The Fruits of Our Labor

Some we will enjoy here on Earth.

Some we will enjoy once we walk through the gates of Heaven.

Some we will enjoy today....

In 2006, the Friday before Labor Day weekend to be exact, I received a call from a helpless and very desperate lady, Ms. L. I was an immigration paralegal at the time and she was calling on behalf of her husband, Mr. L, who by all accounts, was very desperate for some immigration help, fast! As the "gate keeper", it was my job to ultimately make the decisions whether we had the time, resources and expertise to help people. So as I listened to a condensed version but my answer was, "I am sorry, we just cannot help you at this time". It was a Friday afternoon, they had an important deadline the following Tuesday and I had company in town that needed to be entertained {I only mention this because it's how I remember when all this went down}. Ms. L accepted my answer but I could tell that she was very sad.

An hour later, Ms. L called back. She was again asking me to consider taking their case. She was referred to us by one of our previous clients and had heard we were the best {not denying this but I was a little biased} They were, at that moment, sitting outside of their hired, well paid attorneys office and even though he was in the office, he would not meet with them. As I mentioned, they had a deadline and needed to see if he had their "papers" ready to send to immigration. Not only did he not have the work done, but refused to meet with them AND refused to refund their money.

I asked Ms. L to come to our office immediately! As a paralegal, nothing infuriated me more than these type of shenanigans created by attorneys and their staff!!!

We accepted the case. The attorney I worked for at the time worked the entire weekend to get these "papers" ready to send to immigration. As our house guests helped us lay the floors in our kitchen, I was back and forth from the computer helping get these "papers" ready as well. As I read the history of what has happened to Mr. L since entering the US, not only was I happy that we took the case but it also renewed my passion for helping our voiceless immigrants!

You may assume that when I say "immigrants" I am referring to those that swim a river and sneak into the US but, these clients were NOT illegal immigrants. Yes, they were from Mexico but you see, Mr. L was educated and a highly trained tile designer. He came to our country and opened his own company {read: putting money into the US economy} The only problem was that he picked the wrong attorney. One that did not care. One that was probably over committed. One that did not care what happened to immigrants in our country! Feel my passion??? Even to this day, this case still rattles me!

To make this very long, exhausting, emotional-roller-coaster-of-a-case, story short, just in the last couple months, Mr. and Ms. L, along with their precious kids, have become permanent residents {aka: green card holders}. That's right, five long years, thousands and thousands of dollars and now they can rest easy knowing they are closer to becoming citizens of this great country!

Soooo, why did I bore you with all of these details....one because this is MY blog and I might not remember all of these details one day AND two, because those same two lovely immigrants that we helped five long years ago, custom made tiles for our patio and the preparations to put them down started this morning :) More to come....

P.S. - My use of { } are in lieu of ( ) because I think they are more appealing to the eye! Thank you Bryan for suggesting that I use ( ) instead of { }!!! :)