Two kinds of people may legally advise you on a United States immigration case, and the list stops there. The first is an attorney licensed by the highest court of a state, a territory, or the District of Columbia, and in good standing. The second is a representative accredited through the Department of Justice recognition and accreditation program, working for a nonprofit organization that has itself been recognized. Everyone else may help you in narrower ways, some of them genuinely useful, but they may not tell you which form to file, whether you qualify, or what to say when the question is hard.
An attorney's authority travels. A lawyer licensed in Illinois may file a family petition for a client in Texas, appear before an immigration judge anywhere in the country, and take the case on whatever terms the two of you agree. Accreditation works differently: it attaches to a person and to a specific nonprofit, and it comes in two grades, one covering filings with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the other extending to the immigration courts. The organization must charge only nominal fees. That constraint is the reason accredited representation exists, and it is also the reason a good accredited representative is often booked out for weeks.
The practical difference for a reader choosing between them is less about competence than about scope and cost. An experienced accredited representative who has filed several hundred adjustment packets is a better bet on a straightforward marriage case than a general practitioner who does immigration occasionally. An attorney is the safer choice when the file contains a criminal record, a prior removal order, a fraud allegation, or a question that will eventually be argued rather than submitted. Ask which of the two grades of accreditation a person holds; the answer is a fact, not an opinion, and it should come back immediately.
A preparer may type what you dictate. That is close to the whole of it. Filling in boxes on Form I-130 with information you supply, translating a document, photocopying, and mailing a packet are clerical acts, and in most states an unlicensed person may charge for them, subject to disclosure rules and fee caps that vary by state. Choosing the form is not clerical. Deciding whether a ten-year-old shoplifting conviction needs a waiver is not clerical. Advising you to check a box that says you are a lawful permanent resident when you are not is not clerical either, and it happens.
The word notario does most of the damage. In much of Latin America a notario publico is a trained lawyer with substantial authority; in the United States a notary public witnesses signatures and nothing more. The Federal Trade Commission is responsible for policing deceptive commercial practices of this kind, and the mismatch in meaning is exactly the sort of thing that gets a business sued. The harm, though, lands on the applicant first. A wrongly filed asylum claim can start a removal case. A false claim to citizenship on a form can foreclose relief permanently, and no later attorney can unsign it.
Start with the bar. Every state bar publishes a searchable directory of licensed attorneys with admission dates and current status, and it takes about two minutes to confirm that the person named on the retainer is the person on the roll. Next, if the name came back as an accredited representative instead, the Executive Office for Immigration Review publishes a roster of recognized organizations and accredited representatives, with expiration dates, because accreditation must be renewed. Then check the EOIR list of practitioners who have been disciplined, suspended, or expelled from practice before the immigration agencies. Finally, ask for a written fee agreement naming the individual who will sign your Form G-28.
Those four checks are cheap and they compound. A person who is on the bar roll, absent from the discipline list, willing to be named on the G-28, and specific about what the fee covers is, by construction, someone the system can hold accountable later. That accountability is the product you are buying as much as the advice.
If a consultation ends with a business card, a cash request, and no written agreement, the identity of the person you just spoke to is the first thing worth confirming, not the last. The verification is free, public, and quick, which is unusual for anything in this process.
Immigration advice may be given only by an attorney in good standing with a state bar or by a representative accredited through the Department of Justice program. There is no third category, and no license that covers only immigration work.
An accredited representative's authority exists only through a recognized nonprofit organization. If that person leaves the organization, the accreditation does not travel with them to a new job.
Partial accreditation covers filings with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Full accreditation adds the authority to appear before immigration judges and the Board of Immigration Appeals.