What if I have tried everything to get USCIS to decide my case? I am Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer, practicing law throughout the United States, out of our offices in San Diego, California and St. Louis, Missouri. I was talking to a young man from Syria yesterday, and we were talking about all the efforts that he had completed in order to try to get USCIS to rule on his long pending Green Card. This case has been pending for not one, not two, not three but four years. And he did everything humanly possible to get this case moving.
He's called USCIS many times. He's made InfoPass appointments. You can't even do that anymore, that's how long his case has been pending. He put in service requests. He contacted his members of Congress. He involved the American Immigration Lawyers Association's Liaison. So each chapter has a connection between the local bar of immigration lawyers and the local field office. This man did everything humanly possible to get his case moving. And you know what? None of it worked. None of it worked.
USCIS is not going to adjudicate this man's Green Card application unless, and until he sues them. It's the only thing that works. People love to tell me about all the things that they did. And they ask me, "Jim, what do you think is going to work? Do you think that all these other efforts that I've made contacting my Senator, contacting USCIS Ombudsman, any of these things going to work? No, they're not. None of those things are going to work.
The only thing that works, especially right now, is suing them. And that's whether it's the State Department or USCIS. There are too many cases. The backlog is too big. They're not going to go digging for your case. Now, every time I post a video like this, somebody gets down in the comments, "Oh, Jim, it worked for me. It worked for me. I got my Senator involved." That's just luck. I honestly do not believe that in most situations, based on everything that I've seen, all the people that I've talked to, who've tried to get a Senator to help or try to get the ALL liaison to help, none of it works.
And I don't say this because I want you to hire me to sue them. I say this because I honestly believe that the only thing that you can do to get them to adjudicate, to decide a case that's been pending for way too long, is to sue them. It's the only thing that works. So you can keep banging your head on the wall. You can keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. But at the end of the day, you're going to be frustrated if you keep trying over and over to get them to do what they're supposed to do. What they're legally bound to do. What the law says they're supposed to do and what a judge is empowered to compel them to do, and that is to just do their damn job. That's all that we're asking.
If you have questions or if you're frustrated by all of your efforts, feel free to give us a call, 314-961-8200. You can email us at [email protected]. Be sure to join us in our Facebook Group, that's called Immigrant Home. We'd love to see in there. And also we ask you, please subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you get updates whenever we make videos just like this one. And then finally, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have a live show in the Facebook Group and on YouTube, usually around noon central time, answering as many of your questions as possible, immigration questions. So thanks a lot and have a great day.
