Skip to main contentIn a one-story office on Southeast Stark Street, Jorge Macias works with Mexicans seeking to navigate complicated immigration laws. He advertises his services in the Hispanic Yellow Pages, and his firm, Legal Processing Center, claims "Nosotros Sí Podemos Ayudarle," which means, "Yes, we can help you."
It appears to be a rather broad definition of the word "help."
According to public records, Macias, who is not a lawyer, has been investigated three times by the Oregon Department of Justice. In May 2001 and December 2003, Macias was ordered by the Multnomah County Circuit Court to stop offering immigration advice. In June 2003, the Oregon State Bar issued a cease-and-desist order against Macias, prohibiting him from dispensing legal advice that wasn't OK'd by a supervising lawyer. And as recently as May 2005, Macias signed a letter of agreement with the Justice Department saying, among other things, that he would cease to advertise his services as an independent provider of legal services.
Yet Macias is still in business. On a recent afternoon just before 5 pm, he met with two clients, Spanish-speaking men in their 20s, one of whom peppered Macias with questions about his son's visa application and pending immigration legislation in Congress. Macias also maintains several listings for his business in the Hispanic Yellow Pages, and one in particular says he can help people fill out immigration forms, even though he is specifically prohibited from doing so without a supervising lawyer. His business is also listed under the "attorneys" category in the phone book, despite the fact that he is not a lawyer.
"I think it is important to know that although, yes, I did get in trouble before, I have corrected myself," Macias says. "I wasn't trying to rip off anyone."
Miguel Rosales Medina, a 33-year-old Mexican who went to Macias several years ago seeking help in obtaining permanent residency status in this country, instead found his application derailed by Macias' "help."
"I lost everything," Rosales says. "It isn't fair."
Tilman Hasche, the lawyer who represented Rosales, says, "It makes my blood boil to think that someone of Mr. Macias' caliber can literally wreck people's lives. ... Mr. Macias must be stopped."
What Macias was doing is hardly unique. According to the Department of Justice, state officials are currently investigating five individuals and businesses in Oregon that may have illegally offered advice to immigrants seeking to adjust their legal status in this country.
Every year, on average, 25 complaints are filed with the state against individuals or businesses that offer help with immigration issues. Given the reluctance of many immigrants, legal or otherwise, to interact with law enforcement, it's likely that these numbers are just a fraction of the true total. Even when immigrants do file a complaint, they often change their minds about cooperating with law enforcement.
"The big problem...is that you lose witnesses fast," says Jan Margosian of the state Justice Department.
Much like the "coyotes" who guide Latin American and other immigrants across the U.S.-Mexico border illegally, businesses that offer new arrivals help with their applications for legal status aim to capitalize on immigrants' hope for a piece of American pie. They call themselves different things: "notarios públicos," "licenciados," "paralegals." But unless they are also lawyers or agents accredited by the U.S. Department of Justice's Board of Immigration Appeals, they are probably not qualified to make judgments dealing with immigration matters and the exceedingly complicated laws that govern the process. Despite this, a number of people in the Portland area who are neither lawyers nor specialists in immigration law manage to fly under the radar selling their brand of advice to immigrants who trust them.
"It's a growing concern," says lawyer Bruce Bornholdt, chairman of the Oregon State Bar's committee on unlawful practice of law. "People who want to prey on other people look for victims like immigrants. ... They [the immigrants] believe these individuals can truly help them, when, in fact, they can't."
Just as the intensifying economic divisions in this country have led to the growth in payday lenders preying on the poor, the volume of immigration to the United States, both legal and illegal, has become a golden opportunity for immigration "consultants." And as Congress continues to debate immigration reform, the opportunities to confuse immigrants whose English is limited seem only to increase.
Enrique Santos, a Latino community advocate, calls immigration consultants who deliberately deceive immigrants "vultures" and says he frequently hears from people who have been victimized by them.
Luis Elias, who works at the Mexican Consulate in Portland as a liaison between Mexican citizens and Oregon law enforcement, adds that undocumented immigrants often aren't willing to believe or accept that they have no avenue for legalizing their status in the United States. They're vulnerable because they're desperate, and when someone tells them "no," they may turn to businesses that say "yes," even if the promises are false.
"When they're turned down because they don't qualify, they go somewhere else," says Elias.
Miguel Rosales Medina was born in Jalisco, Mexico, but came to Oregon 20 years ago at the age of 13 on a special visa that allowed him to work with his family on a farm. Today he lives in Southeast Portland, where he works as a car detailer and shares a mobile home with his wife and kids. He speaks very little English; in his native tongue, he explains that in 1992, he submitted an application for U.S. residency.
In May 2000, on the recommendation of a friend, Rosales visited Jorge Macias at his office, Legal Processing Center on Southeast Stark Street, for help with court paperwork in a child-support dispute. The two men started discussing Rosales' immigration status in the United States, and Macias, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Mexico, offered to help Rosales with his application, which had been pending for eight years at that point.
(Due to quotas that are established by Congress, the wait for Mexicans applying for U.S. residency in certain categories is quite long. For example, the U.S. State Department is currently processing applications from Mexican children of U.S residents that were submitted in December 1991.)
