Hi everyone I’m Patricia Barbee the Managing Attorney of the Immigration Department here at Bailey & Galyen.
Just wanted to give you a few updates in the world of Immigration. Honestly it’s the dog days of summer there’s not a lot new happening but I do want to let you’ll know if you are thinking about filing a petition, a family petition or other kind of petition with Immigration it’s a good idea to get started now because Immigration announced recently that they are raising fees on a lot of the applications. One of the most significant would be for citizenship. That filing fee for several years has been $725 to apply for your citizenship, is going to going up to over $1,200 by October the 2nd so if you want to file for your citizenship let’s get that in the mail now and save you about $500.
There was some judicial action on DACA which had been seemingly restored by a District Court Judge back East so there was a brief window where initial DACA applicants were able to file again but another judge in another District Court ruled that actually no that’s not what the Supreme Court decision on DACA said at all and so all states now other than 3 on the East Coast are again rejecting initial DACA applications. So I would say to you if you are interested in DACA and you think you are eligible for initial DACA come see me for a consultation and let’s see if that’s true and keep our eye on the news. And if that changes in your favor we would be ahead of the game and ready to get your application in the mail to take advantage of that window of opportunity that could be open again very briefly.
But I would also say to you if you think you are eligible for DACA come see me because it may be that you could be eligible for other things that you were not aware of. Knowledge is power and until you come and tell an Immigration attorney your facts of your particular history in your case you may be completely unaware that there are ways that you can adjust your status and become a permanent resident and even a US resident. Some of you may even already be US Citizens. I have had quite a few clients over the years who had no idea that they had any status but we were able to show because they had 1 US citizen parent and that parent fulfilled some of the requirements for physical presence in the United States between certain periods of time that that person actually was a citizen all along.
So come see me, make an appointment, call 214-252-9099 which is the reception desk here at my office in Dallas. We’ll set you up and we’ll see what we can do for you.
