Immigration Attorney for CR-1 visa

[MT.R 0]

My husband and I are looking at getting an immigration attorney to help us along with our CR-1 visa. I found Taylor & Associates Law P.C.

https://www.usavisanow.com/spouse-visa-cr1-ir1/immediate-relative-ir-1-cr-1-attorney-services/

I am carious to see if any of you have experience dealing with them or have any other recommendations.

Thank you MT.R

[Boiler 48,036]

Very much depends on the nature of your problem, immigration violations, criminal history, drug abuse etc,

[MT.R 0]

We do not have any of those issues, we are just looking for someone to help us be sure everything is done correctly.

Do you feel it is not necessary to have an attorney if we do not have any one of those issues?

[Boiler 48,036]

This is a DIY site, would not exist if a Lawyer was necessary.

[Cyberfx1024 7,980]

The majority of what a attorney does is pretty much the same thing that you can do on your own if you follow the guides on here. I know from experience because I got a attorney for my now wife's K1 visa. I then filed the AOS and ROC by myself by using the guides on here. If you want to save money and are fairly competent enough by being able to read a simple guide then do itself. It is fairly simple if you have no big issues or problems to deal with.

[Russ&Caro 1,550]

One thing my wife was hoping for when we were filing our documents was whether an attorney could expedite the process. After looking both on Visa Journey and other sources of information, we concluded that an attorney couldn't get it done any faster than we could by doing it ourselves. We did get an Request for Evidence (RFE) when our application was at the USCIS. Theoretically, an attorney might have caught our error in advance and saved us 4 weeks of waiting time, but it hardly seemed significant enough to have engaged and paid for an attorney.

[Jack2107 46]

Hi there, pervious posts may have already answered this for you. But thought I'd add my two cents to the equation.

Both me and my husband spoke to two immigration lawyers and weighed the options up with pros and cons and to be honest with you I would file it by yourselfs. The lawyers we spoke to in the states charged for two different stages. 1st stage for I-130 around $2000 for that!!

2nd stage for AOS and that was around $3700!!

That's nearly $6000 to put together documents that Come directly from me and my husband and we are just paying for the privilege for someone to fill in a few forms and organise the package. We just couldn't justify spending that much money on a lawyer when we can do it ourself and trust me it's very simple!! If you follow the guide on here you will breeze through! And save money!

And if your ever stuck with a question there's tons of info on visa journey and there are a lot of people on here that are more informative than lawyer. The most common misconception is that a lawyer can get it done faster than the public and this is not true.

Save your money and do it yourself ??

Oh and just to add one lawyer in the U.K. Wanted £8900 for a cr1 visa!!!

Even if I had the money and was at the beginning again I would still choose to do it myself.

[HFM181818 750]

Unless you have an extremely complicated case, hiring an attorney to essentially fill out some forms that a precocious twelve year could do is a waste of money. Those charlatans will try and sell on the idea that our immigration laws are complex, but not for this....I've completed a prototype case with the required forms, etc, in less than 90 minutes, which included pasting photos and 'love letters' in the file....there is nothing to it...it's mostly standard questions....yet attorneys will charge upwards of $2500 in exchange for about ten actual minutes of their time and another hour or so of a para-legal's time......and attorneys have NO authority to expedite petition processing, no matter what these sleazebags tell you. Save your money. DIY.

[HFM181818 750]

remember, immigration attorneys act as if they care, but, like TV evangelists, they care about one and only one thing: billable hours ($$$$)....nothing else matters in their lives except the money. They will try to convince you that without their intervention, your case will rot in someone's inbox at USCIS, but that is an outright lie.

[pushbrk 13,860]

Some people are not do it yourselfers. There are also many who lack the necessary skills or dedication to learn to do it themselves. Folks should never assume somebody else has the necessary skills, aptitude and dedication needed, particularly folks who don't yet know if they handled their own case successfully yet.

If you hire professional help, make sure it's somebody who concentrate's their area of service on family based immigration. You'll find the vast majority of immigration attorneys do very little spouse or fiance work, and when they do, they don't bother to update their knowledge to understand how things are working now.

The big money in immigration law is with corporate clients, or people fighting deportation.

Edited March 24, 2016 by pushbrk

[chulo 1]

My husband and I are looking at getting an immigration attorney to help us along with our CR-1 visa. I found Taylor & Associates Law P.C.

https://www.usavisanow.com/spouse-visa-cr1-ir1/immediate-relative-ir-1-cr-1-attorney-services/

I am carious to see if any of you have experience dealing with them or have any other recommendations.

