Help with deciding if we should hire an Attorney or do the entire process ourselves

[oasis1701 0]

Hello

I would like this community to give me some advice whether I should hire an Attorney or not.

We do have a little bit of a special situation so that's what's has me a little bit concerned.

We're both totally blind, but we are able to work with computers with screen reading software. I live in Iran and my girlfriend lives in the US.

We've been online dating since a year ago and we've met each other, outside of the US, on April of this year, 2023.

We do have thousands of voice messages in between us and some text messages in between, and many many call logs on whatsapp and discord, but i am unsure about how to provide this sort of evidence when  preparing our i129f package. I am also not sure if we're supposed to let them know if we're blind so the interviewer is aware.

I've been looking up attorney prices and they cost around 2000-4000 dollars, just for the k1 visa process, excluding   government fees. This will add up to my expenses of travelling to turkey or the UAE for my interview  and it's going to be very expensive for me.

Please let me know if you have any advice for us

Cheers

[powerpuff 5,906]

Welcome to the forum.

 

Most of us here have done the process without an attorney but we also put a lot of time into research to file correctly.

 

While relationship evidence can be beneficial for certain applicants who will be going through what we call “tough consulates”, it is not what the I-129f will be adjudicated upon. It’s the evidence of physically meeting within the last 2 years before filing the petition. To clarify, you did meet in April in person and if so, can you present evidence of that such as boarding passes and passport stamps? 

 

The best thing to do is familiarize yourself with the instruction to I-129f, it’s a separate document and can be found on USCIS.gov.

[Ontarkie 13,917]

Since I do not know how well those reading softwares are at being accurate. You can always test them out using the guides here on VisaJourney and having someone you can trust go over the forms and see if they match to what the software says. 

 

The other option is to use a service rather than a lawyer. Visajourney has a list of affiliates under the tab Ask a Pro. 

[oasis1701 0]

13 minutes ago, powerpuff said:

Welcome to the forum.

 

Most of us here have done the process without an attorney but we also put a lot of time into research to file correctly.

 

While relationship evidence can be beneficial for certain applicants who will be going through what we call “tough consulates”, it is not what the I-129f will be adjudicated upon. It’s the evidence of physically meeting within the last 2 years before filing the petition. To clarify, you did meet in April in person and if so, can you present evidence of that such as boarding passes and passport stamps? 

 

The best thing to do is familiarize yourself with the instruction to I-129f, it’s a separate document and can be found on USCIS.gov.

 

Thank you for your response. We do have photos, stamps, tickets and hotel reservations. In a lot of the guides it's mentioned that call logs and emails are also required, though perhaps as not important as the evidence that we've met.

 

12 minutes ago, Ontarkie said:

Since I do not know how well those reading softwares are at being accurate. You can always test them out using the guides here on VisaJourney and having someone you can trust go over the forms and see if they match to what the software says. 

 

The other option is to use a service rather than a lawyer. Visajourney has a list of affiliates under the tab Ask a Pro. 

 

One worry that i have with these services, is that they might put us on some sort of a queue and do the process on our behalf at a slow pase, but perhaps i should consider them. Can we trust them with our documents?

[IWander 581]

36 minutes ago, oasis1701 said:

Hello

I would like this community to give me some advice whether I should hire an Attorney or not.

We do have a little bit of a special situation so that's what's has me a little bit concerned.

We're both totally blind, but we are able to work with computers with screen reading software. I live in Iran and my girlfriend lives in the US.

We've been online dating since a year ago and we've met each other, outside of the US, on April of this year, 2023.

We do have thousands of voice messages in between us and some text messages in between, and many many call logs on whatsapp and discord, but i am unsure about how to provide this sort of evidence when  preparing our i129f package. I am also not sure if we're supposed to let them know if we're blind so the interviewer is aware.

I've been looking up attorney prices and they cost around 2000-4000 dollars, just for the k1 visa process, excluding   government fees. This will add up to my expenses of travelling to turkey or the UAE for my interview  and it's going to be very expensive for me.

Please let me know if you have any advice for us

Cheers

This is a DIY site.  The overwhelming majority here have done it successfully themselves.

[SalishSea 16,775]

When you get to the interview stage, you’ll be able to ask for any type of accommodation you need related to being blind.   I don’t think it’s relevant to the petition stage.

 

Using a visa service or attorney will not cause extra time for your overall case, but being from Iran is very likely to, especially with only one visit.

 

International relationships are very expensive.   

[Ontarkie 13,917]

1 hour ago, oasis1701 said:

 

One worry that i have with these services, is that they might put us on some sort of a queue and do the process on our behalf at a slow pase, but perhaps i should consider them. Can we trust them with our documents?

Using a service is less costly, no issues with your documents. At least I have not heard of that complaint on here before. 

As mentioned already this is a DIY site and if you feel your reading programs are spot on I would do it yourself.

Regardless of a lawyer or a service you still need to check things and be on top of your process. Both lawyers and some services have screwed things up on ppl. You need to be 100% on top of it. None of the others will care as much as you. 

[Boiler 43,446]

On one occasion I helped friends now they were not blind but had not paid attention to what they were doing.

 

I think if you have someone who is meticulous to help you you do not need a lawyer

 

Might need a joint sponsor 

[oasis1701 0]

I have read the i129F instructions and from what you guys are saying, it's not needed for me or my fiance to mention that we're blind. I have no idea why both attorneys that i talked about told me that we need documents stating that we're blind.

[Boiler 43,446]

Not relevant

 

K1 has issues and most people recommend going the marriage route. Some of the issues are not relevant for you but it is still Iran 

[Marieke H 2,314]

Do you have someone who can help you fill out the forms and make sure no fields are accidentally skipped? While the forms are fillable PDFs, I don't think that they are very screen reader accessible, so it might be good to have some help just so you know the forms are filled out correctly. That doesn't necessarily need to be an attorney though, it can be anyone you trust. 

[TexasRafael 102]

20 hours ago, oasis1701 said:

Hello

I would like this community to give me some advice whether I should hire an Attorney or not.

We do have a little bit of a special situation so that's what's has me a little bit concerned.

We're both totally blind, but we are able to work with computers with screen reading software. I live in Iran and my girlfriend lives in the US.

We've been online dating since a year ago and we've met each other, outside of the US, on April of this year, 2023.

We do have thousands of voice messages in between us and some text messages in between, and many many call logs on whatsapp and discord, but i am unsure about how to provide this sort of evidence when  preparing our i129f package. I am also not sure if we're supposed to let them know if we're blind so the interviewer is aware.

I've been looking up attorney prices and they cost around 2000-4000 dollars, just for the k1 visa process, excluding   government fees. This will add up to my expenses of travelling to turkey or the UAE for my interview  and it's going to be very expensive for me.

Please let me know if you have any advice for us

Cheers

Well for financial reasons with the cost of a lawyer, we opted instead of using a company that helped us fill our all our forms and also reviewed them for accuracy as well as all the content to assure at least from the submission point of view all was ok.  These companies are far cheaper than an attorney and I have seen reviews on them that are from the no good to the excellent.  I can only speak to my experience with them for our K-1, Adjustment of Status and CR1. They did a great job on all three instances and I never received a ROE.  You may want to look them over.