Michael Shannon Morano

I was referred to Mr. Morano by a friend who said he did an excellent job on his case too. I’m from Greece and came to the U.S. in 1987. Over the past 16 years I had been represented by a very well-known immigration lawyer who charged me almost $40,000 and after all these years and all this money I ...paid in legal fees, I still had no legal status. In 2001 this “famous” lawyer convinced me to do this very complicated (and expensive) case in immigration court. I contacted Mr. Morano at the time to get a second opinion, and he told me I should instead do a labor certification case because I would have been protected from deportation under a law called INA 245(i). I mentioned that to my lawyer, but then he insisted that I should go forward with my court case because he was confident I would win. (I realized later on that he wanted to do the court case instead because he could make a lot more money on it than the case Mr. Morano proposed). Well, I lost the court case and I ended up with a deportation order. On top of everything, I missed my opportunity to file under INA 245(i), like Mr. Morano originally suggested, because the deadline passed. My lawyer then filed an appeal. And there the case sat for 8 years. In the meantime I married a U.S. citizen and had 2 kids, but I could not get a green card because of my old deportation order. I finally went back to Mr. Morano to see what he could do. After reviewing the copy of my file Mr. Morano found out that my ex-lawyer did not even file my appeal correctly, so it had never really been filed! This is after I paid the old lawyer $14,000 just for the appeal! To make a long-story short, Mr. Morano reopened my deportation order based on ineffective assistance of counsel. I was then able to adjust status and get my green card – all because of Mr. Morano’s great legal work. The only regret I have is not hiring Mr. Morano from the beginning.