My job is not to tell you what you want to hear.
Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer, practicing law throughout the United States out of our offices in St. Louis, San Diego and Washington, D.C. This is a video I've been wanting to shoot for a while now. I am not going to tell you what you want to hear. I am not going to give you the answer that you want. I'm going to tell you the truth. So I've had multiple situations lately where I've been talking to people, either clients that we took on, or people who are thinking about hiring us, or even past clients, who want me to tell them what they want to hear. And I'm not going to do it. As Dana Carvey used to say, when he was pretending he was George Bush, President Bush 41, "Not gonna do it, not gonna do it."
I am not going to tell you what you want to hear. Let me give you an example. Had a guy that we filed a lawsuit for. We got him a Green Card. It had been delayed. He got his Green Card based on employment, but he had previously filed an asylum case and he was asking whether he could go back to his home country. Generally, if you get asylum, it's not a good idea to go back to your home country, because you swore to the federal government that you were going to be persecuted if you go back home. And now, if you get your Green Card based on employment, and you say, "Oh, well, I didn't really mean that," or "I didn't really have to do that," then that's going to be a problem.
So this guy wanted me to say that everything's okay, yeah, go ahead. In fact, he had talked to his employment Green Card lawyer and his employment Green Card lawyer said it was safe. Now, it's interesting. He asked me also if I thought it was safe. The reason that's interesting is because I think he knew internally that it wasn't a good idea for him to go back to his home country, but he wanted assurances. And he wanted me to say that was all right. I didn't say it was all right. And then he pushed back. Then he said, "Well, my other lawyer said it was okay and I got it based on employment. So why isn't this okay, Jim?" I'm like, "Dude, you do what you want, but I'm going to tell you the truth. I'm going to tell you what I think will be the immigration consequences of your poor decision."
That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to do it in my consults. I'm going to do it on my show. I'm going to do it on this YouTube channel. I'm going to do it whenever I'm having the chance to interact with people. My job is to tell it how it is. My job is to speak the truth and to let the chips fall where they may. Whether you hire us or not, I don't really care. Whether you follow my advice, that's up to you. I don't know why you would talk to a lawyer or pay for a lawyer or hire a lawyer and then not listen to them. But you might be surprised, people do it.
I'm not in the game of making you happy. I mean, I'd like to have our work make you happy. I'd like to get you the immigration benefit that you want. But when it comes to answering your questions and telling you how things are. If I look at a case and I think you have a 10% chance of winning your case, I'm going to tell you have a 10% chance of winning your case. I'm not going to tell you that you have a 90% chance of winning your case. Give me money. That's the last thing I'm going to do.
So we've actually been turning down cases like this forever. This is a bedrock philosophy of our firm. That if you're going to hire me, I want you standing here next to me. I want the two of us to be on the same page, so that you understand the stress that I'm under trying to get your case approved. I want you to know that your case is a long shot. Or I want you to know that your case is not a long shot. I want you to be comfortable and happy and safe, but I also want you to be going into this with your eyes wide open. I don't want to fool anybody. I don't want to trick anybody. There are too many people that need my help, that will listen to me. And I'd much rather work with them and have them educated and smart and knowledgeable about their case, than just trying to grab an extra 3,500 bucks or an extra 5,000 bucks. It ain't worth it to me. As my wife would say, "It's not worth our law licenses." I would never do that. And I wouldn't do that, because it's wrong. I wouldn't do that, because it's unethical. And I wouldn't do that, because I want to do what's best for you and I want us all to be on the same team. All on the same page.
If you want to join our page, come to our Immigrant Home Facebook group. We're answering questions in there and we're talking about immigration issues every single day. You know we have our YouTube channel. You can subscribe to it and get updated whenever we make a new video. If you need to call us 314-961-8200, and you can email us [email protected].
Thanks a lot. Have a great day.
