Ideas Boulevard

[cosmos]

Friends, we are the best.

No, that’s not arrogance, just confidence. If you look at the per capita income of the immigrants and the highly sophisticated job skills that legal immigrants possess, you will agree with me too. Some have made it big through startups (e.g. Yahoo, Hotmail in the past, and Google in the present). Some others have started successful law practices (e.g. Rajiv and Murthy). Some have gone to space (late Kalpana Chawla). Some have become medical doctors at the age of 15. Some are leading researchers at Stanford, MIT and other top research institutes. Some are top managers and sit at the top of consulting firms such as McKinsey. Some boys and girls win junior Jeopardy competitions. Some of us write code for a living. Some of us perform surgeries for a living. Who are we and where do we come from? We are men, women and children coming from India, China, Japan, Taiwan, England, Holland, …the list goes on. What an exciting and diverse population we are!

If we set our mind to it, we can solve just about any problem that we face. Therein lies our weakness too. Set our mind to it! We are almost always focused on setting our mind to solving the problems in our professional and personal lives. And that’s great. That’s what we should be doing anyway. But sometimes we forget that immigration is also a major component in our personal and professional lives. And even when we recognize that, we just feel helpless and indifferent. And we end up saying “It’s just not my cup of tea”. Are you sure my friends? Do you seriously not think that we are being taken for granted?

You know, I am willing to give benefit of doubt to worker bees at CIS and assume that they do their best and process applications in the best way they can. But I am sure that their process is not consistent, timely and transparent. It’s about time that we changed it. Sending emails/faxes to 1-800 CIS number won’t cut it. I am not saying that is bad or ineffective. I am saying that it is insufficient. We have to get to the Congress, my friends. We need to explain to them (a) we will be a huge voting block one day (b) our contributions to this economy (c) the fundamental unfairness of the backlog. There is no doubt at all in my mind that if we collectively come up with ideas to increase our financial resources and start lobbying, we have a greater chance of being heard in the Congress.

It pains me that we are suffering from this backlog monster. It pains me more that we are quite indifferent. To misquote a character from Shakespeare, I come here to bury our indifference, not praise it.

If you want to bare your soul, go ahead and do it in the following post:
http://boards.immigrationportal.com/...d.php?t=126190

If you want to contribute ideas on how to better collect funds, add your comments in this thread. Thanks!

Idea #1 (has been floating around in some thread or other):
---------------------------------------------------------
1. If you have not contributed, please do so.
http://immigrationportal.com/showthr...003#post785003
2. Please explain the problem and send an email to at least 10 friends (who are going through GC process) asking them for donation.
http://boards.immigrationportal.com/...1&postcount=22
3. Please explain the problem and send an email to at least 10 friends (who already have their GC/citizenship). I will come up with some text by the weekend.

Idea #2: How about organizing fund raising social events? It can be a family event.
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Lets start debating some ideas and also keep coming up with new ones.

My friends, if we can’t solve the problem, who can?

Thanks for your time and best regards!

[cosmos]

Pending 485 applications (as per Mar 2004 report): 1,210,838

# USCIS employees (based on Eduardo Aguirre’s public remarks): 15,000
Eduardo Aguirre is Director, USCIS. Did you know he is an immigrant?

Average 485 applications / month: 40,000
Average 485 applications / year: 480,000
New fees: 315
Total fees collected / year: 151,200,000

My assumptions
--------------------
Number of cases processed per day per officer: 2
People working on 485 cases: 1,000
Total number of cases processed per day: 2,000
Total number of cases processed / month: 40,000

Estimated annual salary of 485 case officers (my own generous assumption): 60,000
Total salary paid: 60,000,000
Balance = 151M – 60M = 91M

Shouldn’t they be processing 40K applications per month? Shouldn’t they utilize all the fees collected for 485 to process the backlog? What are they doing with 91M balance?

