Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States at our office here in St. Louis, Missouri. In today's video, we're talking about people who are stuck in administrative processing. They have a spouse or a fiancé overseas in an embassy, maybe in Morocco, maybe Islamabad, maybe some other difficult embassy, and they can't get any answers, and they've spoken to their attorney about possibly filing a writ of mandamus, or an APA, a violation for unreasonable delay, or both, in a federal lawsuit in federal court.
The lawyers oftentimes tell the people, "Oh no, you just need to keep waiting," or they tell the lawyers to call the ombudsman, or call the National Visa Center, or to call their senator. The lawyers will not discuss or even entertain the idea of suing them. When people come and do a consult with me, they're surprised when I tell them that you need to sue and that all those other things don't work to get the case moved.
Now, I'm not going to presume to speak for all immigration lawyers or to presume that I know more than other immigration lawyers about your case, so if you have an immigration lawyer, we want you to stick with your immigration lawyer.
We don't want to take over your case. We just want to file the lawsuit. In certain circumstances, we can't take over the case. It's separate from the representation on the lawsuit, but usually if a lawyer is telling you not to sue, I suspect that in many cases it's because they don't know how to sue.
Most immigration lawyers are not barred in federal court. They haven't been admitted to federal court. They don't know how to file a lawsuit. They don't know how to use the PACER system, and this is not to say that we are better than those lawyers. This is to say this is what we do every day. This is what I spend all my time doing. I'm not handling that many cases anymore. Actually, USCIS or State Department cases, I haven't filed a case at the National Visa Center or ran a DS-260 or a DS-160 in a really long time. I was reflecting on that the other day.
But filing lawsuits is what we know how to do, and that's what we're good at. We've filed hundreds and hundreds of these lawsuits now, and I find them very fulfilling. The point of the matter is, is just because your lawyer says you shouldn't sue doesn't mean that you shouldn't sue. We can work in tandem with your actual immigration lawyer.
We can let them know that you're going to sue, and oftentimes we tell people you should sue, and then the lawyers get surprised that we've reached the level of success that we have, and we get the case approved, and so just because your lawyer says that you shouldn't sue doesn't mean that's right. You should at least explore the possibility if you've been waiting years or months, and months, and months to get your spouse or fiancé to the United States.
The lawsuit is the great way to get that done, and just because your lawyer says no doesn't mean they're right, because they just might not know how to do it, or they might not be familiar with it, or they might not know anyone who has done it. I find those lawsuits to be very effective. My clients have found them to be very effective, so I wanted to make sure that you understood that you're the boss.
It's your case. You do what you want, and it's perfectly okay to have us file a lawsuit in federal court while you try all those other things too. I don't think any of those are going to work, but the lawsuit is going to work in most situations. You're going to get a decision. It might not be an approval, but you're going to get a decision in about 90 to 120 days.
Hope you found this video helpful. I hope you think of us if you're thinking about suing USCIS and the State Department for an unreasonable delay. If you want to get ahold of us, give us a call at 314-961-8200. You can email us at [email protected]. Be sure to join us in our Facebook group. It's called Immigrant Home, and we talk about a lot of immigration issues in there every day. If you like this video, be sure to 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.
