The Seventh Circuit has determined that an attorney provided ineffective assistance of counsel by failing to advise a client about his eligibility for a U visa. “The Board should not have faulted Alvarez-Espino for failing to provide his initial counsel with information significant to a potential U visa application. The Board’s reasoning is backwards: it is up to counsel, not the client, to ask the right questions and to solicit information pertinent to potential legal grounds to prevent removal. To place the burden on Alvarez-Espino as the Board did is to require him to have a nuanced understanding of American immigration law. That expectation defies reality.”
However, the court found that the petitioner was not prejudiced by the ineffective assistance, because he did eventually file his U visa, and the application will continue to process while he is outside of the country.
The full text of Alvarez-Espino v. Barr can be found here:
http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Display&Path=Y2020/D03-06/C:19-2289:J:Scudder:aut:T:fnOp:N:2483918:S:0