K-1 Visa approved in Moscow on St. Valentine's Day

[AllenK 0]

Thanks everybody! Man, it's good to be on the other side!

[AllenK 0]

Congrats! We also had a lawyer for the K1 process but not for AOS. Our AOS went fine, without any requests for additional evidence (our interview will be in April). Having a lawyer in the K1 process mostly provided us with a great big piece of mind that my husband would be able to come to the U.S. But as a piece of advice, if you follow the VJ guides for AOS exactly, you won't need a lawyer.

I'm still batting around the lawyer thing on the AOS. It's one of those things that is so important, I do not want to be up $h1t creek if we encounter problems. Kind of like having an insurance policy. It feels pretty worthless up until you have to make it pay. I've read posts from people who get shocked at an unexpected AOS decline, and do not know what to do. That worries me.

This is just so important to me, I am more averse to risk than usual.

Edited February 16, 2007 by AllenK

[SoL. 0]

Congrats!!!

[slim 1,525]

I'm 100% anti-lawyer in the visa process (VJ makes it easy) but like many people have pointed out, there is the piece of mind when paying someone to do something for you. And in the U.S., having a lawer is the equivalent of saying "it will get done, it just depends on how long you wanna fight me on it."

[Satellite 1]

there is the piece of mind when paying someone to do something for you.

Like driving my car, doing the immigration thing is something I prefer to do myself rather than entrust some over paid attorney who has another 100 cases sitting in his desk. I'm also anti-lawyer, despite having worked at an immigration attorney's office for six months already. Based on my experience, I can tell you that family cases are (1) the easiest to do, (2) low priority, and (3) take a a lot longer to complete than would have been the case if the individual did it him or herself.

[AllenK 0]

I guess most people here on VJ seem to be solid do-it-yourself types - which is good. Maybe I'm biased because my case went so well with the lawyers. I had 0 delays, and 0 RFE's. Maybe it would have gone this well without them. It just feels good to know that if we have problems, a team of lawyers is coscke and loaded ready to step in and make things right. I will never really know how good they are until we have problems, if we ever do. I know I could process the forms myself. I just don't want to be unprepared if things do not go as planned. This is just too important for me.

I use lawyers for the pre-marital agreement to. That is also something that is too important to do myself.