3 ms·

Why did it cost $10,000?

• patio11 17y ago
  Immigration law can get expensive in a hurry, and (as an aside which I hope is unrelated to the current discussion) the people who most need it are the least capable of assessing providers and the most likely to get taken to the cleaners by unscrupulous folks. If you accessed the Internet from outside of the US you'd be bored to tears of ads, in every language, promising a shot at the US Visa lottery for "very reasonable application fees". Edit: Incidentally -- if you'd like to sit down and discuss your (three page) application for an engineering visa in Japan with someone who speaks English, that will run you about $2,000. You could do it yourself, too (my company and I always do), but for people who are inexpert at the magic words, the lawyer is worth the money. You're paying them largely for their savvy and, ahem, "I'm important enough to have a high-powered lawyer on my side" rather than for their ability to read and fill out forms. The visa process has rather little to do with you and rather a lot to do with your host country. The letter in support of my most recent application says "Patrick" once and variations of "Japan" about fourteen times. It was written by an HR officer who understands how the game is played.
• CyberFonic 17y ago
  Lawyers just love immigration law. They can charge like wounded bulls for what you can essentially do for your self. One friend spent $30,000 for a business visa app and failed to get it. Another just went ahead by himself and successfully got it. His costs, only filing fees and a bit of form filling, photocopying, printing.