Rosales says Macias advised him to marry his girlfriend, Iris. It may have been good romantic advice, but it was terrible immigration advice. At the time, Rosales was eligible for permanent residency—thanks to complex immigration laws—only because he was unmarried.
According to an affidavit signed by Rosales, Macias assured him that marrying his girlfriend, the mother of two of his children, would not harm his residency application. In fact, according to Rosales, Macias told him marrying his girlfriend would help her gain legal status in the United States as well. So, as a result of Macias' advice, the couple married on April 12, 2001, and then dutifully sent notice of their nuptials to immigration authorities. In response, the U.S. government swiftly rejected Rosales' application for permanent residency. He had, in essence, to start all over again. His bill from Macias? $1,345.
"Mr. Macias, through his incompetence, his unlawful practice of law without a license, and his exploitation, by fraud, of Mr. Rosales' limited English and limited education destroyed the best opportunity Mr. Rosales had to obtain legal status for himself and his life partner within the foreseeable future," wrote Tilman Hasche, Rosales' attorney, in a letter to the Oregon Department of Justice.
Macias does not deny that he gave Rosales the advice that he marry, but he says he offered it as a friend rather than as an expert on immigration matters. Along those lines, Macias says that Rosales came to him distraught about his faltering relationship with Iris, and in response to Rosales' "suffering," Macias says he told his client how Rosales could win his girlfriend back. Macias says he was dealing with matters of the heart, not the letter of the law, and he thought Rosales understood the difference.
"I was telling him, 'Look, man, women like to be treated with courtesy, with respect, they want us [men] to improve, not to be the same all the time. They want to see some progress,'" Macias recalls telling Rosales. "He was crying one time, he was pretty depressed, and I told him, 'Don't let her go, man. You've got to save your relationship. If you love her, why don't you marry her?'"
Twelve additional complaints have been filed against Macias, although the complaints resulted in investigations only two other times and not all of the complaints dealt with immigration matters. (Macias also allegedly offered legal advice on divorce and other topics.)
Yet today Macias still operates on Stark Street, where a sign outside his office advertises his services as a "notary public," which—when translated literally into Spanish—means "lawyer" in Mexico. He maintains that he is operating legally, by only performing supervised work with outside lawyers with whom he has contractual relationships, and he says the work he does involves no more than translation and interpretation. But when asked why his ads still say that he helps fill out forms and why he is listed under the "attorneys" section in the Yellow Pages, he says he paid for the ads prior to the May 2005 agreement with the state Justice Department and that his office is not open to clients who walk in off the street. A representative for the phone-book company says the deadline for ads for the current Yellow Pages wasn't until November 2005, six months after Macias signed his latest Justice Department agreement.
These days, Macias says he is devoting his time to studying online for his bachelor's degree in criminal justice. He then wants to pursue a law degree at Lewis & Clark Law School, he says.
"Hopefully, if I'm lucky, next year I can go to law school and really help people," he says.
Legal Processing Center is by no means the only questionable immigration consulting service operating in the Portland area.
Another such operation, Legal Services Center, had offices in Hillsboro, Gresham, Estacada and Vancouver, Wash., where it took advantage of more than 220 immigrants and took in over $120,000, according to the state Justice Department.
Its owner, the Rev. Michael Shattuck of Beaverton, was arrested by Hillsboro police Feb. 8, 2002, on 14 counts of theft in the first degree, three counts of theft in the second degree and one count of illegally practicing law. The 59-year-old, who is also co-founder of Celebration Christian Church, which is now located on Thurman Street in Northwest Portland, pleaded guilty to the charges in Washington County Circuit Court and was sentenced to five years of probation on Oct. 8, 2002.
Contacted at his house on Southwest Sexton Mountain Drive in Beaverton, where an American flag hangs above his garage, Shattuck says his business was unfairly shut down before he had a chance to help any of his clients. He says lawyers are driving up the price of helping immigrants to secure their papers and that non-lawyers could offer immigrants a better deal.
Fifty-one of his clients thought otherwise and filed written complaints against Shattuck with the state. Three of those complainants spoke to WW on the condition that their names not appear in the newspaper. All three are from Mexico and speak only Spanish.
The first client, a man who washes dishes at a Portland restaurant, says he and several of his relatives went to Shattuck's center to seek assistance in getting documents to stay in the United States after hearing an advertisement on the radio. The man says that after paying Shattuck at least $1,900, Shattuck filled out forms seeking political asylum for him. But because Mexicans do not qualify for political asylum, immigration authorities began deportation proceedings against the man. They say Shattuck had filed a false petition on the Mexican man's behalf but that the man was ultimately responsible for the claim. He remains in the United States because another lawyer intervened on his behalf, he says.
Another of Shattuck's clients, a housekeeper who lives in Hillsboro, said she gave Shattuck $280, after borrowing $100 from her mother, in the hopes of getting legal documents to stay in the U.S. "He told us it was easy to get the papers because we had children who were born here," she says in Spanish. She says she trusted Shattuck to help her because his operation looked legitimate. Several diplomas were displayed on the office's walls, and when she arrived there for the first time at least five other people were waiting to talk to Shattuck, who employed a secretary who spoke Spanish. Within weeks of her first visit to the center, it closed. She never received her papers or got her money back, she says.
