Immigration Lawyer -- Can It Help Speed Up The Montreal Embassy At All?

[Haribo 16]

My fiance and I are hoping to get married next August in Quebec City. We submitted our NOA in August of this year, so we were hoping we'd have enough time to get the visa, have a civil ceremony, and apply for him to leave the country. However, looking at all the delays with the Montreal embassy, I'm starting to get nervous about my master plan, and wondering if hiring an attorney to navigate this portion of the process is worth it.

I am fairly confident in my and my fiance's ability to put together visa application packets. But a friend of mine recently married a Canadian, had some DOS-side processing errors, hired an attorney, and ended up getting their approved visa back much faster than they were expecting. They said their attorney was able to expedite some of the paperwork and cut out some of the wait time. The attorney came highly recommended to them from an immigration professor at a top law school.

I'm wondering if it might be worth it to hire this attorney in the hopes of speeding up the process somehow. Are there any opportunities for a savvy, connected lawyer to cut some time/get an earlier interview date than might otherwise be available? When I emailed the attorney, he told me "Also, the process typically involves interfacing with government officials from CIS, Consulate, Visa Center, and (perhaps) Border Patrol ... which is what we do everyday ... so there would be plenty of chances to expedite. On the other hand, we never guarantee results ... it's not prudent."

Is this accurate? From reading the forum, it seems like lawyers don't offer any added value to the process -- but my friend's visa came but much faster then the timing would have suggested, and logically it seems to me like an attorney who works regularly with the consulate staff at the Montreal consulate should be able to help out. Any thoughts?

[Sweetcheeksss 91]

Unless you have a complicated case (as in a criminal background, custody issues, previous immigration issues) - its been my personal experience that lawyers cannot make the process go faster. In fact, they don't generally interact with customs and border protection (CBP) and unless you are their only client, often times lawyers make the process go slower because they have a practce full of other clients that they have to answer questions to, prepare legal docs for, etc. So your case doesn't get there foremost attention.

If you ( or your spouse) get a notice or letter from immigration and you want your lawyer to act on it right away...they might not be able too because they have a deadline with another client.

That's just my 2 cents - good luck!

[hikergirl 277]

My fiance and I are hoping to get married next August in Quebec City. We submitted our NOA in August of this year, so we were hoping we'd have enough time to get the visa, have a civil ceremony, and apply for him to leave the country. However, looking at all the delays with the Montreal embassy, I'm starting to get nervous about my master plan, and wondering if hiring an attorney to navigate this portion of the process is worth it.

I am fairly confident in my and my fiance's ability to put together visa application packets. But a friend of mine recently married a Canadian, had some DOS-side processing errors, hired an attorney, and ended up getting their approved visa back much faster than they were expecting. They said their attorney was able to expedite some of the paperwork and cut out some of the wait time. The attorney came highly recommended to them from an immigration professor at a top law school.

I'm wondering if it might be worth it to hire this attorney in the hopes of speeding up the process somehow. Are there any opportunities for a savvy, connected lawyer to cut some time/get an earlier interview date than might otherwise be available? When I emailed the attorney, he told me "Also, the process typically involves interfacing with government officials from CIS, Consulate, Visa Center, and (perhaps) Border Patrol ... which is what we do everyday ... so there would be plenty of chances to expedite. On the other hand, we never guarantee results ... it's not prudent."

Is this accurate? From reading the forum, it seems like lawyers don't offer any added value to the process -- but my friend's visa came but much faster then the timing would have suggested, and logically it seems to me like an attorney who works regularly with the consulate staff at the Montreal consulate should be able to help out. Any thoughts?

You've applied for a fiance visa in order to get married in a civil ceremony in the US, apply for his AOS, EAD & AP so you can have a marriage ceremony back in Canada? Just trying to get it straight in my head.

There are only specific reasons to expedite petitions and the whole process. Unless your friend had specific reasons to expedite then she was bamboozled by a lawyer.

Lawyers cannot speed up the process and a lot of times actually delay it. It's quicker to do up the forms and get them mailed in yourself than it is to fill out the forms, mail them to your lawyer, your lawyer's assistant then assembles the package and mails it out. You will save yourself a load of time and money doing it yourselves.

[The Mean Lady 604]

1- Lawyers don't speed up the process

2- You don't apply for an NOA. An NOA1 was given to by the USCIS after they received your I-129

3- It's slightly confusing the way you have stated what your intentions are

4- It is my understand that while doing the AOS, you cannot leave the country. Since I'm not familiar with that process, I can't tell you if your time frame is unrealistic, however, my gut feeling is to say that you're not going to be finished with everything by then. If K-1 Visas take, just as an example, 8 months to process and approve, then I think it takes more than 4 months after that to finish your process.

