Hi, I’m Angie Turner. I am the managing partner of Lamb & Turner. I started working with Jonathan in 2020 as his partner. I joined his firm in 2016. He’s been practicing since 1983 so he’s been around to see everything. I think we counted he’s been under eight presidents so he knows immigration very well. He’s taught me almost everything I know. We practice solely immigration. We do asylum. We do family-based petitions, waivers, immigration court. We represent employment-based applicants. We have all kinds of – if it’s an immigrant, we’re going to help you in some form or fashion.
We help our clients who are abroad who want to try and come home because they have a prior deportation. We help our clients who are abroad who want to come and visit a family member. If you’re looking for a tourist application, we try and help you get that. Anything we can help you do, we’re there. Now, if you want to apply for citizenship, we have that, too. We do everything. Whatever immigration concern you have, more than likely we’re going to help.
I just turned 70. Don’t have any immediate plans to retire, but as we get older, we can’t continue with the same workload as before. I had been looking for someone to take the firm over for quite some time. I wanted to give the firm continuity. I have some very loyal employees. I wanted them to know that they had somewhere that they’d be able to work. When you’re working for a boss in their 60s, you start thinking about things like that. One of my goals was so that the firm would continue on and I finally found someone. It took a long time to find Angie that I felt was committed to doing the work, to do a good job, and could run it.
What I had been doing as we’ve been partners almost five years is gradually withdrawing a little bit more from the actual administration and the firm. I still do interviews. I still go to court, still consult with clients. Those are the things I like to do the most, but I guess I’m considered the general partner here, not the managing partner. The fact that everyone’s a lot younger than me actually makes it very refreshing because being 70, as I said earlier, I’m set in my ways. It’s good to see fresh approaches, especially when things come up that they’ve never seen before and there’s an atmosphere of discovery. I’ve seen a lot of – I’ve seen it all in many ways. It’s interesting and rewarding to see that. If I can help give people some guidance in how to tackle these things, that’s rewarding.
Our practice is set apart, because like I said, you can reach me any time, 24 hours a day, same thing with Mr. Lamb. You can reach Jonathan any time of the day. You have our email. Our email goes straight to our phone. In some cases, you’ll have my personal cellphone number. I’m more responsive to text messages and emails than I am to phone numbers because I’m a millennial. I don’t like answering my phone, but I do respond to text messages pretty quickly. I’ve always valued being available for my clients and I know Jonathan has, too. I think that sets us apart where you’re not speaking to a legal assistant. You’re not speaking to an associate. You’re speaking to Lamb & Turner or Lamb or Turner whenever you call our firm.
There are two, really. People assume that they can stay in the United States. Just that they can do that. It’s not that easy. You have to have someone to sponsor you, whether a relative or a job, or you have to be seeking refuge because you were persecuted in your home country or you feel that you will be persecuted if you go back. Sometimes you hear this in the media where people will say that people need to go back and wait in line. There is some waiting in line. There’s some categories where people are able to immigrate to the United States where they’re sponsored by particular relatives that there’s such a small quota every year that they do literally have to wait for many years to do it, but it’s not just a question of going back to your country and waiting in line. Sometimes there is no line to wait in. Not everyone can stay in the United States. That’s something that both immigrants and people that don’t want people to immigrate here don’t really understand.
In my opinion, it’s the backlogs at the agencies, both the courts are backed up, USCIS is backed up. For instance, asylum cases, we tell people if you file an asylum case with USCIS, you can wait five, six, seven years for an interview. It’s a manpower problem. It’s also I think different administrations take these different officers and put them on different projects. For instance, if there’s a particular influx of cases from one part of the world, they’ll take all the officers out to work on those cases and people that have been waiting are just shunted aside. This builds up a lot of frustration because clients, of course, want to get their case finalized. You’ve come to the US. You want to get your future nailed down. It’s hard to really understand that if you’ve not been in a situation yourself.
