Is our lawyer a complete failure?

[Mastur 0]

Hello everyone. We have a frustrating situation and are asking ourselves if our lawyer is incompetent and if she is avoiding taking responsibility for the delays we have experienced in the processing of my wife's Green card.

To make a long story short, me (US citizen) and my Canadian wife were living intermittently in Morocco and were there when we submitted the I 130 application. When we submitted it we used the Moroccan address. A few months later, I took up a job offer and moved back to the US while my wife returned to Canada. I informed USCIS of my new address in the US and forgot to have the attorney update my wifes address from the Moroccan one to the current Canadian one. Fast forward a year, and we finally get a letter stating that the file has been approved and is moving to the NVS for further processing, and that our interview will be in the US consulate in Casablanca.

We were shocked and realized that the attorney forgot/failed to update my wife's address. We are fairly certain that is why we waited an extraordinarily long time for the file to be moved the NVS (from filing the I 130 to the approval was 17 months!).

We voiced our concern to the lawyer and she dodged the issue and insisted that she needed to keep the old address. She said in an email:

"n my professional judgment, I properly provided your address to the immigration authorities on your paperwork. Any omission on my part of your extensive time in Morocco as a living address would have been, and would be now, in my view, a misrepresentation that not only would have prejudiced your case significantly, but also would be a breach of ethics on my part."

We feel that the fact that paper work was not checked correctly and my wife's address was not updated until May 2018 has caused the huge delay in the acceptance of the petition. Since December 2017 till we received the notice about interview on June 7, 2019, the USCIS office was under the impression that my wife was a Canadian residing in Morocco; hence it would take them longer to verify information before giving their approval.

As far as we are concerned there are only two possibilities here: either the lawyer neglected to change the address upon my wife's return to Canada or the lawyer purposely left it without updating the information. It's one thing for them to do their background checks in Canada, but throw in another country that they think I'm living in, and that's untold delays upon an already lengthy and frustrating process.

When we expressed this in an email, the lawyer's response was: "I did not neglect or purposely neglect updating your file. Your information is properly updated with immigration and Department of State."

Furthermore, we have had to correct the documents half a dozen times (misspellings of our children's names, incorrect entries for country of birth), and we sent an incorrect document that she sent to NVS that WE later discovered was the wrong document (the lawyer didn't even look over it).

We are all in favor of due diligence, but are we wrong in thinking that this lawyer has dropped the ball way too many times and refuses to acknowledge her errors?

What say you all? Thankfully, we are now at the final stage and waiting to get the interview date, and we don't require the lawyer's "services" anymore, but we feel she has been negligent and left most of the work for us to do, and her failure to update information has resulted in extra delays.

Thank you!

[Crazy Cat 42,563]

Did you specifically inform the attorney that your wife moved back to Canada?  "I informed USCIS of my new address in the US and forgot to have the attorney update my wifes address from the Moroccan one to the current Canadian one."  

[JeanneAdil 6,701]

First why were you living in Morocco and for how long?

i ask because she would require the 2 criminal reports from there along with her Canadian one 

 

 a Fiche Anthropometrique and a Casier Judiciaire from the Central Police station at their place of residence. 

one is police report of any arrests and the other is a driving record of any fines

 

Morocco does not allow a family member to pick these up / must be in person

she can fly back and get the 2 reports and do the interview

 

and sounds like with all the spelling mistakes ,  you didn't hire a good one

but he is not responsible for the address error as you say yourself / you did not inform USCIS or attorney

 

Edited September 19, 2019 by JeanneAdil

[Tara & Rohit 224]

Did you both originally intend to complete the interview in Morocco? If no, then why not put a Canadian address for your wife when you filed? She's right that you have to include all of the places that you've lived within the past ten years. But you could have also included the Canadian address in the original form.

 

I understand that lawyers make mistakes, but they're certainly not mind readers. If you didn't tell her about the change, then that's on you.

[Mastur 0]

Thank you. For clarity:

 

1. We did not live in Morocco over six months. We would go back and forth over a period of nine months, never staying there longer than 9-10 weeks. So while we did have an address there, and filed the i 130 while there, we were not living there permanently.

