By Emily Wilson
Immigration lawyer Steve Baughman calls the ad a blatant fraud. His colleague, Justin Wang, says it will take advantage of naïve new immigrants. Baughman and Wang, partners in an immigration law firm in San Francisco, are referring to an ad placed in the Sing Tao Daily by Shu Guang Immigration Services that claims to help immigrants get green cards and work permits.
Immigration consultants have become a growing problem in the Asian American community by charging thousands of dollars to newcomers to help them get around the bureaucratic confusions of immigration policy. Baughman and Wang have been cracking down on these agencies by filing suit against nine of them and trying to spread the word about their danger.
“The ad says to let an expert handle your case,” Wang said. “But when my assistant went down there, she said they were operating out of an apartment, not an office, and there’s no sign on the wall or anything. It’s very suspicious. They ask for $2,800 to $3,000 and they imply they can get you a work permit right away, which is totally false. Basically, they promise anything you want to hear. Immigration law is very complicated. Unsophisticated immigrants will get screwed up by these people.”
Employees at Shu Guang Immigration Service refused to answer questions about Baughman and Wang’s claims.
Last year in December, President Clinton signed into law the Legal Immigration and Family Equity Act, which extends the adjustment of status provision 245(i). Although this may not mean much to legal U.S. residents, it means a lot to immigrants who have entered the United States unlawfully, worked illegally or overstayed their visa. Before, to adjust their status, immigrants had to go back to their country of origin, and were not allowed to re-enter the United States for three to 10 years. But under 245(i), immigrants can have a relative or employer vouch for them and file a petition to adjust their status while they remain in this country. The deadline for filing this petition is in a few weeks — April 30, 2001 — and people are scrambling to meet the cutoff date.
Immigration consultants defend their work. Some consultants contend they are providing a valuable service at a substantially lower rate than an attorney.
Alfred Villela, Jr., who has worked at his father’s firm, Indo-Fijian Immigration Services, Inc., for the past 10 years, says that he sees his job as helping people from foreign countries to get established. “We do take business away from attorneys,” says Villela. “To say that immigration consultants as a whole are no good is not appropriate. I know some people who weren’t following the law and they’re not around any more — they’re in prison. They weren’t looking at the long haul.”
An immigration consultant in the Mission, Leonard Lacayo, says his firm hasn’t had a single complaint in 15 years, though he admits shady operations exist.
“Nothing ever happens to them for operating without a license and a bond,” Lacayo said. “I used to call the FBI, Univision, Telemundo, The Chronicle — nothing ever happened. Lawyers do it, too. They overcharge and sometimes aren’t familiar with how immigration works. It’s the poor immigrants who are getting stiffed.
“My business is built entirely on reputation,” he added. “I never advertise. If you ever see an advertisement that says they can fix you and they want money up-front, they can’t fix you.”
Immigration consultants have certain rules they need to operate under: they must be bonded, they must have signs up saying they’re not lawyers, and they are not allowed to give legal advice or represent a client in court. Wang’s firm has filed suit against nine immigration consultants in the last four years for unfair business practices. All of these consultants either closed up shop or settled.
“Even though we don’t get much money from these suits, it’s important to show that people cannot get away with false advertising and practicing law without a license,” Wang said.
Wang’s partner Baughman pointed out that the “victims in these cases are not a politically powerful group. They’re low-priority victims,” he said. “What these consultants are doing is a criminal act, done in the most blatant way possible — taking out an ad in the newspaper.”
Baughman also said these consultants are sending out the wrong messages to new immigrants. “They’re learning to lie, to manipulate the [legal] system,” he said.
And there is no oversight for the consultants, Baughman said.
“If I misrepresent myself in an ad, the state bar is going to be all over me, but if these guys misrepresent themselves, nobody does anything,” he said. “These are rogue operations that nobody in law enforcement cares about, and the victims won’t come forward because they’re terrified of law enforcement.”
Immigration consultants are by no means unique to the Chinese community. Inna Simakosky, an immigration attorney for Jewish Family and Children’s Services, a nonprofit agency that helps resettle Eastern Europeans, said that she has seen ads placed by immigration consultants in the Russian-language newspaper, Novaya Zhizn (New Life).
“They say that they can guarantee that you will get your travel documents back in five to seven days. That’s impossible,” Simakosky said.
The director of San Francisco’s Immigrant Rights Commission, Dang Pham, said that they have received no official complaints about immigration consultants taking advantage of this change in the law. But Pham does see problems with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. “They didn’t do any effective outreach,” Pham said. “This leaves the immigrants open to abuse by the law firms, as well as the consultants.” |
