Thursday, October 13, 2011

Approval Notices

Recently the Citizenship and Immigration Service instituted a new rule whereby the approval notices of visas, with the original I-94s are being sent to employers instead of the Attorney. The attorneys get the courtesy copy. The American Immigration Lawyer's Association is protesting against this move.




However I think this is a good move by Citizenship and Immigration Service. First it cuts down on fraud. Fraud is very prevalent in the Immigration petition system. Although the forms require signatures from the employers, those signatures can be forged. Documents can be manufactured. And if employers get a representative’s copy, the lawyer can give the actual copy to the fraudulent employee, who would then get false status. Granted maybe one attorney in the country will do this, but still its fraud.

Secondly the clients can get the approval notice expeditiously. In most states clients need the approvals to renew their driver’s license. Sending that approval notice to the attorney means the attorney has to mail it to the client. Even if the attorney fedexes, it still takes time. And most large law firms take forever to send the documents. This way everything can be done expeditiously.



American Immigration Lawyer's Association has complained that the attorneys can check and see mistakes in the I-797, and correct them. But attorneys can simply ask their clients to scan and send them that approval notice. On the contrary attorneys cannot scan and send the original to the client, since they need the original approval. My clients have no problem scanning and sending the copies to me.



I feel that many lawyers have an inflated sense of ego, and feel that the Citizenship and Immigration Service is slighting them by sending originals to the employer. I applaud this move by the Citizenship and Immigration Service. This is probably the only time, in years, that I think that the Citizenship and Immigration Service is doing something sensible.



Contact Houston Immigration Lawyer, or Houston Immigration Attorney Annie Banerjee, for more information





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