Clients get frustrated and we get frustrated. I don’t want to say we’re caught in the middle because our job is to help these people to take care of this, but especially USCIS is a very unresponsive agency, very difficult to talk to anybody there. You can’t really check on the status of cases, not in a meaningful way. You can get something that, oh, your case is still being processed, but it’s impossible to talk to the people that are actually working on the cases. To me, that’s the biggest area of frustration.
When you have a long-fought case or one that’s got a difficult facts situation and you’re able to get a benefit or relief for the client by putting in a lot of hard work and a lot of time on the case, especially when the person might have had several attorneys before we got the case and they were not able to successfully conclude it and we were able to. Those are probably the most rewarding.
When a client calls our office and asks a question about immigration or criminal defense, our first question is, “How did you hear about us? What kind of immigration questions do you have?” That way, we know who to filter it to as far as employment-based or family-based or deportation defense, those kinds of things. Our intake system is we have an intake online where my legal assistants will email the form to our clients. Then based on the types of questions that they answer, it could be filtered to either Jonathan or I. Both of us handle the same cases. I handle mostly waivers and family-based and deportation, but he handles the same things. Either way it goes, we handle all matters of intake. Once the intake form is completed, we get scheduled a consultation. The client will be assured to either meet with me or Mr. Lamb.
Depending on how the case goes, if it’s let’s say with a family-based case, once we meet with the client and we explain how the law works, our legal assistants take the case and they help them fill out the paperwork. If there’s an interview, I usually attend the interview or Jonathan will attend. Either way, asylum-based cases, we prep the clients adjustment – if there’s an interview, the client’s prepped a minimum of one time, depending on the complexity of the case, a minimum of two times, and then we go to the interview with the client. If it’s a deportation case, it’s a minimum of two times where they’re prepped. We work with clients directly. Our legal assistants help us fill our forms, but we attend the court cases. We go to the client. We’re on the phone with the client. They have our cellphone. They have our email. They have everything so they know how to reach us.
We’re very hands-on here. That’s the one thing I love about our firm is when you hire us, you get us. You get either me or Mr. Lamb. You know how to reach us. You have my email, which is on my phone, and there’s no way I’m not going to respond to you. You could call and say, “This is Angie Turner. I need to speak to attorney Jonathan,” and we’re ready to go. We’re there to answer your calls. We’re very much available all the time.
Every case we take on, all deadlines, either court-imposed deadline, USCIS-imposed deadline, or internal deadlines, we put on our Serenade system. Also, we put it in the Google Calendar. Everyone shares the same calendar every day. Things are color coded for particular legal assistants and attorneys, but this is a way, again, and we try to share ownership of different things. Everyone sees what’s due on a particular day. We try to review things a couple of weeks prior to – well, we try to review things on a consistent basis so that we see what’s coming up within a couple of weeks and so we can be prepared for it.
We consider all the cases that we take on to be everybody’s case. When you hire us, you’re assigned to a specific legal assistant because all three of them have different specialties, but because of things I have seen earlier on in my practice, I know it’s very disconcerting if someone calls up and they have a question about their case and the person who usually they deal with isn’t there and they can’t get the answers they need. It’d be frustrating for anybody to go through that. We try to share everything here. I mean, it’s impossible. Not everyone can be up to date on everybody’s case, but one of us will be hired initially but sometimes, for instance, if one of us has a conflict, maybe it’s my case but I can’t go to the interview that day, Ms. Turner will go instead of me and vice versa.
We collaborate a lot. The main emphasis we have here is we are a small firm. There are only two attorneys, three legal assistants. We try to share all the cases. We try to make it so everyone is involved in every case. If there’s any discontinuity, like I said, if the person who normally handles the case is not in the office one day for a particular reason, there’s always someone that can step up and fill in and answer questions.
It’s a funny topic, changes in the near future. It depends on who’s in charge. 2020 to 2024 was hectic because of COVID. It wasn’t necessarily anything – each administration has its own challenges. 2020 to 2024, we saw a lot of increases in immigration court. The practice got busy with immigration court. Judges were told that they needed to have cases done quickly. Jonathan and I were going to court almost two, three times a month, which is not normal for us. Immigration cases as far as asylum were slowing down. We weren’t going to our asylum cases as quickly, but there were upticks in the fact that interviews weren’t happening for green cards. People were just getting approved for green cards. One area will pick up but another area slows down.
