Immigration Lawyer

Well, I have made an appointment with an immigration lawyer in Fuengirola and will be paying him a visit tomorrow at 13:00. I am hoping it doesn't turn out to be another fruitless day of getting tired whilst making no progress...

The last time I had a meeting with a so-called immigration lawyer, he told me his fees would be 3000 euros and by the time he'd drafted the contract the fees had gone up to 4000 euros and he was asking me to pay for expenses on top of this.

When I told him I would not be using his services he and his colleague started to send me threatening emails telling me I'd get deported if I didn't use their services. This just convinced me that they were a bunch of dishonest swindlers and I stopped answering their email.

The hardest thing here is that one hardly ever gets straight answers to any questions.

All I need from an immigration lawyer frankly is:

1. Ensure I get the correct application form
2. Enusre I have ticked the right boxes in the application form
3. Ensure I don't apply for a 1 year permit when I in fact can apply for a 2 year permit
4. Ensure I'm taking all the right steps so that I can apply for a permanent residency after 5 consecutive years of temporary ones

This is what I asked the last lawyer too, but he didn't seem to be listening and started telling me some wild fairy tales about how one could get a permanent residency in 1 year if they set up a 'chamber of commerce' and a 'website promoting international business relations', etc. This guy didn't want to help me do the simple things I wanted to do but wanted to abuse a loop hole in the law to get the permanent residency permit faster. Well actually that's not what he wanted to do. He just needed to inflate the project so he could make me pay him 3000 euros.

He seemed to be very much in a hurry to make me pay my deposit without a contract. I refused to pay anything until a contract was in place of course, and while he was writing the contract he had another bright idea to milk even more money out of me. He insisted I needed to apply for a work permit separately from my permanent residency and that because of this he would discount one permit to 2000 euros but I'd have to pay him 4000 euros for two permits.

If this doesn't sound ridiculous to you...let me just say it sounded ridiculous to me.

I turned my back on him despite his threats and walked away, and I am convinced I made the right decision.

I hope tomorrow's trip isn't going to be a replay of this again. I did get this new lawyer's contact details through the American Club here so I'm hoping this guy will be a little more honest with me.