Who's responsible for your immigration status? Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States at our offices in San Diego, St. Louis, and Washington DC.
In today's video, we're going to talk about extreme ownership, extreme ownership of our immigration status. Where do I get that concept of extreme ownership? Well, it's a book that I'm reading right now by a former Navy Seal named Jocko Willink and he talks about how leaders and people need to take ultimate responsibility, extreme ownership, of their situation, and that if you find yourself in a situation that is not of you're doing, or that you want to fix, that you and only you can fix it.
And that concept I think comes right over to the immigration world. Well, what in the hell do you mean by that, Jim? Well, what I mean is that there are a lot of people that you might interact with or talk to about your immigration status. You might talk to your immigration lawyer, you might talk to your friends, you might talk to your family back home. You might talk to USCIS. And sometimes the advice that you get is not good, and sometimes mistakes are made and your case gets off track.
And I'm here to tell you that it's ultimately your responsibility. You need to be on top of things. You need to be paying attention. You need to be educated about your situation. That's why we try to really make sure that at the beginning of a representation, that our clients understand exactly what their situation is, exactly what burdens and uphill battles they have ahead of them, and to make sure that we're all on the same page, because the client has to be educated. The client has to understand their precise situation so that they and they alone can make the best decisions about how to move forward. Our job is to educate our clients, to give them our best advice, and to let them make the decision.
So if you're in a situation where you have gotten out of status, a lot of times people will try to blame their family members or blame the world or blame their school or blame their employer, and they aren't taking that ultimate responsibility. We've also seen a lot of times where people just sort of try to get mad at other people or blame their old lawyer, or do all kinds of things except take responsibility for their situation. Because here's the thing, nobody cares about your immigration status as much as you do, nobody. And certainly the USCIS or the State Department don't care about your immigration status as much as you do. So you need to do everything humanly possible to make sure that you stay in status and that you maintain a clean and immigration record. And then you do whatever you can to get your case approved.
Now, we have a lot of people who might think that translates into sort of being a bully and being mean to people and trying to bulldoze those that are trying to help them. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about saying, in a humble way, "This is my fault. I didn't do a good job. I didn't pay attention. I stopped going to school. I quit my job. I didn't go home after my visit visa. There are a lot of reasons why those things happen, but ultimately it's my responsibility as the immigrant to make sure that I'm doing everything I can to stay in status, to follow the law, and to get my next immigration benefit."
I hope this makes sense. It's a little bit esoteric, but at the end of the day, what I'm trying to say is that you need to take responsibility for your own situation. Nobody else is going to do it for you. Nobody else is going to care as much as you do. We try to do everything we can at our office to care as much as you do, and we will work hard to demonstrate that we care much as you do, but at the end of the day, it's you and you alone, who bear ultimate responsibility for your immigration status throughout your history in the United States.
If you have questions about this, give us a call 314-961-8200. You can email us [email protected]. Be sure to join us on our Facebook group, which is called Immigrant Home. If you like this video, we ask you to please share it out on social, and that you subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you get updates whenever we make videos just like this one. Don't forget most Tuesdays and Thursdays you'll find us live in our Facebook group and on our YouTube channel answering as many of your immigration law related questions as possible. Thanks for watching and have a good day.