[Flames9_RN 358]

Nope lawyers do not speed things up, if anything slow it down a bit!! We used a lawyer--huge waste of $2500, but we had not found VJ and after my wife talked to an immigration official, he made it sound impossible to do on ones own--wrong!!

1 never knows how long it will take from starting the process to the interview, thus that's why they tell you not to make plans--and if you do, make sure you can get your $$$$ back.

During AOS--one can apply for Advance Parole and if a family emergency pops up, you can get it expedited!

Best thing you can do to ensure it goes as smoothly as possible is READ THE K1 GUIDE!! Understand the process from start to Finish and know what documents you require--police back ground check, any divorce paperwork if applicable, etc etc etc. No 1 cares more about your case--so best to read up on it.

[SF2007 48]

Unless your attorney can make a high ranking U.S. representative call the consulate, he can expedite your case no more than Santa could. Attorneys (good ones) can make sure your paperwork is filed correctly and thus not slowing down the process, but that's it. Which, if you have a good head on your shoulders, can do as well as him/her and save your money. So unless you have a problematic case (overstay, criminal charges, dui, etc.) attorneys offer no added value.

Also, as it has been mentioned before, if you go the K1 you do have to legally marry in the U.S. within 90 days of activating your visa. And the beneficiary will not be able to leave the country until he/she has received either their AP (Advance Parole) or GC (Green Card). I highly recommend you read the guides here: http://www.visajourney.com/content/guides. You apply for those during your AOS. AP takes about 3 months to receive and count 6 months for the GC. I don't know what the attorney told your friends, but if he told them it would take a year for what is a 6 months process, then of course they must have been very pleased to get it sooner than expected.

Also, planning an August wedding in Quebec at this point is unwise and unrealistic. As anybody here can tell you: do NOT make any plans before having your visa in hand. Processing times are guidelines and by no means a guarantee that you application will be processed within that time frame. And if you go through Montreal, they are notoriously slow. Be flexible and ready for a long wait. I wish I could tell you otherwise, but it is wiser to not make any definite plans and stay flexible. Having plans for a vacation (or your wedding) is not grounds for an expedite. So any time and money you would've put into it would be wasted. save yourself the hearthache

Good luck!

Edited December 8, 2012 by SF2007

[Haribo 16]

Thanks everyone! My friends got an RFE in August and the visa in the middle of November, which seems very fast to me, but of course I don't know all the details of their case. I think I'll save myself the $1500 and go without a lawyer.

Also, sorry for any confusing terminology -- I meant to say that we applied for the visa and received our NOA1 in August. Last night I realized the administrative parole took longer than I'd thought (for some reason I thought it took 30 days, not 90 days, ugh), which has thrown a wrench into the plans.

However!! I also realized that I don't need to spend the summer in the States, so unless we manage to get an interview date before May, it will make more sense for us to have the wedding for friends and family in Quebec in August and then have him travel to the US, visa in hand, have the official, civil ceremony there. That takes a lot of the time pressure off, which was stressing us both, and it means even if there is some sort of massive delay we can still have the wedding -- he just won't be able to come to the US afterwards.

Can we do that? Have an unofficial ceremony before he enters the US? Could that cause any problems with the visa? Obviously we wouldn't arrange for a Canadian marriage certificate or anything like that.

[Kimbear 53]

more often than not lawyers actually make the process longer as you have to send back and forth forms to be signed etc. And they can screw up majorly in my case and wont admit it. WE even got a "notice of intent to deny" letter along with multiple RFE's for things they screwed up on. in total it added 9 months to our process. Waste of time money and energy yelling at them and uscis.

this process is really easy if you can read and follow simple instructions. thousands of people have done it themselves and this is a fantastic forum to get help and reassurances when you need them.

[Kathryn41 3,205]

You can't really have any sort of 'wedding' in Canada if you wish to use a fiance visa to enter the US. Unfortunately, in Canada, civil and religious ceremonies are both official and any sort of official who is allowed to perform marriage ceremonies would not be able to perform an 'unofficial' wedding. You could have a 'mock' ceremony with an unofficial and unlicensed family friend playacting as the officiant as a sort of dress rehearsal in front of your family and friends but it must not have any sort of legal connection to it at all or your fiance would be denied entry to the US - and if he was successful in entering the US on a fiance visa, once he applied for a green card, it would be found out and he would be deported back to Canada and permanently banned for immigration fraud. That is how seriously USCIS looks at using a fiancee visa to enter the US when you are not a fiancee.

