I am so happy and content this week. After more than 10 years of filing applications by this client and others lawyers before me, years of responding to long and tedious requests for more evidence from U S Citizenship and Immigration Services, then getting the application denied and going to removal proceedings to face deportation, (which we successfully terminated), I gave a sigh of relief when the immigration officer asked, at the end of the naturalization ceremony, if my client was free that afternoon for his oath ceremony. I am truly blessed to be a part of this journey with my client. My client has a beautiful little child with his US citizen spouse, is helping the spouses child from a previous marriage through school, and is one of the most humble and hardworking person I know. After winning very hard cases, I try to take stock of the actual and intangible cost to the client. It costs tens of thousands of dollars over 14 years (in this case), and years of emotional cost -- the anxiety, sleeplessness night, impact on the individuals physical and mental wellbeing, strain on the couples marriage, fear by the children that they might lose a loving parent who faces permanent separation after deportation, impact on productivity at work and relationships with co-workers. This greater social cost can never be quantified. These are things that occupy me long after my clients are gone. What could have been done differently to make the immigration process for good, hardworking people more efficient and less stressful? After all, more than a decade and four neatly rubber- banded files measuring one foot high, this person was approved to be a citizen anyway So why did the system fail?
Posted on: Sat, 06 Dec 2014 12:51:55 +0000
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