Getting started advice- should I use a lawyer?

[Chilenitaaa 0]

Hello everyone,

I am barely getting started with the K1 visa process and I'm already overwhelmed! I have been debating for some time whether to use

a lawyer or not, and I'd love some feedback from those of you who have successfully completed the process (with or without lawyers).

Here's a brief description of our case:

My fiancée and I met on a trip to Italy in 2007. We have dated ever since and got engaged in October, 2009. We are planning to

get married in May, 2011. We have plenty of proof of our relationship (pictures, e-mails, airline tickets, etc) and have been with

each other in person for over 7 months. I will begin medical school at Harvard this August, and thus, I only count with a student

"income" of $24,500.” Since these are loans, I know I will need a co-sponsor in the process. Due to mine and my fiancée’s school

workload (he's finishing a Masters), we won't have all the time in the world to thoroughly complete the paperwork in time. Unfortunately,

we underestimated the amount of work behind the process. My fiancée lives in the Netherlands, so I don't expect any major issues in

the process.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, as would be attorney recommendations.

Thank you!

[DoneWaiting 15]

I can tell you the following: Lawyers are worthless, they are good collecting money.. Unless you case is a unique, I would suggest hang with the VJ forums and you will be able to get though the whole process.. I paid a lawyer to fill out applications.. gee

Overwelhing? of course it is specially when we know nothing about it [my case then] but there are plenty of people here with knowledge and good intentions..

Start with the guidelines here.. http://www.visajourn...content/k1guide

Edited July 8, 2010 by DoneWaiting

[Mononoke28 137]

Yeah, don't bother with lawyers unless you have a very difficult case because all they do is ask you to fill out the forms, give them the supporting documents and mail it to the USCIS, all of which can be easily done by you.

And yeah, the initial process may be overwhelming but just wait until you have to file ofr AOS.

Diana

[TLJohnson 1]

I just submitted our I-129F a few weeks ago, and it is really not that bad once you start putting everything together. I am an attorney (although not an immigration attorney), and unless you have some special concern about the process, such as a criminal record or something like that, I just can't see why it would be necessary to hire an attorney to complete the K-1 visa paperwork for you. Most all of the information you will have to provide to the attorney eventually anyway, so if you can spare the day it would take to put everything together and make it perfect, I say save yourself a few thousand dollars, scour this website for tips, and DIY .

If you do decide to use an attorney, just be careful and do your research. There are lots of horror stories out there about shoddy immigration attorneys (watch out for general practitioners that just dabble casually in immigration law), so in my opinion it is better to just educate yourself and take control of the process. Save your money for your wedding (especially seeing as you are students)!

Best of luck to you either way!

[Chilenitaaa 0]

I just submitted our I-129F a few weeks ago, and it is really not that bad once you start putting everything together. I am an attorney (although not an immigration attorney), and unless you have some special concern about the process, such as a criminal record or something like that, I just can't see why it would be necessary to hire an attorney to complete the K-1 visa paperwork for you. Most all of the information you will have to provide to the attorney eventually anyway, so if you can spare the day it would take to put everything together and make it perfect, I say save yourself a few thousand dollars, scour this website for tips, and DIY .

If you do decide to use an attorney, just be careful and do your research. There are lots of horror stories out there about shoddy immigration attorneys (watch out for general practitioners that just dabble casually in immigration law), so in my opinion it is better to just educate yourself and take control of the process. Save your money for your wedding (especially seeing as you are students)!

Best of luck to you either way!

Thank you for the advice and best of luck on the process to you as well! May I ask how long it took you to complete the I-129F package?

[TLJohnson 1]

Spread out over a few weeks, I probably spent a solid day or two researching, pulling and reviewing the necessary forms, and compiling the biographical information we needed, getting new passport photos taken, communicating back and forth with my fiance re signatures and his photos and things like that, gathering up the evidence of our relationship that I wanted to send, and drafting our letters of intent and a cover letter. Then I probably spent another day filling in the forms and compiling my fiances documents, labeling our photographs, and pulling the packet together.

I really spent a lot of time researching in advance (although I only found this website right before I filed) so that I was comfortable with the process. There are samples of the letters of intent and cover letter online, so that is a no-brainer. Also, just about any question you run into has probably already been asked and answered ten times already on this website. I think my best estimate would be a solid weekend of pulling everything together (not including transit time for anything your fiance has to send to you, such as documents requiring original signatures).

Just be confident that you are intelligent and you can get through a couple of government forms!

[Dodi 69]

Also, feel free to ask as many questions as you like on here. I used/am using an attorney, but she's made so many mistakes I would have been better off on my own and now wish I'd saved myself the headache and found VJ first.

As a student, your income is limited, so make good use of the campus computer lab/laser printers/copiers and put it together yourself. If you need any help, private messages are always just a click away.

[Rob and Jill 82]

This is what I did to file it myself.