2. When I spoke to the lawyer on the phone while I was in Morocco, I clearly told her that we are there temporarily and will be returning--me to the US and her to Canada.

3. At the same time I returned to the US and got a home, my wife returned to Canada. I updated my address when I got the house here in the US, and a couple of weeks later my wife came here to visit. During that time we visited the lawyer and went through the paperwork again, and we told the lawyer that my wife is back in Canada and will be staying here for a while. The i 130 was filed in late December and we met the lawyer in July 2018, and it did not occur to me to ask her to change the old Moroccan address and update the file with my wife's Canadian address.

4. We did not intend for the interview to be in Morocco. We were only there temporarily and sent the i130 to the lawyer while we were there.

[Mastur 0]

Basically, the lawyer knew that we were no longer in Morocco and should have made sure to update the file with the new addresses. I did it on my own for the US address, but it is her job to make sure these things are done. When we questioned this and wondered if this failure to update the address could be why it took so long, she evaded the question and simply reassured us that the correct address is on file now.

 

 

 

[Mastur 0]

At this stage we are just waiting to get the interview date so I don't see the point in retaining her, but I'm just looking for confirmation that we are not alone in thinking this was an error that could have affected the time it took to get the approval.

[Boiler 46,277]

Not sure why it would have delayed approval.

[Mastur 0]

Because if they are doing the background check and think, based on the address on the form, that she is still in Morocco, one can safely assume that they will take longer in the background check. We have no way of proving that, of course, but it makes sense.

[Boiler 46,277]

Security checks are after the visa would otherwise be approved.

[carmel34 3,661]

Fire the attorney.  Contact NVC and request that the file be sent to Montreal and the interview be scheduled there.  Make sure that all your addresses are correct when you fill out the DS-260 on the CEAC website.  If the file has already been sent from NVC to Casablanca, contact the embassy there and request that the file be transferred to Montreal for the interview since that's where your wife lives now.  Good luck!

Edited September 19, 2019 by carmel34

[Lemonslice 4,989]

It's not the first time the paperwork is sent to the wrong location. Might be the lawyer, might be something else.  

 

Is it on its way to Montreal now? 

[inneedofmyhb 217]

Simple solution here...you can’t fix what’s already been done, but you can just fire the lawyer and go on your own from here. Our petition took 1 year for approval and from what I’m seeing, that’s the norm now. We also had a lawyer who didn’t think it was necessary to send a lot of evidence with our petition and We got not one, but two RFE’s and our case being transferred to the local office. After that, We went on our own. It took another month to get our case number from NVC. People need to understand that this entire process is not quick and easy. Going into this requires an enormous amount of patience. I will not say all immigration lawyers are terrible because there are quite a few good ones still out there. But from my experience and many others, you pay the lawyer and you’re pretty much doing all the work yourself. If your interview as already been scheduled, contact that embassy and request your case be transferred to the correct embassy. If not, contact NVC asap. Good luck. 

[SalishSea 18,225]

15 hours ago, Mastur said:

Because if they are doing the background check and think, based on the address on the form, that she is still in Morocco, one can safely assume that they will take longer in the background check. We have no way of proving that, of course, but it makes sense.

Not necessarily.  Her country of birth and current citizenship(s) could have a greater impact.

[JFH 12,191]

15 hours ago, Mastur said:

Because if they are doing the background check and think, based on the address on the form, that she is still in Morocco, one can safely assume that they will take longer in the background check. We have no way of proving that, of course, but it makes sense.

Even if you had the Canada address on file you cannot erase the time spent in Morocco. Any negative impact that time spent in Morocco would have on your approval (and, for the record, I don’t believe it would have any for the I-130) would still apply if you used the Canadian address as the “current address”. 

 

I also think you will need a police certificate. You say you were there 9 months but then threw in the line about never more than 9 weeks at a time. So you were living there with frequent vacations or work trips elsewhere. I work for an airline and spend at least one night a week away from home for work. Doesn’t mean I don’t live in my home just because I’m never here for more than 6 consecutive nights.