Subject: INS cables content (request)

From: [email-masked] (Yi Guo)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 93 21:42:28 CDT

Hi, there,

I have four questions/help request that some of you may help, it's regarding my
wife's LAD filing.  Some background first, and then the four
questions/requests: 

My wife went to INS today and received a pending decision that she may not be
in her F-1 status due to some questionable judgements and treatments.

We, along with her current school's international advisor, all believe that she
is in F-1 status, until today when the INS examiner told her that the transfer
procedure she had two years ago may not be correct, and so that her status now
as a F-1 student is not valid. 

Two years ago, she got sick leave from the previous school and then she applied
to transfer to the current school.  The international advisor at the previous
school told us on phone that her sick leave is approved and told her to take
care of her health.  Then, when she asked the previous office for help on
transfer procedure they told her that she was out of status and they wouldn't
provide info that she was in F-1 status.  The advisor from the current
international office told us that we can get her reinstated either by filing
for reinstate to INS or by reentering the U.S. on the new I-20.  When we told
her that we had already planned a short trip to Canada, the advisor told us
we can just let the border INS inspecter stamp the new I-20 and get this thing
over with.  So we followed the advice and secured the stamp on her I-20.

Now, during the LAD filing examination on her file, the INS asked the previous
school wheter she had been in status and they said no, along with other 
unthinkable "supporting info" (I may sue the old school on this misinformation
after talking with a lawyer).  And the INS examiner then told us that if she
is out of status then, she should have a new F-1 visa for the current school
when reentering the border from Canada.  Since she just had a stamp on the
I-20, her reentering the states is considered illegal entry (funny that the
border inspecter never point this out to us then, and that we entered with all 
documents and followed the procedures to be inspected).

Now my questions:
    1) Is it really necessary to get another visa when entering the U.S. from
Canada to get the F-1 status?
    2) Should the school advise the student if they think the student is out
of status if not reporting to school at such such time, instead of when
asked by the student way later and told the student of the our-of-status?
If so, is there any way to treat this kind of mistreatment as an excuse for
any unawared out of status situations?
    3) What is the INS rules on out-of-status LADs?  Can anyone provide the
complete INS interim rules, and later INS cables on LAD filing?  (My account
was damaged last weekend by some system fault and I lost all the docs I need
to restudy on).
    4) Can any friends in the Dallas area recommend a good immigration lawyer
to handle the case?  I need to get such legal help to clarify our situation and
bring about possible law suit on the previous school on various concerns 
(including possible embezzlement on my wife's admission deposit by some school
official/organization, since her deposit was erronously said to be returned
to us upon our request while we never asked for that and never received that).

Thank you in advance on any helps/experiences you may offer/share.  And wish
you all good lucks in the INS' ridiculous actions (according to the current
school advisor, the INS examiner we talked to acted "really silly", hope she
is right, sigh!)