Of Course I Refused Him - He Used an Attorney!

Regarding Anastasio Somoza Garcia, the ruthless (but non-communist) dictator of Nicaragua, in about 1939 FDR purportedly remarked "Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch."

While Madam hopes that her faithful readers will never suspect that she herself would use language of that color, she uses it here to press a point: your (president, child, wife, dog, recalcitrant rosebush) not being perfect for one of any number of good reasons is not necessarily a reason for you to ditch (him, her, it) out of hand.

In that same line of thinking, the fact that a visa applicant has employed an attorney to help with the paperwork does not automatically mean that the applicant is up to no good.

While there are many good reasons to remember that old warning that one might become known by the company one keeps (Aesop, Proverbs 13.20, your mother), Madam, for all her dislike of incompetent and shady immigration attorneys, still fully understands the reasons why a perfectly honest, legitimate applicant for consular services might choose to use the services of a - preferably competent, honest - one.

Madam suggests that one think of it this way: When you need your lawn seeded, you might try to do it yourself. Or you might find that your own skills lean more toward - say - baking, sewing, training cats, balancing budgets, ruling small nations, or drying the points of your '63 MG after driving through a puddle, and will choose to employ someone who is far more certain to turn your mudhole into a lush green paradise than you are.

That is not a bad idea. It is not a criminal idea. It might cost money, but the last time Madam looked, very few Americans were totally adverse to the thought of spending money for something they wanted.

And while consular officers are aware of (and sometimes even read through and understand, although not always) the complex paperwork that many visa applications require, they sometimes lose track of the first moment they faced such a stack in ConGen and thought blindly, "Sh*t! I knew I should have taken up organic farming!"



... or maybe not.

In any case, Madam, for all her aforementioned dislike of (some) immigration attorneys, would nevertheless caution consular officers to think twice about refusing an applicant for the sole reason that he or she chose to hire someone else to fill out forms neatly and - one innocently hopes - correctly. And she hopes to never again hear what she heard so often, for so many years, "Of course I refused him. He used an attorney!"