Where to Find Legal Help
What is a qualified nonprofit agency?
Qualified agencies have lawyers and/or specialized staff (called BIA reps) who can help with immigration cases
Do I have to pay the nonprofit to help me with my immigration case?
Help from a qualified nonprofit is free or low-cost for low-income people. If you use a private lawyer, you will have to pay the lawyer’s fee.
Will it cost money to talk to a lawyer?
You may have to pay for your first meeting or “consultation” with a lawyer. You should ask about consultation fees before making an appointment. Talking to a lawyer does not mean that they will accept your case.
How do I find a private lawyer if a nonprofit can’t help me?
You can search for a lawyer who knows about immigration law at the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s website.
How much will a private lawyer charge me?
First Appointment: Most lawyers charge for the first appointment (consultation) separately. It’s your chance to get to know the lawyer and see if they can take your case. Before you meet with a private lawyer, ask how they charge for the first appointment.
Restoring the Rule of Law Through a Fair, Humane, and Workable Immigration System
The immigration debate in America today is nearly as broken as the country’s immigration system itself. For too many years, the conversation has been predicated on a false dichotomy that says America can either honor its history and traditions as a nation of immigrants or live up to its ideals as a nation of laws by enforcing the current immigration system. Presented with this choice, supporters of immigration—people who recognize the value that immigrants bring to American society, its culture, and its economy, as well as the important role that immigrants play in the nation’s continued prosperity—have traditionally seized the mantle of defending America as a nation of immigrants. By doing this, however, rather than challenging the dichotomy itself, supporters have ceded powerful rhetorical ground to immigration restrictionists, who are happy to masquerade as the sole defenders of America as a nation of laws. The fundamental problem with this debate is that America is, and has always been, both a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws. Debates over a liberal immigration policy actually predate the start of the nation itself; they infused the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, America’s founding document
Indeed, it is precisely because these two visions of the country are intertwined that America cannot be a nation of laws if those laws are antithetical to its history and ideals as a nation of immigrants. Put another way, the U.S. immigration system can, and must, recognize both the need for movement and the need for defined borders; it must have clear guidelines but also clear guardrails; and it must live up to the best of the nation’s past while working for its present and future.
This report sets out a framework for immigration policymaking that brings together the two visions of America, with the goal of building a fair, humane, and well-functioning immigration system in which the rule of law is restored. Additionally, it makes the case for why immigration proponents can and should reclaim the rule of law narrative frame from immigration restrictionists who frequently misappropriate the term to drive law and order policies that demonize immigrant communities and communities of color and only worsen the dysfunctionality and cruelty of the current system.
The report begins by laying out what the rule of law is, how it has been distorted by opponents of immigration, and the degree to which the current immigration system makes a mockery of American history and ideals—of an America that is both a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants. The report then outlines the emergence over a period of years of the extralegal immigration system that exists today. Next, it illustrates that under this broken system, immigration policy has fluctuated between two poles: on the one hand, relying increasingly upon administrative discretion alone to save the system from itself, and on the other, relying on maximum enforcement of “the laws on the books without apology,” as former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Acting Director Thomas Homan said
The inadequacies of the former, and the abject cruelty of the latter, have contributed to a growing sense among some policymakers, as well as many in the pro-immigrant advocacy community, that the entire enforcement apparatus must be unwound. Certainly, enforcement reforms are necessary, as the following sections of this report explain. But the move to reject enforcement entirely—even in theory—only fuels louder calls for maximum enforcement, which then strengthen calls for abolition, ad infinitum. It is time to break this cycle of extremes and build an immigration system that is workable and humane and that the public broadly believes can—and should—be enforced through rules that are fair and just
Immigration
Wherever in the world you wish to live, work or employ people, our highly effective team of immigration lawyers can help.
Withers is a worldwide law firm with immigration attorneys located across 17 offices,
Whether you are a business or an individual, our immigration solicitors will carefully listen to your needs and concerns, and advise on the most effective means of achieving those objectives. We understand that immigration law is a complicated topic, which is why we’ve attempted to simplify the subject here by answering some of the queries you may have.
Of course, if you want more information on immigration rules and legislation and how our team of expert lawyers can assist you, please do not hesitate to get in touch and we’ll do everything in our power to help
When do you need an immigration lawyer?
