You won't believe Mr. Z's case

One of the core values of our firm is that we fight for immigrants every day.This doesn’t mean that we take every case that comes to our firm. Sometimes the law is simply not on our side, or it is not in the immigrant’s best interest to file an application.However, we do everything we can to help each person who contacts our firm. And we have never been afraid to sign up for difficult and complicated cases.In fact, those immigrants with tough cases often need our services the most.Earlier this year, we attended an interview for a client who had one of those challenging cases. Due to the sensitive nature of his case, we will only refer to him as Mr. Z.Mr. Z had a long and difficult process to get citizenship. He filed his N-400 in Fall 2019. After waiting nearly two years for an interview, Mr. Z contacted our firm to file a delay lawsuit.

We filed the lawsuit for him, and within a few months, his citizenship interview was scheduled.

We knew this would be a tough interview because Mr. Z had told us about one major issue in his case. He told us that he had gotten mixed up with the wrong crowd a few years back, and a couple of his colleagues had been investigated and eventually convicted of money laundering.

Mr. Z was never charged with any crime, but the FBI had questioned him about his potential involvement in this matter.

We sent attorney Tim Rudolph to attend the interview with Mr. Z. For two hours, the officer questioned Mr. Z about his employment history and his involvement in the FBI investigation.

As we had recommended, Mr. Z fully disclosed everything to the officer and explained that he had not committed any crime.

A few months later, USCIS issued a Notice of Intent to Deny.

The officer said that Mr. Z misrepresented himself by saying that he had not been under investigation. The officer referred to an FBI record which stated that he was a “subject” of the investigation.

We responded to the NOID and argued that there is a legal distinction between being the “subject” of an investigation and being the “target” of an investigation.

Since Mr. Z was not the target, he did not misrepresent himself by stating that he was not under investigation.

We submitted a legal brief and an affidavit we prepared for Mr. Z, explaining this distinction to the officer.

We waited 7 months before finally receiving a decision on the case. But it was worth the wait, as Mr. Z has been scheduled for an oath ceremony and will soon be a citizen!

Jim