You must chill. You must chill. Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States out of our offices in St. Louis, Missouri, and San Diego, California. That famous quote, "You must chill" comes from one of my favorite teenage movies Say Anything where John Cusak is at a party with a bunch of drunk fools and he has to calm them down. And he says, "You must chill. You must chill." And that is the message that I have for you today at USCIS. I've been seeing something that's been bothering me in some of my consults lately so I thought I'd explain it to you in today's video.
People are filing for immigration benefits by themselves all the time, which is fine. I believe that most people should file for immigration benefits with an immigration lawyer. You might think I'm jaded or that I'm just trying to drum up business. I'm not, but I can see how you might think that But in any event, people are filing for benefits on their own, and here's what I'm seeing, and here's where I want people to chill, to relax, and to take their time.
No, I know that the immigration process is very slow. I talk about it all the time on our videos. And so if you are a short time viewer, a long-time viewer of my videos, you know that immigration takes a really long time, longer than it ever has in my history as an immigration lawyer. So I understand when your case is taking a long time that if you receive a request for evidence, or if you receive a checklist from the NVC, or if you receive any kind of inquiry or documents from the Federal Government on your immigration case at whatever stage it is, USCIS, National Visa Center, embassy, I understand that you are in a big hurry to file that response.
But I had two consults this week with two different people, and for both of them, they had received complicated requests for evidence. One was for a lady who was asked to provide an I944. Now this I944 petition for self-sufficiency, it's a 20 page form that asks for all kinds of evidence and documentation of the beneficiaries ability to earn money in the future.
Now, we have a paralegal on our office, her name is Susanna and Susanna is awesome. I wish I could introduce you to her, maybe one day I will. Susanna is our go-to person on I944's. It takes a tremendous amount of attention to detail to file a proper I944. And the form is complicated, the evidence that you have to submit is onerous and long. There's much they have to file to submit a proper I944. And I talked to this client who was not a lawyer and whose native language was not English, and they turned that I944 around in 48 hours. Now this is ridiculous. It takes us at least two weeks to get a I944 together properly. So to think that a non-attorney immigrant could turn it around in 48 hours, I know that it's crap, I know that it's wrong. And so I wanted to grab her by the lapels through the video and say you must chill, you must chill. So I'm speaking slowly today because I want you to pay attention.
In the other case the person received just a general request for evidence, but it was asking for additional marital evidence. Now let's think this through. This person had filed for an immigration benefit for a green card based on marriage, and had submitted what he or she thought was enough evidence with the initial application. So obviously it wasn't because that's why the request for evidence was issued.
This person responded to the RFE in 24 hours. What is going on people? You must chill, take your time. Now, if you get a request for evidence for marital evidence, that means that you probably filed a very thin case. You need a lawyer. But even if you're not going to use a lawyer, you must chill. You must take your time. Use the days that they gave you. I know that it's slow, but speed is not the most important thing because if your case gets denied you're starting all over and all the time that you spent on it has been lost. So in each of these cases, these people would have been much better off taking a week, taking two, maybe talking to a lawyer and filing a proper response. So slow down and please chill.
Hope this makes sense. If Samuel L. Jackson was here I'd have him drop a couple mf r's, some cuss words, but I can't cuss on these videos, my wife gets mad. So hope you all are well, I hope this video makes sense. If you have questions, give us a call (314) 961-8200. You can email us at [email protected]. Be sure to join us in that Facebook group, it's called Immigrant Home, we'd love to see you in there. We answer questions and have good conversations all the time. Also, we have our YouTube channel that you can subscribe to and you'll get updates whenever we make videos like this one. You can find us on Insta @hackinglawpracticeLLC, and finally most Tuesdays and Thursdays from 12:00 to 1:00 central time we are going live on our Facebook group and on our YouTube channel, answering your questions for free for an hour.
Thanks a lot, have a great day.
