Complaints Rise Against Immigration Lawyers

[peejay 327]

Complaints Rise Against Immigration Lawyers

Complex Statutes, Criminal Schemes Heighten Concerns

By Henri E. Cauvin

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, January 7, 2007

Complaints against immigration lawyers working in and around the nation's capital are rising, say officials who investigate allegations of attorney misconduct.

Last year, the D.C. Office of Bar Counsel received 59 complaints about immigration lawyers, up from 49 in 2005 -- when, for the first time, immigration law drew more complaints than any other specialized practice area.

The bar counsel office is finalizing 2006 totals for other categories, but complaints about immigration law appear likely to rank near the top again.

Such a distinction is no small feat in a city flush with lawyers and no small worry in a region long established as a destination for immigrants, particularly those from Africa and Latin America.

"There are a lot of unhappy immigrant clients out there, and some of them have very good reason to be unhappy," said D.C. Deputy Bar Counsel Elizabeth A. Herman, who has handled immigration complaints for more than a decade.

From the simply confused to the unquestionably criminal, bad lawyers have become a concern for the immigration bar and for the nation's immigration tribunals.

Federal sanctions have been rising in recent years. Established in 2000, the bar counsel at the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the Justice Department branch that oversees U.S. immigration courts and the Board of Immigration Appeals, disciplined 47 immigration lawyers last year and 54 the previous year -- up from 22 in 2000.

"You have a very vulnerable population," said Jennifer Barnes, who has been the bar counsel for the immigration review office since the position was created. Many immigrants, she said, don't speak English, and few understand the statutes and regulations that are second perhaps only to the tax code in complexity. "And you have attorneys out there looking to take advantage of that vulnerability," she said.

Perhaps the most notorious Washington area immigration hustler in recent history is Arlington lawyer Samuel G. Kooritzky, who was imprisoned in 2003 after he was convicted of engaging in a massive fraud. Kooritzky's firm, Capital Law Centers, specialized in applying for state labor certifications, which businesses use when they cannot find a U.S. citizen for a particular job. An immigrant can then use a certification to apply to the federal government for a green card.

Kooritzky's firm submitted thousands of fake applications for labor certifications without telling the businesses they were being used. He charged immigrants $8,000 to $20,000 for the service and raked in millions before the fraud was discovered. Kooritzky received a 10-year sentence.

The breadth of Kooritzky's criminal enterprise is hard to match, but there are some contenders. In November, a few were in court in the District.

A federal judge sent a Northwest Washington lawyer, Mohamed Alamgir, to prison for more than three years. From 1996 to 2003, Alamgir filed hundreds of false labor and immigration forms as part of a scheme to obtain permanent residency for immigrants by claiming they had jobs awaiting them in the United States, prosecutors said.

But there were no jobs. In some cases, Alamgir paid employers who agreed to participate in the scheme. In others, he put up friends or relatives as employers. And in still others, he mingled fake applications with legitimate ones. In all, the fraud took in more than $2 million.

A D.C. Superior Court judge jailed another lawyer, Richard A. James, who, despite having been disbarred, continued to practice immigration law. Given a suspended sentence in 2002 for flouting his disbarment in 2000, James was ordered not to practice. But he did, working out of an office on I Street NW where one of his specialties was helping foreign physicians immigrate to the United States. He's serving an eight-month sentence for contempt.

But most of the wrongdoing that keeps bar counsels busy does not rise to the criminal level.

It is the missed deadline, the unreturned phone call, the obviously overlooked opportunity that frustrate many eager immigrants and prompt a large share of the complaints. Such lapses might be less grievous in other legal arenas, but immigration law is stringent, and immigration tribunals are exacting in their application of it, say lawyers who practice before them.

That is why bar counsel offices such as the District's have made immigration law a priority. "The consequences for missing a deadline are draconian," Herman said. "In civil court, if you miss a deadline, you just file a motion for more time. In immigration court, you can't do that and expect a good result."

Some aggrieved immigrants file complaints. Some have no choice but to file in order to ask an immigration judge to reopen a case. But many never do, being unaware of their rights or reluctant to exercise them for fear of further complicating their situation, advocates for immigrants say.

Complaints can take months or years to investigate and resolve. Documents must be gathered, transcripts of proceedings might have to be ordered and lawyers must be given a chance to respond.

When D.C. bar counsel Wallace E. "Gene" Shipp Jr. elects to seek a sanction, his lawyers have to try the case before a Board of Professional Responsibility hearing committee, then argue it before the board, which ultimately makes a recommendation to the District's highest court, the Court of Appeals.

In 2005, for example, the court upheld a reprimand for a lawyer who had failed to file an appeal that his client had requested after the client was denied asylum and then neglected to tell his client that the appeal had not been filed; the lawyer was in a dispute with the client over how much of a $625 fee had to be paid up front.

Bad lawyering carried consequences for Fanny Saavedra and her family, they said. Born in Bolivia, Saavedra has been in the United States illegally for more than a decade, since she overstayed a tourist visa, was arrested in a workplace raid and ordered deported.

After her husband, Rene, also of Bolivia, won permanent residency in 2000, Fanny should have been right behind him in line for a green card, said her current attorney, the Rev. David Brooks. But their attorney at the time said that Fanny could not piggyback on Rene's residency and would need to wait until he became a citizen.

The lawyer was wrong, Brooks said. But not until last year, as Rene was preparing to become a citizen, did they learn that they didn't have to wait.

The couple's three children -- ages 3, 7 and 9 -- were born in the United States and are citizens, and Fanny Saavedra's teenage daughter, born in Bolivia, was able to gain permanent residency in 2002 as Rene Saavedra's stepchild.

In her own Gaithersburg home, only Fanny Saavedra is in the country illegally, haunted by the memory of the raid that led to her deportation order. Even the news that her case has been reopened and will be heard by an immigration judge this month has done little to quell her anxiety.

"It's like trauma for me," the 40-year-old housekeeper said. "I'm afraid, really afraid. I don't want to leave my kids."

But the idea of filing a grievance seemed like asking for more trouble when the family was focused on legalizing Fanny Saavedra's status. "We didn't make a complaint, because we didn't want any more legal problems with our situation," Rene Saavedra said.

In a field dominated by solo practitioners and firms of two to three lawyers, even conscientious ones can find it hard to keep up with changes in the law and the strict demands of immigration courts.

"A lot of people get into this practice and they mean well, and they get overwhelmed -- they get totally overwhelmed," said Michael Maggio, whose Dupont Circle firm, Maggio & Kattar, has one of the area's biggest immigration practices.

Last year, the American Immigration Lawyers Association created a practice and professionalism center to provide guidance for lawyers navigating immigration law, as more are entering the immigration field. The association has grown from fewer than 4,000 members in 1994 to more than 10,000. Only New York and Miami have more members than the Washington region, which has about 800.

When a lawyer's lapse costs an immigrant whatever opportunity he or she had, the aftermath can be heartbreaking.

"No matter what we do to show the lawyer did wrong, [the immigrant] may still be deported," Herman said, drawing on her experience with the D.C. bar counsel office. "It's more than frustrating. It's tragic in some cases. They may be separated from their children. They may be deported to a country they haven't lived in since they were an infant. Their whole lives are turned upside down."

Fanny Saavedra wakes up with such fears every day, despite her attorney's confidence that she'll be allowed to stay. "My husband, he always supports me," she said. "Whatever happens, we'll be together. If we go back, we're going to go back, all of us."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...7010601214.html

[isleta521 5]

Our Imm. lawyer from 1 to 10 was a low 4. But then my divorce lawyer who I had to fire for another semi competent one was a ZERO !!