Growing fear within the undocumented immigrant community has bred opportunity for fraudulent immigration services as more people seeking protection from deportation flock toward immigration consultants posing as lawyers. According to Arnold Jaffe, a Santa Barbara attorney who specializes in immigration law, more than half of his clients report that they had been “ripped off” by immigration consultants misrepresenting themselves as attorneys.
The California Immigration Consultant Program began in the 1960s to provide monolingual immigrants with nonlegal services like filling out immigration forms and submitting them to the correct United States Citizenship and Immigration Services entities. The consultants are not authorized to give legal advice or choose which forms the applicant fills out. However, many of these consultants illegally call themselves notarios — a term that in many Hispanic countries translates to a highly trained legal professional. They trick immigrants into believing the consultants are full-fledged attorneys and accepting fraudulent services that put them at risk of deportation.
In the past six months, complaints about the unauthorized practice of law (UPL) relating to immigration has doubled in the state, according to Teresa Ruano with the California State Bar. In December 2018, for example, there were 59 reports of UPL. In April, the number jumped to 106. Ruano said it’s impossible to determine the exact reasons for the boost, but it may be in part due to the recent efforts by the State Bar to make complaint forms more widely accessible online to victims of fraud and posting warnings to immigrants on its website and social media in both English and Spanish.