The third victim is a cook at a Tigard restaurant. He recalls giving Shattuck $1,500 to help him secure papers that supposedly would have allowed his family to live in the United States. But when he learned that he would never get the papers, he says, "No pensé nada, no más que había sido robado." "I didn't think anything other than I had been robbed."
For his part, Shattuck says, "I wasn't doing anything wrong, except that it came down to where, unless an attorney owned that business, it was illegal. So they shut me down in the middle of tons of all kinds of contracts we were working on, which killed everything that we were working on."
He says he was trying to fill a need in the community to help immigrants get the paperwork they needed at prices they could afford.
"Are you looking to hurt me some more?" he asks. "Are you looking for truth? Are you trying to help these poor immigrants here, because they're the ones who need help? These guys got them over a barrel. I've never seen a legal monopoly like this."
As for his church, Shattuck says he is no longer ministering to people in Portland, and his wife, Mary, now leads the congregation in Northwest Portland.
In early 2005, a company called AmeriMex aired ads on the local radio station La Gran D 1520 AM, which caters to the Mexican community. The ads claimed that the company could help people get legal documents.
Juan Bastida, who works construction and lives in North Portland, says he went to AmeriMex because he wanted to bring his mother from Mexico to Portland, where he lives with his wife and three young daughters.
In Spanish, he explained that he was skeptical of the company when he first walked into the office, which was in a Milwaukie strip mall next to Rhythm Master Massage. But he nevertheless ended up giving AmeriMex a $3,000 money order simply after speaking to another client who happened to have been in the office and who said AmeriMex had secured her a green card. That was all he needed to suppress his suspicions, and today he says he is incredibly embarrassed by his willingness to trust the company.
Bastida says, "Me pareció legal"—it looked legal.
After two months passed and nothing came of Bastida's mother's application, Bastida began leaving voicemail messages at the company's phone. No one ever returned his calls. "I went to the office," he says, "and it was closed."
The Department of Justice received Bastida's complaint about AmeriMex but never investigated because the office had closed down shortly after Bastida's visit, according to the state's records.
The business was registered with the state in 2004 with Daniel W. Dickerson, a lawyer, listed as its agent. However, Dickerson says he formed the corporation on behalf of a Mexican man living in Portland named Jose Mendoza, who was supposed to manage the business and send the legal paperwork to Dickerson for approval. Not only did Mendoza not do that, says Dickerson, he stopped all communication with the lawyer and never paid his bill, either. The company was dissolved in 2005, and Bastida never received his money back.
In some respects, immigrants from Mexico and beyond are easy targets, unfortunately. Often they don't speak English, are unfamiliar with American laws and are confronted with a bewildering maze of immigration rules. Many of them are here illegally, so they tend not to generate much sympathy. Because of their status, they are less likely to complain when conned. And their numbers are growing, creating an almost endless supply of victims for unscrupulous businesses. And despite a state attorney general's office that seems dedicated to addressing the problem, the challenges are almost overwhelming.
Yet the cost of not pursuing these cases is simply too high, according to Dagmar Butte, a Portland lawyer who sits on the board of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
"Folks are desperate—they just want to stay and keep their families together. And it just breaks your heart when something bad happens that needn't have happened," says Butte. "America isn't about taking advantage of people."
CORRECTION 10-13-2006
This story included a photo of an advertisement with the caption "Ads in the Hispanic Yellow Pages promote legal services that may not be legal." The caption was describing the ad for LPC Inc., one of the central subjects of the article, in the Hispanic Telephone Directory, which is not the Hispanic Yellow Pages as was reported in the story. However, the photo also included the ad for Benjamin Grandy. Grandy is a lawyer in good standing with the Oregon State Bar and has nothing to do with the cover story. The article itself did not mention Mr. Grandy, and inclusion of his ad in the photo was inadvertent. Willamette Week regrets the errors.
The Mexican Consulate in Portland estimates that there are 60,000 to 70,000 undocumented Mexican immigrants in Oregon.
In 2005, 1,632 Mexicans living in Oregon were granted permanent residency status. A total of 9,632 immigrants from across the globe also earned that designation in Oregon last year.
Mexican immigrants are not the only targets for unscrupulous immigration consultants operating in Portland. Immigrants of Eastern European descent have also been victimized, according to the Oregon Department of Justice.
Jorge Macias' ex-wife, Olimpia Santizo, also offers services to immigrants seeking to file paperwork with U.S. immigration authorities. A complaint filed in February against her Beaverton company, Access to the System, alleged that the company filled out the wrong forms for a client, jeopardizing that woman's legal status in this country. Santizo says she was only filling the forms the client requested.
Unlike applications for public assistance, most immigration forms are available only in English, according to a spokeswoman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Oregon law prohibits notary publics from advertising their services using the phrase "notario público." In Mexico, that term refers to lawyers.
WWeek 2015