That’s not all. USCIS is requesting additional funds in FY 2005 budget. The request includes $765 million for immigration services, $400 million for nonimmigrant services, $247 million for citizenship services, $139 million for asylum/refugee services and a total of $160 million for backlog reduction. (Source: USCIS news release: http://uscis.gov/graphics/publicaffa...klogfy2005.pdf)

Here is my question, folks. Is there a place where we can get these numbers? For instance, I would like to get accurate count of people working on 485 and other cases. If you know, please provide a link. I want to substitute my assumptions with real numbers.

I would like to prepare a one page summary of fees collected, number of people working on various cases, USCIS’s story for backlog reduction, etc. and present our side of the story, the effect on economy, blah blah… and let us debate the summary here and make sure it is accurate. Let us engage in an intellectual debate. Old timers, please point me in the right direction.

Idea #3: Fax the summary sheet to all 100 Senators and 434 Congressmen. Each Senator and Congressman should receive at least 50 faxes all within a span of a week.

Total number of faxes to be sent: 26700
Number of faxes per person: 30 (6 faxes per day * 5 days)
Number of volunteers needed: 890
The key to success is a crisp one page summary and the timing. I propose the week of June 7th. That would give us enough time to come up with campaign text, get volunteers. Also, the Congressmen and Senators would be back from Holiday weekend.

How about it, guys? Let me know what you think. Thanks!

[OmGV]

Count me in to send the fax

[kashmir]

It's a great initiative, cosmos.

> Estimated annual salary of 485 case officers (my own generous assumption): 60,000

http://immigrationportal.com/showthr...370#post674370
Salary: GS-5: Range from $23,442 - $27,905 per year depending on the location of the position.
GS-7: Range from $29,037 - $34,566 ...

[brokenarrow]

I am in for the fax, my friend.

[linuxrox]

And lets christen this: PROJECT COSMOS.
cosmos: pls open another thread on thelines of project kashmir.

joining you guys soon there.
Rox

[brokenarrow]

And you are right about the fax be sent withing one week to all senators. Faxes tricking in over a period of time will not have much effect. 50-60 fax for each senator withing one week is sure to get noticed.

C'mon guys.

[mango_pickle]

Wow! Thats a great idea. Im in for the faxes too.

[desi_alien]

Has anyone approached the ACLU for support on this issue?
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wac-02-122-5xxxxx

[cosmos]

Idea #4: Arrange a fund raising lunch / dinner with speeches (followed by a Q&A session) from successful immigrants who have already made it BIG.

Of course, we have to decide on which successful immigrants to contact, gain their consent, arrange location, publicize the event, etc. But we can do this if we gain enough traction from our members.

What do you think, folks? Let us debate this.

Thanks!

[kashmir]

Idea #4: Arrange a fund raising lunch / dinner with speeches (followed by a Q&A session) from successful immigrants who have already made it BIG.
Of course, we have to decide on which successful immigrants to contact, gain their consent, arrange location, publicize the event, etc. But we can do this if we gain enough traction from our members.
What do you think, folks? Let us debate this.
Thanks!

Here is Project Ocean e-mail campaign to California Governer Arnold Schwarzenegger:
http://immigrationportal.com/showthread.php?t=117772

[dsatish]

cosmos,
I greatly appreciate your energies and leadership qualities. People like you lessen the burden on the active core team members. All the active core team members like myself,edison,kashmir,rajum,rk4gc,kash777 and 140_takes_4ever have learnt a lot from our experiences in core team activities. It is all about working in a team environment in a volunteer organization, complementing one another, building a new organization, organizing conference calls, collective decision making , understanding people , learning from each other etc. These experience s are valuable and helps us greatly in our future endeavors. So what ever sacrifices we have made, will not go waste. People have to understand that they always gain when they join any organization. Those who are contributing anything to our efforts, are really losing a lot.

[linuxrox]

cosmos,
Those who are contributing anything to our efforts, are really losing a lot.

