Stop waiting for your immigration benefit. Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States at our offices in St. Louis, San Diego, and Washington, DC. We get a lot of people who reach out to us because they're frustrated. We are at a record high in the number of delays and time that people have been waiting for their immigration benefits. And that can be at USCIS for something as simple as a work card. It can be for their fingerprint notice. It can be for their green card, interview, or for their citizenship, or for their overseas visa case.
We are now about a hundred days into the Biden presidency and people are sick and tired waiting. And I totally get that. But on the one hand, you need to still be patient. You need to still keep your head about you, keep confident that your case is going to be approved. I know that's easy for me to say, because I was born here and I always have work authorization because I'm a US citizen, but I know this is putting a tremendous strain on families. I can see the frustration. I hear it in your voice. I see it when I talk to people on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I really empathize with you.
And that's why we do what we do. That's how we try to file the strongest cases as possible, why we try to fight for our clients every single day, and why we sue the USCIS and sue the State Department. We have filed a record number of lawsuits in the last 12 months. We've pretty much doubled the number of lawsuits that we had filed. Up until 2020, we'd probably filed around 400 lawsuits, and now we're at about 800. Unfortunately, it's one of the few things that work. I talk to people all the time and they tell me, "Jim, I'm going to try the ombudsman, or I'm going to try the senator."
And I don't care if you hire me or not. I really don't. We have plenty of cases. My crackerjack paralegal, Haley, is working on these lawsuits all day long every day. I think right now we have about 180 pending lawsuits, most of them in Washington, DC. I'm not saying this to try to get more business. I'm saying this because if you're truly frustrated and if you've been waiting way too long, more than a year, more than two years, more than three years, you've waited long enough. People get on the show and they say, "Jim, I don't know. When is a good time to sue?"
And I say, "How long have you been waiting?" And they said, "Well, I have my interview about six months ago." I'm like, "Yeah, but when did you file the case?" And they say, "Oh, three years ago." Three years ago is ridiculous. No one should have to wait three years to get the government to do what they're supposed to do. The thing about the lawsuits is it just gets your case moving. It just gets USCIS or the State Department to issue a decision. I like to call it a fast forward button. It's not a guarantee that your case is going to be approved.
I do not think that they treat your case more harshly because you sue them, but they do start moving on the cases and they do get resolved for the most part. Every now and then because of COVID or because of embassy closures, we have had some hiccups. But for the most part, when we sue for a green card delay, or when we sue for a citizenship delay, or even when we sue for work card delay or an H4 EAD visa delay, those kinds of things, those things really get moving. If you're truly sick and tired of waiting, I think your only solution really is to sue them. And please don't ask us to do other things.
We don't do anything else. We don't do anything else. We don't send them a letter saying that we're going to sue them. We don't call the senator. We don't waste our time with any of that stuff, especially given the fact that you can't get smart people on the phone at USCIS and there's no InfoPass system. So really with the backlogs as severe as they are, they're just not going to pay attention to you unless you sue them. Hopefully you're not going through this. But if you are and you need our help, give us a call, 314-961-8200.
You can email us at [email protected] or at our new email address [email protected]. We have our Facebook group. It's called Immigrant Home. We'd love to have you in the home with us. We talk about a lot of immigration issues of the day, spread a lot of news about immigrants and immigration. And then, of course, you know about our YouTube channel. We post a new video every single day. And on Tuesdays and Thursdays for most weeks, you'll find me live in our Facebook group and on our YouTube channel answering as many of your immigration law related questions as possible. Thanks a lot and have a great day.
