If you’re a foreign national but want to stay in the US, you can do that if you get yourself a temporary visa. There’s a fairly long and complex process leading to this outcome. If you want to move in this direction, hiring a lawyer to help you definitely makes sense.
We’ll talk about why you should hire an attorney to help you obtain your visa in the following article. Getting a lawyer on your side who understands the law regarding temporary visas should help you a great deal.
There Are Multiple Temporary Visas
Seeking professional help to obtain a temporary visa is a sound strategy because there’s more than just one kind of these visas as explained by njimmigrationattorney.com. If you don’t hire a lawyer who can explain the process, you might not know which visa type you need.
For instance, you can get a P-type visa. That works best for athletes, entertainers, and artists. Say you’re a famous painter, and you’re coming to the US because you’re presenting some of your most compelling works to an American audience for the first time. You can get a lawyer to guide you through the process and get you the P visa you need.
You might get an O-type visa if you have extraordinary abilities that America needs. For instance, maybe you’re a world-famous neurosurgeon, and you’re here to perform a very delicate operation on a patient who needs your help. You can locate an attorney who will help you get that O-type visa, and you can stay here in the US legally while you perform the operation that potentially saves someone’s life.
What Other Temporary Visas Exist?
You can hire a lawyer who will help you get an L-1 visa. That’s an intercompany transfer visa. If you work for a company with locations inside and outside the US, you might come to America to work for that company. Maybe you’ll stay here for only a few days, but perhaps that business entity wants you here for weeks or even months.
Lawyers can help you obtain H-1B, B-1, or B-2 visas. Those are visitor or specialist visas. If you’re a foreign national and travel to America to conduct temporary business, you’ll want a B-1 visa. You need a B-2 as a tourist in the US.
You’ll need an H-1B visa if you’re a worker that an American company hires to do a job requiring a Bachelor’s Degree or higher. If you work in architecture, engineering, IT, or finance, you’ll need a lawyer to help you get one of these visas.
What a Lawyer Does for You if You Need a Temporary Visa
You’ll want to contact a lawyer’s office that knows all about filing and processing temporary visas. The best ones will know how to move you through the process and get you any of the temporary visa types we’ve mentioned.
You should also know that many different specialist lawyers exist. You don’t want an attorney who does strictly criminal defense or corporate law if you need a temporary visa. You should check the lawyer’s website or ask them whether they do this kind of work.
Once you’ve found an attorney or law office who you know handles this kind of thing, you can ask them to help you obtain the paperwork you’ll need to fill out to start the process leading to your eventual temporary visa. They might also help you fill out the proper forms on a computer and send them in.
They can help you pay the filing fees that go with this task. They can help you understand any confusing or ambiguous legal language or terminology that sometimes comes with these forms.
What if You’re Not in America Yet?
If you’re already in America, meeting with the right attorney isn’t challenging. However, maybe you’re still in your origin country, and you need a lawyer’s help.
The right lawyer can meet with you via Skype or Zoom. They can instruct you from America regarding what to do, even if you’re hundreds or thousands of miles away.
The lawyer can meet digitally with your home country’s US consulate. They can tell the consulate why you want to come to America and what kind of visa you need.
Can They Do Anything Else for You?
The right attorney to help you in these instances can instruct you regarding when you need to get a new kind of visa if your status changes. For example, maybe you’re here with a legal six-month tourist visa. Perhaps you need to stay here for longer than six months, though.
Maybe you’re visiting a family member, and that family member gets very sick. You want to remain in the US to care for them, but you know your visa will expire soon. If you file for a longer visa quickly enough, you can probably stay. However, you may not know how to file for a visa extension fast enough.
Your lawyer can help you with that. They will know what forms to file and what fees to pay. They have probably helped other individuals and families in similar situations in the past.
Find the Right Lawyer to Help with Your Visa
Temporary visas allow workers, tourists, and foreign nationals visiting family members to stay here legally for as long as they need to do so. Finding and hiring the right attorney or law office to help you secure a visa makes sense. You don’t want to risk deportation because you made a mistake during the filing process or for some other easily avoidable reason.
Ideally, you’ll want a lawyer who doesn’t charge an unreasonable amount. You should also make sure the one you hire does this kind of work regularly. You don’t want someone inexperienced or who doesn’t know this law area.
With the proper lawyer on your side, you’ll soon get the temporary visa you need, and you can stay in the country for as long as you desire.
Nicola Holder 
Rhydian Choi