Thank you MT.R

I HAVE AN ATTORNEY SINCE 2014 ATTENDING OUR CASE. IT TOOK AWHILE AND I WAS CONCERN THAT HE WAS SLOW, BUT THERE WAS ALOT TO CONCEDER I LOST MY JOB , ON UNEMPLOYMENT...LIKE TH OTHER PERSON SAID IT DEPENDS ON YOUR SITUATION. WE ARE AT THE DOOR OF HIS INTERVIEW WITH ALL DOCUMENTS AT THE NVC BUT THEY DECIDED THAT THEY NEEDED ANOTHER BIRTHCERTIFICATE OF THAT COUNTRY. SO I WAS ABLE TO GO VISIT MY HUSBAND AND BRING THE COPIED ITEM BACK AND CERTIFIED. REMBEMBER THEY HAD A B. C. SO THEY WAITED UNTILE THE LAST MOMENT....I APPRECIATE THAT NOW BECAUSE WE COULD BE AT THE CONSULATE AND EVERYTHING WOULD STOP...TIME IS PRECIOUS...JUST FYI THE IMMIGRATION HAD MANY CHANGES WITHIN THE YEAR AND THE ATTORNEYS ARE DOING MOST OF THE WORK THAT THE NVC WERE DOING AND CHANGE TO CONTRACT WORKERS LEARNING THEIR JOBS....WE'RE OK NOW HOPEFULLY IN 3O+DAYS HE WILL HAVE AN INTERVIEW DATE AS SOON AS THE DOCUMENT IS SENT BY MY ATTORNEY...THE REPRESENTATIVE TOLD ME THAT I WOULD NOT HAVE PROCESSING RESTARED. IT WILL P/U WHERE IT IS AND IS FINISHED ....HOPEFULLY THIS IS HELPFUL....I CAN GET LONG WINDED. ON YOUR OWN RESEARCH VISA JOURNEY AND GO INTO TOPICS OF THE CONSULANTS AND THE IMMIGRATION RULINGS THAT CHANGE WITHOUT NOTIFICATION....I HAVE LEARNED ALOT SO WHEN I TALK WITH MY ATTORNEY HE IS IMPRESS THAT I AM KNOWLEDGE AND I ASK MANY QUESTIONS....GOOD LUCK

[Sonja83 0]

I also think attorney is a waste of money if your case is not complicated..You could use some agency to help you with the papers, it is a cheaper solution.Prices go from 500 USD and up. However i think this website is a huge help so you can do it yourself. if we have found out this website earlier we would not use any agency.

[JamieEmm 2]

I called two immigration lawyers. The first one was in Sydney, Australia. The lawyer's office told me that it would take close to 2 years to get a visa for my husband. We have been married 12 years, have 2 kids, and he has a previous green card. We have no complicated circumstances beyond trying to figure out if my husband had to officially turn in his green card which was no longer valid because he had been out of the USA for nearly 8 years. The fees were outrageous. And she was overseas for a long time and couldn't work with me for ages. So I then called one of these services where you pay for some time on the phone with an immigration lawyer in the USA. That was absolutely useless. They wouldn't tell me one way or another whether he needed to mail in his old green card along with the appropriate form. In the end I got a lot more help on that from the consulate in Singapore for the cost of a Skype out call. Then I was told that it would take 13-18 months to get the visa. In the end it took less than 6 months! They also told me that people living overseas NEVER get the letters that are posted from the USCIS so it's best to have them as our agent in the USA so we get all of our correspondence. That was completely untrue. I got both emails and letters - every single one that I was supposed to get.

I have done immigration applications four times now - 2 for me in Australia, 2 for hubby in America. Every time successful with no dramas. Yes, it's a lot to keep track of, and I drove myself a little mad going over everything with a fine toothed comb over and over again - but for the USA visa applications, this forum and google have been more than enough to get things done properly. And if you think about it, who is going to pay the most attention to your case? You are, because it's your life, your relationship, etc. I am not saying that there are no good lawyers, and I think if you have complicated circumstances it's probably the way to go. But in a straightforward case, you might as well DIY with a little help from us on the forums and from google.

[Joshua@Tinz 52]

I hired a lawyer because I was afraid of making mistakes, through the whole process the lawyer made several mistakes, time consuming ones that delayed our visa several months,

So basically I wasted $5000 and delayed our case by following her directions.

The thing about lawyers is this, they are not really helping you if you have a simple clear cut case, you are still going to be filling out the same forms no matter what, the lawyer is just going to give you forms to fill out and they will then input that information into the proper documents and mail them off, So right there alone you will delay yourself 2 weeks to a month depending on how efficient they are. Also lawyers do not always focus on just one country so they can get confused , or forget such important things for example, a police certificate from Japan takes 3 months to get, my lawyer recommended I "wait and see" if we get asked for it, I did not wait but it still set us back a month.

Here on this site you can focus on country specific information that is much more accurate then a lawyers opinion because they are too arrogant to open a computer and find the answer, they think they already know everything. My advice, hang out here, start a country specific thread and just go through the process step by step, You have way more knowledge here at your fingertips then any lawyer in the world can offer you.

Unless you have a real issue such as deportation or criminal history and so on.

Good luck

[pushbrk 13,860]

Hiring a lawyer assures nothing. Hiring the professional services of somebody who actually knows what to do and how to do it, is what gives, assurance and peace of mind, and avoids mistakes. The key is to hire the right services, attorney or not.