You may wish to enlist the services of an immigration solicitor to guide you through any number of scenarios. For example, you may represent a company seeking to hire foreign employees, you’re someone hoping to attain citizenship overseas or you are part of a family that has been separated and wishes to be reunited.
How do I find a good immigration lawyer?
You can benefit from the skills and expertise of a Withers immigration attorney by getting in touch with one of our many offices around the world
Find Legal Services
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services provides free resources to help guide you through the application, petition or request process
Anyone is allowed to give you this type of limited help, and may charge for it. This person should only charge you a small fee and should not claim to have special knowledge of immigration law and procedure.
If you are not sure what immigration benefit to apply for, or which USCIS forms to submit, then you may need immigration legal advice from an authorized service provider. Only authorized immigration service providers can help you beyond basic preparation or translation of forms.
Authorized immigration service providers are:
Representatives accredited by the Department of Justice (DOJ)’s Office of Legal Access Programs (OLAP) and working for DOJ-recognized organizations; and
Attorneys in good standing who are not subject to any order restricting their ability to practice law.
Authorized immigration service providers are allowed to:
Give you advice about which documents to submit;
Explain immigration options you may have; and
Communicate with USCIS about your case
Immigration Lawyer and Judge
I found immigration law quite by accident in 1976, the summer between my second and third years of law school. I responded to an ad for a part-time law clerk. The small law office was near school, paid well, and had nice support staff, so I took the job, barely knowing what the daily work would be. The field of immigration law was so small at that time that my law school only offered one, semester-long immigration law course every other year. It was not offered in the one year I had left before graduation. I have never taken an academic immigration law class, but rather learned my trade from generous practitioners who gave up their Saturdays once a month to teach free seminars to new practitioners. It was from that perspective that I developed a profound respect for immigration lawyers, so many of whom freely shared their knowledge in the hope of ensuring that quality legal services were offered to the immigrant community.
For me, the daily practice of immigration law was akin to love at first sight. It was the perfect mix of frequent client contact with fascinating people from all walks of life and all socioeconomic backgrounds that made me feel as if I was travelling the world; and a combination of social work and complex legal puzzles that intellectually intrigued me. As I became immersed in the field, I became totally hooked by the compelling stories behind my cases, as well as the complicated legal strategies that many cases required. At the time I began my career, I did not understand why immigration lawyers were generally ranked only slightly above ambulance chasers. My experience allowed me to interact with brilliant lawyers dedicated to helping their clients, often with little acknowledgement and meager remuneration.
When I began to practice and tried to explain the basics of immigration law to interested legal friends, it became clear to me that the statutory structure of this field of law was quite unique, but fairly sensibly built on general parameters of who would be a benefit to our country and thus should be allowed to find a way to legalize their status; and who were the bad actors who should not be allowed into the country or allowed to stay even if their initial entry had been legal. It struck a balance between family reunification and business and labor needs. There was even a category for industrious, pioneering individuals to come without sponsorship so long as they were able to support themselves financially. In short, it seemed to me to be a logical balance, with fair criteria to limit legal status to deserving, law-abiding people. Some of the hurdles that had to be overcome — for example, to test the labor market to protect US workers where one wanted to immigrate as an employee, or lengthy quotas that resulted in separation of families of lawful permanent residents (LPRs) — were clunky and cumbersome, but on the whole the system seemed to work fairly rationally.
While some aspects were frustrating and individual immigration officers sometimes seemed inflexible or even a bit irrational, I do not remember the legal community who helped immigrants being tormented by draconian twists and turns in the law on a daily basis, which is how it has seemed lately. When someone was in deportation proceedings, there was the possibility of showing that, after having lived in the United States for more than seven years as a person of good moral character, if one’s deportation would cause oneself or a qualifying US citizen (or LPR) spouse, parent, or child extreme hardship, one could qualify for suspension of removal and eventual permanent resident status. There was also the possibility of qualifying for withholding of deportation if one was more likely than not to suffer persecution if returned to one’s homeland if one had fled a communist country or certain specified geographic areas. Yes, the preference quotas could be problematic, but all in all, it seemed to me at that time that most people who wanted to regularize their status could carve out a reasonably achievable path towards their goal, while the bad actors who were sent home deserved that fate. Every so often there were sad cases of nice people who could not find a category that allowed them to stay, but somehow it just did not seem as harsh a result for so many people as it does lately.