Immigration Newsletters – Still Useful?

I still receive 5 – 6 immigration newsletters on a regular basis. All of them are from immigration law firms. But I rarely read the content of those newsletters or bulletins any more: They all look similar to each other.

All newsletters contain information about the latest visa bulletin; yet all of them are simply describing VB tables in sentences. This doesn’t add much value to the easy-to-understand tables, in my opinion? In addition, by the time most newsletters arrive in my inbox, the Visa Bulletin was already out for a couple weeks. Unless attorneys are able and willing to offer some in-depth analysis, such as describing visa spill-over in more details, discussion of the visa bulletin is probably no longer news-worthy.

Another component of most newsletters that is also showing diminishing value is the re-broadcast of USCIS news. Again, since most newsletters are weekly or even monthly publications, they often are talking about old news instead. With Twitter, blogging, RSS and other venues, news is more accessible than ever, and in real time too. I’d be much more interested if a newsletter can bring information from an “unidentified source familiar with the situation” – also known as rumors – than press releases. Sure, there is liability and blah blah blah, but that is what a disclaimer is for, isn’t it?

One part I still read in those immigration newsletters is “Success Stories.” They all contain promotional languages, obviously, but at least I expect to find something new. More importantly, it adds a personal touch, as you are learning about a person or family, not just something called the law.

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