Bucharest Expat realizes that quite a few of you out there, whether from the US, or elsewhere have fallen in love with, began a relationship with, and possibly even married a Romanian. Because of these “circumstances” as we’ll call it, you, at some point, will be going down the “immigration” road. Unless you yourself will be laying permanent ground in Romania you’ll need to seek a Visa of some sort for your new partner.
There are multiple was to do this, each with a unique set of pros and cons. Lately we have had discussions with many people, from all walks of life, with experiences that seem to be oddly consistent.
Do you do the leg work yourself or hire an attorney?
The answer is it depends.
Doing the legwork yourself can be a tedious process in which you will have to “learn the ropes” as you go. You will save the money you have spent on hiring an attorney, however your cost of learning may or may not offset that initial retainer. When doing the legwork yourself, you may also “hire” a local representative that can assist in pointing you in the right direction. Start at your consulate both in person in your local area and on the web. Each country offers a complete or near complete package of immigration information on their consulate websites, of which you can download, print up, and walk (documents in hand) to your nearest consulate and speak with someone who can walk you through what it is you have in your hand.
Hiring an attorney is something you must really do some homework on before hand. It is best to work with someone that comes highly recommended by someone you trust, or is someone you have worked with in the past, as immigration is something to be taken very seriously! Best bet?… Hire 2 attorneys… one to work on your visa, the other to make sure your attorney is working on your visa.
The best advice we can offer?? Stay away from immigration attorneys that advertise heavily on the web, as these companies may not be who or what they say. Remember this is not a fact, nor our we attorneys.. this is simply our OPINION. There are enough “bad apples” out there that you may wish to just pursue a route away from the web altogether.
Here is the story of a fellow expat that may help you protect yourself in the future:
My wife and I met in Bucharest over 3 years ago, and almost immediately married in Bucharest. Soon thereafter we began the pursuit of her visa into the US via an online company that appears to have a couple of names. Those names are Fiancee Visas, and/or Allan S. Lolly and associates. Allan S. Lolly is the named partner representing this firm Fiancee Visas that specializes in immigration. When you google “Fiancee Visas” or combinations of those words you will inevitably see 1-800-fianceevisas, Fiancee Visas, or Allan S. Lolly and associates, so naturally, we called them, compared some rates, and decided to foot the bill to proceed forward.
Soon after, we received our “welcome” package, which of course included a list of all the documents we will need to include in our return package in order for a proper submission to the government of the US and so forth for my wife’s visa.
We completed the package, and “fedex’d” it out to our case manager, or paralegal, assigned to our case. We were off and running… or so we thought.
After a couple of days, we received confirmation that our package was received and we were good to go. I had qualified with flying colors to be my wife’s “sponsor” into the US, and we should have our interview in the not to distant future.
Then it began… after a while we received communication from our “new” case worker at Allan S. Lolly law firm, that introduced themselves and informed us they would be handling our case from here on out. No clue why this happened but we went with it. This new caseworker then proceeded to ask us for additional documentation… documentation she had yet to “receive”. Funny thing was, we had already submitted some of this information (copies of passports included) to the prior caseworker. Wonder what happened to our important, not to mention confidential, documentation? We questioned the necessity of this re-submission of information, stalled a little to do some research, and ultimately resubmitted it via email this time (which took some persuasion to do as some docs required our original signature). So the caseworker had what she needed and now we were good to go… again.
Time for a third caseworker from Allan S. Lolly to introduce themselves to us and our case. This time the request for more documents threw up a lott of red flags, and my wife and I had our first “sinking” feeling, as we now realized we were in the middle of “being had”. We paid them their money already… we now became someone to “deal” with rather than a client. The person becomes a number. Suffice to say, we did not continue to submit “further documentation” as we were now putting ourselves at risk.
Additionally, this period of “caseworker transition” caused such long and inappropriate delays, that I was forced to relocate near permanently to Romania to be with my new family. Any reasonable person would do the same. In doing so, and amidst the economic crisis, it was necessary for me to “close up shop” and cut my losses with a real estate business in the US. This (over a year into the Visa Process) caused me to no longer meet the USA’s financial requirements to be my own wife’s sponsor into the US. Thank you Allan S. Lolly for not doing your job when you had the opportunity! Allan S. Lolly did apologize for the delays in some emails, stating that it was indeed unacceptable delays, and he even offered to pay for the DHL costs to send yet another package of docs from Bucharest this time. Thanks a bunch.
It was not too long after these “switcheroos” that I became somewhat more “forceful” in my demands that they treat me as a client, which means responding to emails in a timely fashion, locating the documents that I said I had submitted, and answering my questions instead of answering questions they “thought” I asked. Time went by and still nothing except apology letters that passively put the blame on us, as well as excuses of why the caseworkers at Allan S. Lolly were not answering my emails. They were out of the office at the time as it stated on their outgoing auto-reply messages. How convenient.
Finally, we had had enough, we had gotten nowhere with this firm. We had the slight indication that they may have filed some paperwork to immigration on our behalf (a strange forwarded “receipt” email) which is disappointing because the lack of proper communication and their prior loss of our docs insured they could not have submitted a complete package. Or could they have? We’ll never know. We finally asked Allan S. Lolly and his firm for a refund of our hard earned money that we paid for this “service”.
After many emails over yet another 2 month period in which we asked for a refund, the response and communication seemed to pick up pace a bit. But no mention of the refund… just how we could be “satisfied” as customers. This included the passive apologies, including throwing the paralegals “under the bus” as well as Allan’s “personal” attention to our matter, where he would review our case. Good. We needed our case reviewed. Its About time. During this “review” of our case, Mr. Lolly replied to us in emails where he stated that everything should be squared away and again, an apology, and that if I had any delays in dealing with my caseworker to contact him personally. Of course he doesn’t pick up his phone. Well, as they had completely dodged my request for a refund, I pushed harder. Finally this story came to a head this month when Allan S. Lolly forwarded me an email his bookkeeper had emailed him that stated their firm had issued me a refund already back in October! Neither my wife and I nor Allan S. Lolly were aware that this refund had taken place. To make matters worse, this “surprise” refund was issued to a debit card that had been cancelled years prior, and was also tied to a closed bank account! Are there still companies out there that don’t re-confirm a financial transaction with customers prior to making said transaction? Apparently.. yes.
My wife and I were outraged. They just gave our money to a bank, that no surprise, was more than happy to accept the transaction. Now Allan S. Lolly has essentially handed our refund to a perfect stranger. I sent off another series of complaint emails, attempting to get them to “step up to the plate” and take responsibility, and issue my refund TO ME, however the best they could do was reinforce the fact that they had already issued a refund to some random bank that, because I used to bank with them 2 and a half years prior was reason enough to wash their hands in any responsible. Allan S. Lolly graciously offered to let me call this bank (whom let me reiterate again I am not a customer of) and sort out his firms problem.
So up to this point, I have been aggressively working very hard on the internet on the Better Business Bureau, consumer protection agencies, any blog and forums I can find to let every person know what Allan S. Lolly deems is adequate customer care. I still have no refund nor do they consider me and my wife a client that is worthy of any customer care. Beware.
So in summary, we hope that you get an understanding of some of the nightmares you may encounter along your journey to bring a spouse or fiancee back to the US, Canada, wherever it may be as a legal citizen. The above testimonial is not the opinion of Bucharest Expat, it is only the testimonial of one of our readers. Remember, the information on here is not necessarily fact, only opinion. Not all experiences are bad, nor is Bucharest Expat an attorney. The best way to find someone qualified to assist with your visa concerns? Word of mouth. If you hear something negative… err on the side of caution and steer clear!
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