worker petition) and the US Department of State (for issuance of the immigrant visa should the employee be abroad).
Similarly, an individual in removal proceedings commonly deals with the US Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS), the attorneys for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Immigration Courts (EOIR), the first two of which are housed under the US Department of Homeland Security and the Immigration Court as a part of the US Department of Justice. This mishmash of agency authority makes navigating the overall immigration system chaotic and confusing, making the finding of a proper solution exceedingly difficult.
As a practitioner, one of the situations that I find most regrettable is when I have to speak with a potential client that has attempted to navigate the immigration process on their own, only to hit a roadblock or, more commonly, have created a problem. These predicaments are often avoidable, but clients are often unaware of the complexity of the law that governs our immigration system.
These situations often lead to clients spending more on having an attorney fix the problems that are now created than would have been required from the outset; moreover, the commonality of all of these situations is that mistakes cost time and as we all know, time is the only commodity that we never get back.
I’ve had the unfortunate responsibility to tell parents that their child may have to wait another two years before they can immigrate due to mistakes that need correcting.
All of this returns us back to our initial question – do you need an attorney, to which I would answer again the same – it depends. If you feel comfortable with the subject matter and are familiar with the legal requirements for what you are seeking, then you may not need an attorney. Consulting with an attorney, even for a 30-minute phone call, may be money well spent, to avoid making a mistake and costing yourself time and money.
A running joke amongst immigration attorneys is that a functional and semi-intuitive immigration system would eliminate many of our jobs; alas, the federal government keeps me employed by making the system harder to navigate than it should be. Given this complexity, having the right guide be beside you throughout the process is usually worth the expense.
Rishi P. Oza is Partner at Brown Immigration Law, a firm that focuses solely on immigration law; he practices in Durham. [email protected]
