What to Bring to an Immigration Consultation
Bring what you have. The most common reason people delay a consultation is that they are waiting to assemble a complete file, and that delay costs more than the missing paperwork does. This is a list to work from, not a set of requirements.
Anything ever filed with immigration, and every reply
Applications, petitions, receipt notices, approvals, denials, requests for more evidence. The replies matter as much as the filings — they establish what has already been decided, and a case history is very hard to reconstruct without them.
Identity and entry documents
Passports including expired ones, any visa, any entry or departure record, and your alien registration number if you have one. Expired documents are not useless; they are often the clearest evidence of when and how someone entered.
Anything from a court
Immigration court notices, hearing dates, and any order. Also any criminal record, including matters that were dismissed or that you were told would not count — how a disposition is treated for immigration purposes is a separate question from how it was treated in the criminal case, and the answer is frequently surprising.
Proof of time here and ties
Tax filings, leases, pay records, school records for children, medical records, and anything showing family relationships. Several forms of relief turn on continuous presence or on hardship to relatives who are citizens or residents, and this is the evidence that establishes both.
A written timeline
One page: when you entered, how, and every significant thing since — filings, moves, arrests, marriages, births. It is the most useful thing you can bring and it costs nothing to produce. It also stops the first meeting being spent reconstructing dates.
Your questions, written down
People forget what they meant to ask, especially about the parts that worry them most. Write them down beforehand, including the ones you are embarrassed to ask. What you say in a consultation is confidential.
This applies in every state — but where you are still matters
The steps above are the same wherever you live. Which office and court handle your case, how detention works where you are, and how far local police cooperate with immigration enforcement are not. Pick your state for that.
Related
General information, not legal advice. Immigration law and policy change frequently — confirm your options in a consultation before acting on anything here.