Satish
You may want to correct that, please!!

[Edison]

Hope we get more volunteers!!!!!!!!!

[cosmos]

****, you make good points. However, my point of this thread was not to highlight relative merits and demerits of immigration. That is an entirely different subject. As you rightly point out, my immediate audience is employment based immigrants.

The immigration level is already set by the Congress. We are not asking the Congress to increase or reduce the immigration level. Again, that is beyond the scope of this thread.

This thread is especially for people, who through legal immigration process available to them, have already qualified for immigration, but are still waiting for a long time to get their AOS applications to be approved. This thread hopes to appeal to the already approved LPRs as well for assistance.

The objective of this thread is to find solutions to the backlog problems faced by 485 and 400 applicants. Some ideas will be for collecting funds. Some others for taking some action such as email/fax campaigns. All through respectable, legal means.

Backlog issue is NOT a pressing problem for Congress or USCIS. But it is a pressing problem for us. Hence my appeal to this community at large. And what I said about my audience is 100% true. On that, I think we do not disagree. As a community, we need to come up with creative ways to solve the problem by working with Congress and other organizations that may be favorably inclined to help us.

Thanks for providing a reference. I will read it when I get a chance.

Regards!

[cosmos]

And, once people have their GC, they vanish from forums like this, and go on with their private lives. People like me hanging around here over 3 years after getting the GC are a minority.

Sorry, this ended up longer than I expected...

Thanks for hanging around for over three years after getting your approval. I can admire you just for that fact alone.

It is always good to get different views (whether it is optimistic, pessimistic or just realistic). Unless we continue to communicate amongst ourselves and debate more ideas and different view points and then try to take action, we are just not going to see any traction in getting quick resolutions for these backlog issues.

Thanks for keeping the dialog going. Regards!

[cosmos]

Hi All,

The idea of fund raising is pretty cool. But is it really an easy task? The immigrationPortal.com online community is over 50K but the participation levels of individuals is pretty poor. It has been evident from the non-stressful events one can participate "Fax - Campaigns".

Unlike any other fund raising event which generally speaking, targets at a particular community or culture, Immigrant community is very diverse and an event has to please everyone alike. Finding events that would please this diverse community is very challenging job.

If the expectation is that, the people who are online will be the only participants, then the event will fail as lets say most of them have already contributed what they could and a repeat order is almost impossible.

But if we expect the people of immigrationportal.com and their family members and outsiders (in fact everyone) then again the event should be pleasing to one and all alike. It is tough.

I think there could be 2 ways to tackle this:
1) Associate with other major organizations that organize events to collect funds for other causes and do a "generic" event with them. These associations could be ethnic based like Indian, Chineese, Mexican etc., That way, we can come to an understanding with these organizations that part of the proceeds will be diverted to ImmigrationPortal.org and also, the "pleasing" a particular community part is also tackled. That can bring in some good $ to the reserve.

Good thing about this approach would be is, we can be part of many such events that would bring in more money (repeat orders, if you will) than if it were one event we organize and collect funds.

2) Along with the thoughts of fund raising events, we can identify all the organizations that are immigrant friendly and get donations from them. This needs a strong team to approach which has the capability to milk money out of these organizations/individuals (if any) and get donations from them.


I believe in Networking and the benefits it could get us. Leveraging the same, we can "Partner" with others to drive our point and cause. Partnerships will almost always result in WIN-WIN situation.

I appreciate Cosmos for starting this thread and taking the initiative. If what i said seems reasonable, then we can start churning out the logistics. What do you guys say?

We have over 50,000 registered users and much more guests. We have only a little over 100 folks contributing with their purse and just 50 folks for the most successful campaign ever organized.

Just for the sake of discussion, let us assume that only 10% of the population is interested in 485 applications. Even that number is an impressive 5,000. Even if 10% of that population contributes an average of $200, we would have $100,000. So far it looks like we have collected only a little over $15,000. What's with that? I have a major problem understanding why there isn't better participation.

