K1 For Fiance From Thailand To California -- Should I Get An Attorney For Speed Only???
Q: I have a simple K1 request. My Fiancé has never been married. I live in California and have never been married. We have spent about 1.5 months together in the past year. I have filled in the paperwork and starting to assemble my I194 package. I have our photos. I was told the process should only take 1-2 months. But I am not sure this is true. Should I get an INS lawyer to help me with this just to make sure things go as fast and perfectly as possible, or should I proceed on my own. Thank you for your advice in advance.
A: -I'm an immigration lawyer -- if you came to me and proposed to hire me solely because you think its faster, I would probably refuse your case. If I took your case, I would put a yellow highlighter on the boilerplate paragraph of my retainer that I have no control over such things as change in the law, change in INS procedures, INS backlogs, and world events and things I can't even begin to imagine. I like to tell about one of my very first immigration cases -- a man was petitioning for his identical twin daughters -- the I-130's were identical in all respects too -- same info, same supporting documentation, same lawyer, filed at same INS office at same time. One took 21 days and the other 9 months. -Whether you hire an attorney to help you is up to you, but I wouldn't do it just because you think it will speed things up if you are otherwise comfortable with the instructions that are publicly available. An attorney is unlikely to be able to change meaningful how applications are processed (they are opened, the money is taken, you are issued a receipt, then your application goes to a "shelf" -- might be a room, who knows? -- where it waits, until those received earlier are handled), which is what appears to be causing most delays for most people. The 1-2 month estimate used to be a possibility some months ago but not right now and may never be again. Right now the CSC is publishing an estimated time for processing of I-129F's of 205-235 days. But when I filed my I-129F in December 2002 it was 34-64 days. I even have 34-64 written on the NOA-1 I got back from INS. Today is Day 65. And I still don't even know yet if my application was done correctly, since my application is still sitting on the shelf (and I am a lawyer who is pretty good at following instructions). Nobody has even touched it yet, other than to take my check off the top and cash it. The wise immigration lawyers who frequent this