5 Steps to a Smoother Immigration Process

The immigration process can be extremely difficult, time-consuming, and frustrating to navigate. Yet there are steps you can take to give yourself your best chance of having your application accepted the first time.

Here are five ways you can make life a little easier for yourself as you seek to get a visa or a green card.

#1) Explore All Your Options

There is often more than one way to get the legal right to enter and remain in the country. There is often more than one way to earn the right to work, open up a bank account, or study here in the United States.

Choosing the right visa is the first, crucial step, and it’s one of the first places where an attorney’s help can be invaluable.

Note the first visa you get is often not the only visa you’re stuck with. Once you have a legal status that lets you get started you can always apply for a change of status later. It may be more advantageous to do that than it is to go for the most difficult possible visa you can apply for. 

#2) Watch Your Deadlines

Every visa comes with a complex schedule of deadlines. The more you work in advance of those deadlines the better off you’ll be. 

Use a method to keep all the deadlines straight, such as Google Calendar. You might want to create some deadlines of your own, ones that can help you get your paperwork turned in well in advance.

Make sure you’re getting all your paperwork in. Often, there will be multiple forms you’ll have to file in order to get the process started and handled correctly.

#3) Gather Supporting Documents

Requests for Evidence delay immigration applications by a considerable margin. You can avoid them by making sure you include every scrap of evidence USCIS could possibly want with all of your paperwork.

This can include evidence of presence in the united states, passport photos, passport copies, birth certificates, arrival and departure documents, bank statements and other financial documents, documents related to your sponsor’s status in the United States, evidence of a clean criminal record, military records, and more.

Your attorney can give you a full list.

#4) Get a Translator

Many individuals don’t realize that all supporting documentation will need a certified English translation. You’ll  need this in addition to copies of the originals.

Certifying a translation just means that there is an accompanying “certification statement” that outlines the translator’s qualifications and affirms the completeness and accuracy of the document while identifying the translated document and th language, as well as the translator’s name, signature, and date. 

#5) Start With an Attorney

You may have noticed a few times here that working with an attorney can greatly reduce the amount of time, research, and guesswork that you’ll have to do for everything from gathering evidence to making sure you’re selecting the right forms.

While this may seem self-serving, the truth is that immigration is not a DIY process. The earlier you involve an attorney the more successful you’re likely to be. Fortunately working with an attorney is generally not as expensive or as hard as most people fear.

Trying to enter the United States legally? Get help today. Reach out for a consultation with Hykel Law to find out how we can help.

See also:

7 Ways to Get a Green Card

Remote Work and US Immigration Law

What Are the Grounds for Cancellation of Removal?