I studied up here for weeks and week before I did anything else. I also went directly to the USCIS website and printed out their requirements in order to compare the two. Then I very neatly bound everything in to "chapters" with a table of contents, made 3-4 copies of it all and sent it in.

My NOA1 and 2 were pretty quick and we received no RFE's. As long as you are both willing to work on it together and pull the things you need together, then the process is easy. You have to do it regardless, so I see no reason why you should spend the money on simply filing a few forms.

If you're going to Harvard Med school, I am 100% postive you can figure this one out

[dakay ♥ 10]

if you pay a lawyer, you will have to provide them information , which means you'll work for them, do not waste your time and money with lawyers, here in VJ you will find lots of information and people that can help you better than a lawyer.

My advise, read, read and read the info in VJ:

K1 guide

K1 flow chart

K1 tips

[TBoneTX 47,491]

Lawyers are worthless

YOUR lawyer may have been worthless, in YOUR instance. Conversely, some are worth their weight in gold. OP, TLJohnson makes sense in this thread -- attend to his counsel.

[Justine+David 218]

Like others have said, it's mostly about filling out forms correctly. All the little minutiae questions about the form can be easily answered by doing a quick VJ search in the K1 forum because they'll all been asked dozens of times.

The other parts of the package that took awhile by their own particular nature for me included:

-Proof of having met (passport stamps, flight tickets, pictures, etc etc)

-Generic statements from each party stating an intent to marry the other, signed.

-Finding the last 5 years of addresses for each person and last 5 years job (I was a college student for most of the past 5 years so it took awhile to remember all my old apartments)

-Passport photos of the US citizen and foreigner

If you guys work on it now, I bet you'll be able to have it all together before August! Tell your fiance to work on the G325A form, signed letter of intent, and passport photo ASAP since she has to mail it to you, cannot fax it to you because it needs an original signature (blue ink preferred).

Good luck! Welcome to VJ!

Oh--and I would talk to parents/friends/relatives NOW about being a co-sponsor. You don't want to end up half-way through the process trying to scramble for one. They have to provide their SSN, proof of tax returns (or assets). Their obligation is that if the foreigner ends up on government assistance, then they can be sued for those particular funds. The obigation ends if the foreigner has a certain amount of quarters of work to their name, the foreigner dies, or the foreigner becomes a US citizen.

[Chilenitaaa 0]

Thank you everyone!!! This is very ecouraging...I do have one quick question though. Like I explained earlier, my "income" are loans provided by the

school, so technically, since I don't claim taxes on it, I won't be having an "official" income at all. Therefore, we'll be completely relying on the

co-sponsorship. Is this alowed? Could this be a potential problem?

Thank you!

[belluco86 3]

The best advice has been given... Unless your case is unique such as criminal case, deportation, overstay. Use VJ guidelines to file a K1 and you will be ok. Read on some of the issues people have had and ask questions. You will get better answers than a lawyer will give you.

[JimVaPhuong 4,864]

A lawyer will (hopefully) have knowledge and experience that could potentially save you some time. For example, they'll know what forms and documents you need to submit with the petition package. In the days before the internet this would have been a huge head start, and would have saved you weeks of going from one government office to another, gathering forms and instructions, and reading various manuals. Now, you can find everything you need on the internet. If you click on the "Guides" link at the top of the page and read the K1 guides then you'll know 90% of what you need to know in about 5 minutes.

What is a lawyer will not know is what information to write on those forms, and whether a specific document will be required from you. They have to ask you for this information. What they usually do is give you a stack of questionnaires to answer. Based on your answers, they use the information to fill out your forms (usually, a secretary or paralegal does this grunt work), and they tell you what documents you need to hunt down for them. You provide all of the information, and you provide all of the documents and evidence.

In the end, you will spend just as much time gathering information, filling out forms, and tracking down documents as you would if you did it yourself.

The odds of a lawyer making a mistake are also higher than if you do it yourself. A lawyer won't know if a form contains any wrong entries unless he compares it, line by line, with the information you provided in the questionnaires. You, on the other hand, could read the form and know immediately if something is wrong. If you decide to use a lawyer, be sure to insist on inspecting everything before they submit it to the government.

[Mithmeoi 29]

Thank you everyone!!! This is very ecouraging...I do have one quick question though. Like I explained earlier, my "income" are loans provided by the

school, so technically, since I don't claim taxes on it, I won't be having an "official" income at all. Therefore, we'll be completely relying on the

co-sponsorship. Is this alowed? Could this be a potential problem?

Thank you!

I don't see why it would. I didn't have an income for the last couple years, only recently was hired but I won't start to earn anything until later this year. So since I can't sponsor my husband, my father is my co-sponsor.

I asked at the embassy about what I have to do for a co-sponsor since I had no real income at the moment the woman didn't even bat an eye. Just told me to make sure my father has proof of being an American Citizen and that I should put on my form that I didn't have enough income to file for taxes and what I expect to make this year with my current job.

Edited July 9, 2010 by Mithmeoi