Who is allowed to sign your immigration forms, and what the wrong answer costs

There is a moment in every paid immigration filing when someone other than the applicant puts a name on paper, and that moment tells you almost everything about what you have bought. A licensed attorney and a Department of Justice accredited representative sign Form G-28, the notice of entry of appearance that makes them the recognized representative on the case. A form preparer signs a different part of the form, the one reserved for a person who filled in the boxes at the applicant's direction. The two signatures cost different amounts, but the price gap is rarely the important gap.

The signature is the product

When a G-28 is filed with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency starts copying the representative on everything: receipt notices, requests for evidence, interview notices, decisions. That person can call the agency, appear at the interview, respond to a request for evidence, and receive the file's correspondence if the applicant moves. In immigration court the equivalent form is the EOIR-28, and filing it makes someone the attorney or representative of record before an immigration judge. A form preparer files neither. The applicant remains the only person the government will talk to, and every notice goes to the applicant's mailbox alone.

That is not a small administrative difference. It determines who reads the request for evidence when it arrives with a deadline printed on it, who notices that a notice went to an old address, and who is permitted to argue that the agency got something wrong. It also determines who is accountable. A representative on the record has a professional body that can be told about their conduct. A person who typed your answers and cashed your money has, in most states, no such body at all.

Attorneys, and what a state license actually buys

An attorney appearing before USCIS or the immigration courts must be admitted to practice and in good standing with the bar of the highest court of a state, possession or territory, and must not be under any order restricting their practice. Immigration is federal, so a lawyer licensed anywhere in the country may represent someone anywhere in the country, which is why a person in rural Georgia can perfectly properly hire a firm in Chicago or Houston. Bar admission is checkable in minutes on a state's online roster, and the discipline history sits there next to the license number.

The license buys three things worth paying for: legal advice about which relief to seek, the ability to appear and argue, and the existence of a complaint process with real consequences. If you are weighing whether to hire an Immigration Lawyer or handle a filing yourself, the honest question is not whether the forms are hard but whether the facts of your case involve anything discretionary: a prior removal order, an arrest, an overstay, a marriage that ended, a prior filing that was denied.

Accredited representatives sit inside an organization

The Department of Justice, through the Executive Office for Immigration Review, recognizes nonprofit organizations and accredits individuals within them to represent immigrants. Accredited representatives are not attorneys. They are trained non-lawyers whose authority comes from the organization that employs them and the accreditation the department granted, and it exists in two tiers: partial accreditation, which covers practice before USCIS, and full accreditation, which adds the immigration courts and the Board of Immigration Appeals. They sign the G-28 in their own name, alongside the recognized organization.

The rosters of recognized organizations and accredited individuals are published, which makes this the easiest credential in the field to confirm. These offices typically charge nominal fees or nothing, because recognition requires that the organization serve people of limited means. The waiting list is often the real cost. For a straightforward naturalization application or a green card renewal, that wait is usually worth it.

Preparers, notarios, and the line drawn under them

A form preparer may transcribe what you dictate and nothing else. The preparer section of a USCIS form exists precisely so that this work is disclosed, and a preparer who selects a category for you, tells you which box to check, or advises you not to mention an arrest has crossed into the unauthorized practice of law. The confusion around the word notario is genuine and not the fault of the people it harms: in much of Latin America a notario p\u00fablico is a licensed attorney, while in the United States a notary public is authorized to witness signatures. The Federal Trade Commission oversees deceptive practices in consumer services, and state attorneys general have brought cases in this space for years.

What the decision costs when it goes wrong

Compare the two bills honestly. An attorney's fee is paid once, at the front, and it is visible. The cost of unrepresented error is paid later and comes in pieces: government filing fees that are not refunded when a case is denied, a second set of fees to refile, medical exams and biometrics repeated, months or years of lost work authorization, and in the worst version an application that creates a record the next filing has to explain. In removal proceedings, missing a hearing can produce an in absentia order. Choosing the person who can sign the G-28 is what prevents that arithmetic from ever starting.