I do a fair bit of immigration work these days.  It’s not all form filling and filing, as the myth goes.  (I wish it were. Wouldn’t that be a great way to make a living?) It’s actually incredibly complicated with the various statutes, regulations, policy manuals and cables to navigate through.  Immigration law has its own caselaw and precedent and its got a language of letters and numbers that will make your head spin.  Ethical issues are tougher to manage as well – as a criminal defense attorney your role is clear:  Defend your client within the confines of the law.  That’s easy.  There really is very little you can’t do or say and you don’t need to tell a client well, you did it so I can’t represent you – there is almost always something you can do, whether its by way of mitigating sentence or just plain old counselling.  In immigration, there are too many people for which the answer is just, I’m sorry.  I can’t help you.

So while most of us lawyers are out here busting our hump to try to get people playing nice in our immigration system, to manuever and contort ourselves to find legal means of legitimizing our visitors’ stay here, there are others who are more than happy to take a buck (or several thousand) without any license to practice law and just fill out forms.  These folks, called notarios, otherwise known as ‘crooks’, offer these form filling services for a princely sum.  When the shit hits the fan, though, you are on your own.

The crooks aren’t so different from the Legal Zooms and Nolos of our current internet world.  Cheaper than a lawyer, but more expensive than doing it yourself.  It gives you the feeling that you’ve got someone who knows what they are doing on the other end  But, really, that’s all you’ve got is a feeling.  You actually won’t have someone who will show up at Surrogate’s court when your will is contested.  You probably won’t have someone to refile your corporate papers when your business filing ends up with the wrong letters on the end (ex: in Maryland if you are a law office, you must be P.C. I doubt LegalZoom knows that.)  Who will you turn to when you need an amendment to your bylaws or want to just ask if your step-children can be included on your I-360?  When you pay for a lawyer, you pay for the peace of mind, knowing that your problem is now their problem.

The notarios are thieves.  They steal money from clients who are desperate enough to pay it.  Usually the people they target don’t understand english and really just want someone who can read and write to fill in the blanks.  These thieves work under guise of “immigration experts” and since they can speak the client’s language and are frequently from their native countries, they are trusted explicitly.  Maybe we can have the folks in Arizona just start recommending them to their unwanted immigrants.  Using a crook/notario is a quick way to get a free flight back home.

I went to see a new client last night, mother’s day.  I went to her house to talk to her about her case.  We’ve got to be in court tomorrow and I’ll ask for more time since she just hired me.  She’d gone to one of these crooks to file her paperwork.  When she called him to tell him what had gone wrong he told her that it wasn’t his problem. 

Now that I’m her lawyer, its mine.