Should I get immigration advice from a non-lawyer? Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States at our office here in St. Louis, Missouri.
I found myself this morning trying to find one of my old YouTube videos and so I ran a couple searches in YouTube and one thing that surprised me was there are a lot more people making YouTube videos than there were when I started. I think a lot of people have figured out that it's a great way to connect with potential clients, but I was troubled by couple things that I saw and that is that there seemed to be YouTube channels that have a lot of subscribers and a lot of YouTube views by people who aren't lawyers. The people making the videos are not lawyers. They may have gone through the process once and they may have some chat board. But man, this seems to me like a really bad idea.
I saw one video where the person was just flat out giving bad advice. You really need to be careful with who you're listening to on YouTube. You want to make sure that the person is experienced, that they know what they're talking about, that they're a licensed practicing immigration lawyer, that they're not just dabbling, but most importantly, that they are a lawyer. I've seen lots of websites where people aren't lawyers and I just don't know why anyone would spend any time watching those videos. And I'm not trying to make you watch my videos more or anything like that. I'm just really concerned for you and I want you to make a good decision and get good advice. Just because one guy brought his wife over from the Philippines doesn't mean that he thereafter becomes an expert in family based overseas visa immigration. It's just ridiculous.
I would dig down and deep and see who are these people that you're listening to. And I would advise you to only listen to immigration lawyers and ones who have experience dealing with the kinds of cases that they're talking about in their video. If you have questions, give us a call, (314) 961-8200. You can email us at [email protected]. Be sure to join us on our Facebook group, which is called Immigrant Home. And if you like this video, we ask that you please share it out on social and subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you get updates whenever we make videos just like this one. Thanks a lot. Have a great day.
