Complaint to Congress Men

[dsatish]

Hi Guys,
Here is the initial draft of the letter that i would like us (ip.org) to send to all the congress men. Please review it and let me know the feed back. Please note that as i am from VSC , i do not know of deeper issues related to CSC, NSC and TSC centers. That's why this letter might look more of a complaint against VSC, but that was not my intention. I want people from other forums to suggest me what they want me to add.

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Dear Honorable Senator/Congress(wo)man <XXXX>

Subject : Request for addressing the backlog for Employment based I-485 applications (Application for Adjustment of status for Permanent Residence) .

ImmigrationPortal.org is a non-profit organization formed by members of legal immigrant community, who intend to voice their concerns about and help contribute towards legal immigration reform in the United States of America.

We want to draw your attention to the excruciatingly slow and random progress of I-485 applications (Green Card applications) at California, Nebraska, Texas and Vermont Service centers.
We are happy that the congress men like you have put enough pressure on US CIS (formerly known as INS) to reduce the backlog of immigration applications. We are aware of the recent presentations of Mr Eduardo Aguire, the honorable director of Unites States Citizenship and Immigration Services, about the backlog reduction plan.
After reading the backlog reduction plan and the milestones, we would like to make the following submissions to you.
1. Random Processing
All the four service centers i.e. California, Nebraska, Texas and Vermont are processing the I485 applications in a highly random manner. We agree that each application has a unique history and hence there will be some differences in adjudicating times for different applications. But what we are seeing is not just some difference in timelines for applications filed at the same time, but in most of the cases, the difference in adjudicating times are just beyond comprehension. We have several members who have filed their applications in 2001 and still waiting for adjudication where as we started seeing many approvals for people who have filed their applications only in 2003. On any given day, we are seeing the simultaneous adjudications for people who have filed the I485 applications in a range of 18 months.
2. Showing the incorrect Current Processing Date
The Vermont Service Center is showing the current processing date for I485 applications as 02/15/2002. In fact, the current processing date has advanced only by 1 month during the last 6 months. The issue here is that Vermont Service Center is not publishing the correct processing date. Daily, through the postings of our members, we have been noticing that the actual adjudication of applications is taking place for applications received any where between October’2001 and April’ 2003. In fact, daily, we are seeing more adjudications for people who have filed their applications after February’2002 than who have filed before February 2002. When an applicant who is waiting for more than 1 year for the adjudication, is approaching his/her congress man, then US CIS is getting back to the congress man that they are currently processing application received on or before 02/15/2002 and they can not process the other applications out of turn. This is factually incorrect. Obviously US CIS is using the current processing date as a tool to prevent intervention of congress men to render justice to the suffering applicants.
3. Manipulating Average Cycle Time
In their recent backlog reduction plan milestones, US CIS has shown that they will bring down the average cycle time to 20 months by the end of FY2004. The average cycle time was defined as the average time taken, over the last 12 months, to approve an application. Currently Vermont Service Center is showing the official processing date as 02/15/2002. That means that on an average, official time taken to approve the application, is more than 28 months. We are wondering how the average can come down to 20 months within the next 3 months . If the applications are processed in a serial manner, then to achieve the average processing time of 20 months by September’30 of 2004 (FY2004), the official processing date has to advance to 01/31/2003. It is just hard to believe that they can advance the current processing date by almost 1 year within the next 3 months. Based on recent approval trend, we believe that US CIS is trying to achieve the target results by approving a large number of very recently filed applications so that it will bring down the average cycle time because the average cycle time depends on the wait times of the approved cases in the last 1 year. This is a highly manipulative method chosen by US CIS to show the congress that the backlogs are reducing where as the applications pending for more than 2 years are not going to see much change in the pace of approvals.
4. Transfers to District Offices
In many instances, US CIS is transferring a large number of cases from the main service centers at California , Nebraska, Texas and Vermont to its district offices in various states.
While we agree that US CIS has full rights to schedule interviews to any applicant, we are concerned at the time taken to schedule the interview at the local office for these applicants. In some district offices such as Atlanta, it is taking up to 2 yrs to schedule an interview. In the recent days, we have seen that US CIS is transferring a large number of cases to Missouri Service Center (MSC). Most of those people who got their applications transferred to MSC, have not got an interview schedule in more than a year. This is in addition to the large amount of time that the application was kept at the main service center such as California, Nebraska, Texas and Vermont. We request that interviews should be scheduled within 90 calendar days of transferring the application to a district office.
5 RFE Delays
In most of the cases, US CIS is asking the applicants to submit certain documents before approving the case. We have recieved several complaints from our members who have submitted all the required information in a timely manner and still could not get any decision from US CIS for more than 3 months. We request that US CIS should adjudicate such cases within 30 days of receiving the response from the applicants.


We believe that US CIS is accountable to the United States Congress and our only hopes of justice in this land of fairness, rest with a representative like you. We request you to ask US CIS to address the above concerns correctly. We will be looking forward to favorable action from US CIS. Please let us know if you have any questions.