In 2016, when President Trump took over, immigration court increased. Everybody was facing – if you had been a criminal or if you had been doing anything, you were put in immigration proceedings and so Jonathan and I were going to court a lot. Asylum cases slowed down. There was an increase in asylum but there were no interviews happening. On the other side, USCIS was approving green cards without interviews so that was really quick. Things were moving but with COVID things also slowed down.
In 2020, when President Biden took over, immigration court slowed down because they offered prosecutorial discretion. Prosecutorial discretion was letting the ICE officers, the ICE attorneys just terminate whatever cases they wanted to so immigration courts were slowing down, but then now you have people without status. There was really no movement anywhere. USCIS has been notoriously slow.
It’s crazy right now. We’re busy but we’re busy in a good way, bad way. It’s difficult. Each administration has its own challenges. In 2024, 2025, when things change, if they change, it’ll probably be a more uptick in some area. We’re not sure. Like I said, each administration is different. We’ll see either immigration court is going to increase again or we’ll go back to USCIS increasing, especially if the Biden policy stays in place. Hopefully, immigration will – USCIS will start seeing more activity.
If I get a hug at the end of the immigration process, if the client is crying once they get their green card, it’s usually I’m crying, too, or I get a hug. I’m a hugger. I’m a big hugger. Whenever the client reaches in to hug me, I’m ecstatic. I love a good hug. That makes me happy. I know I’m supposed to care about reviews and I know I’m supposed to care about everything else, but my happiness happens when my client is happy. That brings me joy. That’s why I like doing what I do.
If they entered lawfully, they have the option to apply for adjustment of status. Generally, the US citizen spouse would file a petition for their immigrant counterpart and then with that petition you file a 45 application and that’s based on your admissibility to the United States, meaning you’re not a criminal. You’re not a terrorist. You don’t have any disqualifying factors, all those wonderful things. Then the US citizen attests that they will be able to support you here in the United States. Then depending on how long you’ve been married, you either get a green card for two years or for ten years.
Now, the other part is if you entered unlawfully, you can do what’s called counselor processing which, where the US citizen petitions for you, that’s the first step. Then depending on your manner of entry, you would file a waiver asking for forgiveness or you could do the new process that’s been just come out by President Biden, which is the parole in place. You would do the parole in place basically asking the US government to grant you this entry document at which point you could then do, if you’ve already done the petition, you could do it or you could rely on that old petition, that original petition, or you could do the petition after the parole in place with your green card application and then you just move forward with your adjustment status in the United States.
It’s a great alternative for somebody that doesn’t want to travel back home to their original home country, war-torn – a lot of people are just scared to go back. This parole in place option is the newest option and it’s the best option for people that don’t want to go back home.
Keep your nose clean. Definitely stay out of trouble. Don’t hang around with anyone that’s going to get you in trouble. If you can’t avoid driving, drive carefully. Drive following the rules. Make sure your car looks – you’ve got all your lights working, use your blinker, all those things. Don’t drink and drive. Don’t use drugs. Don’t do anything crazy because any mistake, any mishap, any misstep will definitely ruin your future. Just keep your nose clean. Be on your best behavior. That’s always my favorite advice to give to anybody that’s here in the United States looking for anything. Even if you’re not an immigrant, just always be on your best behavior.
Not everybody here is illegal. Just because you overstayed or whatever, you’re not illegal. Just because you’re from another country, you’re not illegal. We have a lot of people that are told to just go home. We have people that are told just go back to where you came from. Sometimes it’s not that easy. Sometimes there’s war-torn countries, Ethiopia right now, Eritrea right now, Venezuela, it’s easier to almost live here without a status than it is to just go home.