My friends, we are not here to judge anyone. We don't have the right. But can one of the silent majority at least try to explain to the rest of the folks why this is the case? Will unity in this common cause be just a dream?

Please participate. Let us here alternate views on how we can improve things.

1. If you have not contributed, please do so.
http://immigrationportal.com/showth...5003#post785003
2. Please explain the problem and send an email to at least 10 friends (who are going through GC process) asking them for donation.
http://boards.immigrationportal.com...11&postcount=22

kadamtal, I think your suggestions are pretty good. How do we start developing your ideas?

Thanks!

[dsatish]

Just for the sake of discussion, let us assume that only 10% of the population is interested in 485 applications. Even that number is an impressive 5,000. Even if 10% of that population contributes an average of $200, we would have $100,000. So far it looks like we have collected only a little over $15,000. What's with that? I have a major problem understanding why there isn't better participation.

cosmos,
we made exactly the same calculation . I thought that atleast 1000 people will easily donate and if you think that average donation amount is $100, then we can collect 100K. But we have no clue why only 150 people have donated so far and why we are not able to move beyond $16,000 in recent days. We are almost stuck at this figure for the past 2 weeks. It's time for people to jump in make a contribution. WE HAVE A CLEAR ACTION PLAN. click on the red colored "Operation Fight Backlogs" text in my signature.

[cosmos]

Good point. I wonder how many are active.

I am not sure how much work it would be for the forum techies to get/provide stats on the number of unique people visiting a thread. Right now, I think there is probably just a counter that gets increased everytime there is a visitor even if it is the same visitor. Sometimes, that is misleading. If 100 people read a thread 10 times, the number of views will be 1000. This is not right. It will be good if we can drill down on the number of views.

Any chance of changing this? Then, we can target our messages more efficiently.

Thanks!

[kadamtal]

People are less motivated to start with. I think there are 2 ways to beat this.

1) Start a campaign/event and always keep it at the top of the threads not because of its importance BUT by participation. There should be discussion going on and active/constructive messages posted all the time, then u can see mobilization.

For example, Project Cosmos, a letter is drafted and posted, hammer it down with your suggestions/ideas/correction to it. Keep this session active for 3 days atleast and then post a final version. This brings up heat in the system and when faxing starts, u can see the difference.

2) The core team of CSC and active members to volunteer time and meet up atleast once in two weeks. I have noticed, meeting personally helps people to come out of their shell and to do something constructive (atleast the next 2 days after meeting).

Core team/volunteers to spend time to discuss associating with other organizations and take their opinions and support. If and when there is a fund raising event, we can contribute our time to that event and in turn get support/publicity/funds to our ImmigrationPortal.org.


These (Fund raising events) seem to be a like long term goals but hey there has to be a start for everything. It will probably take some months to come up with a direction but when you have it set, there is only one thing to do and that is TROD THROUGH THE PATH OF SUCCESS. My journey is not till GC, so i am not in a hurry to get out of the forum.

For Quick wins, we always can come up with Fax-Campaigns and participate.

These are my thoughts, u can argue on it!

[cosmos]

Any near term plans for a meeting in Bay Area?

[cosmos]

Friends, I wonder if we can debate the pros and cons of contacting mainstream media (especially issues-based shows such as Meet the Press). I am a little ambivalent about this myself. Let's hear your views.

Pros
1) A person with excellent communication skills should go on Meet the Press and explain our position with facts. There is no question that fair minded people will better understand our issues. Whether this translates to anything tangible is debatable.
2) I think a lot of Senators and Congress(wo)men watch shows such as MTP and they may be more sympathetic.

Cons
1) All the anti-immigrant organizations will start becoming more active especially when there is so much brouhaha over the economy and outsourcing.

I am sure there are many pros and cons. Please engage us with your views.

Thanks!