So, you can plan some sort of reception or rehearsal - but you can't have any sort of wedding. The only wedding that you are allowed to have if you are using a fiance visa is the one that is performed after your fiance enters the US. You can certainly have a second ceremony after that for friends and family but the only one that is allowed to be a wedding is the one in the US after your fiance enters on the K-1 visa.

Also, you are not able to apply for AP (that doesn't mean administrative processing, btw - it means Advance Parole) before you are married. An AP is a special sort of travel permission that is granted while someone is waiting for their green card application to be adjudicated. You need to be married first and you need to submit the AP request at the same time you submit your application for a green card. The fastest way to do that is to have all of the paperwork ready to go, then marry almost immediately after crossing the border into the US and then submitting the package. The AP averages about 60to 90 days after USCIS receives the green card application. Until you have either the greencard itself or the advance parole travel document in hand your fiance cannot leave the US.

If you go ahead and have a wedding in Canada, then you are basically cancelling all of the work and time you have put into the K-1 visa. You will need to restart the immigration process all over again from the beginning, this time petitioning for a spousal visa known as a CR-1. Your fiance is not able to live with you in the US until he gets the CR-1 - and that is about a year's processing time as well.

I suspect you may end up with his interview date sometime in July or August next summer. There is a chance it might be earlier but I think that is a more realistic time frame. Your friend's visa coming in November after an August RFE is not a fast time. Usually, when an RFE is sent out it means that the application is being looked at right then. Once the requested information is returned processing continues and is usually finished within a few short weeks or sooner so I would say that your friends' lawyer did not expedite or speed up anything for them. There is no real way to expedite any of this process except for the US citizen being in the military and expecting to be deployed. A lawyer who tells you that he can expedite an application at any number of spots in the process is being dishonest and is best avoided.

Edited December 9, 2012 by Kathryn41

[Haribo 16]

snip.

Thank you for this information! We're not at all religious, so there is no need for us to have anyone licensed or official perform the ceremony. We'd always planned on it being more of a dress rehearsal or the "Canadian celebration of our [civil, U.S., official] wedding vows" than an official wedding, with a close friend reading the vows. Just that our original plans were for the civil ceremony to be prior to the fake Canadian wedding, but obviously that is looking more and more unlikely as the days tick on, so I thought it might make sense to have the Canadian F&F celebration beforehand rather than afterwards.

(Next August I'm starting an intensive one-year job with no vacation time, so if we postpone the F&F celebration we'll either need to have it in LA (yuck) or put it off for a whole year... and we wanted to think about starting a family soonish. So complicated!)

Maybe if instead of calling it a "wedding" I called it a "celebration" of our (hopefully) impending civil marriage?

And phew, happy to get to save $1500 on a lawyer.

[Kimbear 53]

Thank you for this information! We're not at all religious, so there is no need for us to have anyone licensed or official perform the ceremony. We'd always planned on it being more of a dress rehearsal or the "Canadian celebration of our [civil, U.S., official] wedding vows" than an official wedding, with a close friend reading the vows. Just that our original plans were for the civil ceremony to be prior to the fake Canadian wedding, but obviously that is looking more and more unlikely as the days tick on, so I thought it might make sense to have the Canadian F&F celebration beforehand rather than afterwards.

(Next August I'm starting an intensive one-year job with no vacation time, so if we postpone the F&F celebration we'll either need to have it in LA (yuck) or put it off for a whole year... and we wanted to think about starting a family soonish. So complicated!)

Maybe if instead of calling it a "wedding" I called it a "celebration" of our (hopefully) impending civil marriage?

And phew, happy to get to save $1500 on a lawyer.

only 1500? lol damn the money we wasted from more than twice that amount! and we never got any back for his screw ups! and that was just for doing the i-129 stuff then he got fired and i did the rest myself.

[SF2007 48]

It could very well be an engagement celebration where you exchange commitment vows or something like that. Which could be done at any point of the process, whether you have received the visa or not, and can be planned independently of your visa process. It just can't be a wedding ceremony or look like you got married in Canada prior to activating the visa (and moving to the U.S.).

By the way, tip for you: start recording all those trips and keep evidence (flights tickets, receipts, photos, etc.) as they are strong evidence of an ongoing relationship. Canadians usually don't need to go out of their way to prove relationship at the interview, but it's always good to have.

[The Mean Lady 604]

just have a good 'ol buck and doe up in canada.

Or is that just an ontario thing?

Idk, I just know my father in law's gf laughed at me when I asked her what it was.

It sounded fun!