On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 16:50:51 +0000, crg14624 wrote:
> Originally posted by Ingo Pakleppa - See Web Site For Email
>
>> A word of caution: immigration officers are the least reliable
> source of
>> information you can find! People did get deported for
> following bad advice
>> from immigration officers.
>>
>> Immigration
> officers usually aren't lawyers. Asking one for legal advice
>> would be
> like asking a nurse assistant to perform brain surgery.
>>
>> That said,
> *usually* there won't be a problem, but you can't be sure.
>>
>> On Thu,
> 12 Feb 2004 21:57:32 +0000, SanSaw wrote:
>>
>>
>> > Spoke with an
> immigration officer and found that there will not be any
>> >
> issue with her travelling outside the USA. Thx to all who tried to find
>> > an answer.
>>
>>
> I'd say it all depends which officer
> you speak to. Some don't know the law, and others sleep with a copy of
> the INA under their pillow and know it cover to cover. The information
> officers are the same way.
Agreed, some do know the law very well. Unfortunately, those tend not to
be the front-line people, but rather get assigned to back-room duties,
exactly because they are better qualified.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want to knock immigration officers. These are
hard-working people, and they are usually good at what they are supposed
to do. The misunderstanding is in that they are not even supposed to
interpret the law. There is a reason immigration officers, especially
those you get to talk to as an individual, are making little more than
minimum wage, while lawyers make well over $100/hour, some much more than
that.
> Bad immigration lawyers and consulatants get people into tons of trouble
> as well.
Stay away from "immigration consultants". They don't call themselves
lawyers for a reason, and many end up prosecuted for practicing law
without a license.
Lawyers can be bad, too, of course, but they at least have to adhere to a
certain level of professionalism, study law for years (rather than the
crash-course that immigration officers get) and pass the bar examination.
This still is not a guarantee, but the odds of getting good advice are
much better.
It's really not much different from asking an experienced neurosurgeon vs.
asking somebody who just completed a CPR class about brain surgery. There
are bad neurosurgeons, too.
> Immigration officers prepare cases
> that are sent before judges, and order people removed from the United
> States at the border and that order carries as much weight as if it were
> done by an immigration judge. Many have lots of practice with the law.
First, these are not the immigration officers you would be talking to on
the phone or when you go to an immigration office. The people working the
counters and phones tend to be the low-paid bottom rung people whose job
it is to accept and pass out paperwork. For that matter, as far as I know,
the phone lines are actually not even staffed by government employees but
by a private contractor.
Second, many, many lawsuits against CIS are won because these immigration
officers didn't know the law and falsely denied applications.
> A lot of people that claim "bad advice" get accurate answers that they
> don't want to hear.
Agreed.
> Then they keep asking different people the same question until one tells
> them they can do what they want to do. Some get bad advice the first
> time they ask.
--
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