3. LOS ANGELES — What would you do if
upon disembarking from a plane
following a vacation abroad an
immigration officer at the LAX tells you
that your green card is null and void and
that you are deportable? The obvious
answer is that you would want to call the
immigration lawyer that secured your
green card. Right? Well, it depends who
your lawyer is. In the case of Chilean
Isaac Palma, his immigration lawyer was
James G Beirne, and due to some sloppy
submission of required documentations
to the Immigration and Naturalization
Service in the early 2000s, Palma’s green
card was declared null and void, and he
was ordered to go to Immigration Court.

4. Lucky for him, Palma was not
summarily ordered to board the next
outbound plane back to Chile and
was allowed to be reunited with his
American citizen wife, Lourdes, a
native of
Meycauwayan, Bulacan, who had
made the family petition in his behalf.
She had sought the legal assistance of
Atty James G. Beirne on the
recommendation of her brother who
had a bankruptcy petition filed for
him earlier by Beirne.

5. Palma had left for his native Chile once after
receiving the green card, and breezed through
Immigration section at LAX. But returning from his
second trip to Chile in 2005, he was stopped by
Immigration officers at LAX and was
informed, much to his consternation, that the green
card secured for him by Atty Beirne was null and
void because Atty Beirne and his law office failed to
send the INS all the needed documentation to
support the petition. What followed next was the
near total disarray of Palma’s family life.

6. He told PinoyWatchDog.com that he attempted more than
six to seven times to see James G. Beirne at his
Glendale, California office so that the attorney could right
what he had done wrong, but “he was never in the office.”
In one occasion, Palma went to his office on the off-chance
that he might find Atty Beirne. After being told Beirne was
not available to see Palma the disgruntled client found
Beirne smoking a cigarette in the parking lot of the Wilson
St. Building. “I told him that there is a need to rectify what
he had done wrong with my case,” recalls Palma. “I’ve done
my part of the agreement, writing the support letters, etc I
even paid another $35 consultation fee,” Palma added. “I
have nothing personal against Atty Beirne,” Palma told this
writer. “I just wanted him to fix this case.”

7. Palma then related that during that meeting, Atty Beirne
agreed to rectify the error, but he was asking for more money
on top of the $7000.00 that he had paid for the green card that was
declared null and void by the INS. Once, when he visited the Law
Office of James G. Beirne again, Palma even talked to Ruby
Sexon, the Beirne staff assistant who is a non-lawyer and does not
have an immigration law training.

8. It was already 2007, and Atty Beirne has not lifted a finger
to help his client. “He was missing something,” Palma
said. “They committed a mistake; they should fix it.” But
as luck or the lack of it, would have it, Palma was arrested
for a DUI violation in 2007. He was taken to jail and
locked up, and later on, an INS agent took him into
custody. Left with no option to keep his freedom, he asked
his wife to go and see Atty Beirne. Beirne demanded
$1500.00. But Palma said that the INS released him on his
own recognizance even without the help of Atty Beirne.
When the couple sought the law office to demand a
refund of the fees, Beirne offered to return only $200.00.

9. When the INS pressed for his deportation after his DUI
arrest, Isaac and Lourdes sought a new attorney This time
around, they hired Cuban-American lawyer Joseph Porto.
Because of the erroneous Beirne petition, the new lawyer had
to restructure the petition from square one. “Everything was
redone. I had to go to court many times because Atty Beirne
did not complete the job,” Palma told PinoyWatchDog.com.
In 2009, his new lawyer, Joseph Porto, finally secured him a
valid green card.

10. Recently, he also filed a small claims to recover his
$7,000.00 fee from Atty Beirne. During one of his court
appearances, Palma said, he encountered Beirne near the
court and he made him an offer to settle for $1000.00.
Palma has wised up and turned down Beirne’s offer.

11. Palma related that at one point he noted that Beirne kept
pushing for transferring the hearings for his claims to a court
in the San Fernando Valley, apart from continuing to ask for
postponements. “The point is, I was defending myself, and
he is making it harder for me by asking for postponement
until it reaches the statute of limitation. The moved to San
Fernando Valley is to make it more difficult for me. But the
judge overruled Beirne, and the hearings stayed in Los
Angeles,” Palma revealed

12. Palma did not know about other damaged Beirne
clients until recently hearing about
PinoyWatchDog.com. He was more than glad to share
his tale of woe to this journalist so that others would
be warned how Attorney Beirne’s office messed up his
life for a number of years.

13. fin