We have clients who have been here for years and they’re not married or they don’t have somebody to petition for them. That, there’s nothing we can do for them, unfortunately. If you entered unlawfully and you don’t have family, it’s unfortunate. It’s just how it is. It’s just how the immigration process works. The immigration process is long and complicated. Even if you entered lawfully and your parents are citizens, it could take 20 years before anything becomes available for you. A lot of people don’t understand that. You could have done everything right, but the system just doesn’t work for you.
That’s a tough one. It’s tough because they’re constantly changing. USCIS is good about issuing mandates and regulation changes and emails. Everything comes through the internet. Twitter and Facebook and emails are constantly letting us know what’s going on. TikTok is actually really good because usually if one attorney finds out about it, everybody finds out about it. That’s how we find out about everything, but the law is constantly changing. We’re always getting updates. New case law comes out, which the Fifth Circuit is wonderful about putting their new case law out. The Board of Immigration Appeals does the same thing. We just have to keep our eyes open.
If a client calls and they say that they have a complicated immigration history, our first question is, “Do you have your records?” If the person doesn’t have their records, then our first instinct is to go ahead and ask for them. We can ask for records from USCIS, from CBP, from FBI, from ICE, from the EOIR court, the immigration court. We can ask records from anybody. It’s not hard. It’s not difficult. It does take some time to get those things, but that’s the first step because we want the complete record for everyone that we talk to. Once we get those records, then we can evaluate, well, how complicated is this case and then depending on what the immigration law is at that time, then we can move forward to see, can we get the case reopened? Can we get a new case started? Can we apply for any benefits? We just have to evaluate it from the very beginning.
Having practiced as long as I have, I’m pretty familiar with what attorneys are supposed to do and not supposed to do. A lot of the ethical standards actually are pretty self – they’re obvious. Very few of them are counter-intuitive. Usually, if you’re in a situation where it doesn’t feel right, that’s when you need to step back and see if you’re doing the right thing. We do sometimes turn cases away where we think people are trying to somehow game the system because that’s not our role. Our role is not to just win cases. It’s to determine if someone has rights under the immigration law and to help them secure those rights lawfully and ethically.
The only hidden cost we have, and they’re not even really hidden because it’s outlined right in the contract, is we have copies, postage, mailings, and I believe translations, but those are the only hidden costs that we have, and they’re not, like I said, hidden because they’re in the contract and we lay them out formally. We notify clients that copies are going to be made. The larger your case is – our cases are generally pretty consolidated because we can do everything. We can either file online or we can submit via paper. USCIS is advancing in that we can file online now to minimize our paper, but deportation cases usually have a lot of paperwork so those get a little bit more expensive, even the EOIR court, even the immigration court is going online now. The newer your case is, the less paperwork you’re going to have because everything gets to be filed online.
My favorite types of cases are VAWA cases. A VAWA case is where a woman or a man has been married to a permanent resident or a US citizen and they suffered abuse at the hands of that marriage or relationship. It can be a common law marriage. It could be an actual marriage by law, a lawful marriage, but the abuse that they suffer ranges from emotional to physical. It’s horrible.
One of my favorite cases was this little girl from Israel who had come over and she had married the first guy that she met here in the United States. He convinced her that he was the way to go and they built a life together and then immediately after they got married, he forbid her from seeing people. He forbid her from talking to her friends. He mistreated her. He abused her. He raped her. He did all kinds of things. It was terrible because he was part of her community. He was also Jewish and he basically took away her life.
She would come and see us. She was homeless. She didn’t have anywhere to stay. She was hopping around from house to house. My goal was to make her life easier. I would help her with her Ubers. I would help her with whatever I could help. I would take her to her interviews, get her whatever she needed, but we applied for a VAWA application for her and she got it. She is a green card holder, and she is now a US citizen. She has sent me so many cases because she is so appreciative. She’s one of my favorite clients and that’s my favorite case.
My favorite case is helping women that truly – men, too. We actually have several men who have gone through the same thing. Helping people that need the help and they don’t know that this is available to them and they have been told and convinced that the person that they believe to be the love of their life is the only way out and it’s not. It’s not. Nobody should ever have to rely on anybody else. I love being able to help people with that.