delayed foreign birth certificate, family violence, and a hope for the future...

[garcia.dg 0]

Hello, i was wondering if anyone could give me a little bit of information on a problem of mine concerning my immigrations status. I have been under the assumption that I have been an illegal immigrant for about 26 years. I did have my foreign birth certificate stating that my father was a US citizen but my mother had told me when I was 18 that she went to speak to a lawyer about me, after she had separated from my father, and the attorney claimed I could not file a Certificate of Citizenship(N-600) because I was alread 18 AND came to the US illegally. SO, that being the case, she filed a year later, with some other attorney, an I-130 petition for me through my brother, a US citizen. As you know, most of those types of cases take FOREVER, so I began to get depressed after 8 year of waiting, not being able to open a bank account, get a drivers license, financial aid and so on. I decided to do some research myself and called USCIS about my case, decided to bring up my citizen father, and wouldnt you know, the representative tells me that I COULD possibly be eligible through an N-600 since i was born before November 14, 1986. Does anyone know anything about the law in effect at that time? Also my birth certificate was not filed until they had to return to Mexico so that I could start kindergarden here in the US, I believe when i was 4. Is that going to be a problem? Ive been reading more and it states that I could of used a baptismal something or the other but as we never were Catholic, I was never baptized as an infant. I just dont want to get my hopes up about all this and want to know for sure before I file. It has taken me a year to get all the paperwork together that I would possibly need since our family ran away from my father for being abusive when I was 9 and we never had contact with him again. There was a network of womens shelters that had to hide us from him during that time. He also never petitioned for my mother during their marriage so as to keep her scared and be afraid to leave. Once she did leave, she had to raise 5 children alone working as an illegal immigrant because he filed for divorce immediately after he could not find us. It took me forever to find information on him but I was finally able to find one small piece of paper with his social security and after that, his birth certificate, military records, marriage certificate, divorce decree and all was easy to find. Anyway, thats a little background into my case and my main questions is about the birth certificate, as ive heard they give you a hard time about the smallest things, and also about the law in effect before Nov 14, 1986. Please let me know if you have any information that I could benefit from, thanks!