Regards,
( )
XXXXXXXXXX
Immigrationportal.org

[becky]

Please forgive me, just want to follow up on a few things

I think that in this age of political correctness, it is probably wiser to replace the words congress man with Congress-person. I think a case of not wanting to "bite the hand that feeds you"... by which I mean that there may be members of Congress who feel strongly about this issue, and so doing this change is a sign of respect for those who we want to get help from.

Aguire is Aguirre.

In general, I like the letter... one thing I would consider is rhetorically terming some of the statements as questions. So rather than saying the JIT date is wrong, I wonder whether asking why the JIT date is where it is when there are cases before it still being processed. My thinking here is that that turns it from being something that they can say "OH well, Mr. So and So is wrong and here's why" to actually having to explain why the JIT date is the way it is (something for which I have not gotten a compelling answer).

Well, that's just me, and I want to thank you for doing this. I hope that my comments are constructive and that I've explained where they are coming from. Thank you for organising this, and thank you for fighting.

becky,
being "processed" -- ha ha ha by the CSC

[dsatish]

Thanks becky.
Guys, please give more feedback. Let's roll this out before the week-end.

[dsatish]

So shall we go ahead with this Letter ?

[Stuka]

I know that everything you have articulated is valid. However, Ii think it would be better to focus on one or at most 2 issues rather then give a laundry list.

what do you think?

[sgi]

How about letting them know the ancillary documents like AP and EAD take on an average 5-6 months to get approved.....and these documents are valid for only one year!

Also, could the moderator move this to the sticky area. Campaigns like these should receive more visibilty.

[rawager]

Over all good. Few things to consider changing/adding...

No need to repeat the name of the four national centers multiple times. Once should be enough.

Like sgi mentioned. validity and processing of EAD/AP should be mentioned.

Agree on congress-person. The first thought I had.

PD moved one month in 6 months... what is the work done then? - maybe a question to pose.

Probably should mention about he Pilot plan. We have seen few approvals of 2004 filings - which is totally unfair to the earlier filers. Pilot plan does not address ealier filers. No offense to New concurrent filers or any hard feelings. I am happy atleast some are getting approved.

My 2 cents

[Baykarår ♥]

Senators and Congressmen can only send letters to USCIS and forward you their standard reply. Only thing that can make wake USCIS is a Law suit or Media's coverage.

[CosmicDream]

You are a smart guy DSatish.

CosmicDream

[dsatish]

I will incorporate the changes suggested by people and publish the final one during the week-end. Then we will send it to congress men in next week (after the long week-end).

[sgi]

dsatish,

Instead of targeting all the congressmen, why do we not concentrate the ones in the immigration sub-committe. They are more closer to immigration issues against those who are not. Also, like Project Cosmos, the members should show support by sending the letter to the congress men within certain time period, say a week or two depending on who (all congress man or ones in the immigration sub-committe) we finally decide to send.

We need to get maximum letters to them within certain time frame.

Just suggesting here.

[ZeusChicago]

I have a comment on #3 (these are just my thoughts) - here we are accusing BCIS of manipulating without actually showing any proof. We don’t know what steps (at least I don’t know) they are taking to meet their target of 20 months. I think we are assuming (though these assumptions are based on the approval trends, we cannot prove it) that they are going to reduce the average time by approving recent application.

Instead of saying they are manipulating we can say something like it appears to us that they are planning to achieve it through manipulation. Reasons for our conclusion is 1) we see recent approvals .......2) 2001 cases pending . AND may be we should propose that the measurement should take in to consideration the average time, backlog reduction and number of cases pending for longer than average processing time (something like that..I am writing this in a hurry..so pardon the shabbiness)

[dsatish]

I have a comment on #3 (these are just my thoughts) - here we are accusing BCIS of manipulating without actually showing any proof. We don’t know what steps (at least I don’t know) they are taking to meet their target of 20 months. I think we are assuming (though these assumptions are based on the approval trends, we cannot prove it) that they are going to reduce the average time by approving recent application.

Instead of saying they are manipulating we can say something like it appears to us that they are planning to achieve it through manipulation. Reasons for our conclusion is 1) we see recent approvals .......2) 2001 cases pending . AND may be we should propose that the measurement should take in to consideration the average time, backlog reduction and number of cases pending for longer than average processing time (something like that..I am writing this in a hurry..so pardon the shabbiness)

I have lot of ideas in mind about making some changes to this letter but i am not finding enough time to put all those changes to work. Actually it would be nice if we pose some questions to them regarding the number of cases pending in each month starting from June'2001 to June'2003. If they release monthly figures of these backlogs,then that will give a better picture of who is getting approvals. I will certainly make major changes to this letter.

[dsatish]

Dear Honorable Senator/Congress-person <XXXX>

Subject : Request for addressing the backlog for Employment based I-485 applications (Application for Adjustment of status for Permanent Residence) .

ImmigrationPortal.org is a non-profit organization formed by members of legal immigrant community, who intend to voice their concerns about and help contribute towards legal immigration reform in the United States of America.
We want to draw your attention to the excruciatingly slow and random progress of I-485 applications (Green Card applications) at California, Nebraska, Texas and Vermont Service centers. We are happy that the congress-person like you have put enough pressure on US CIS (formerly known as INS) to reduce the backlog of immigration applications. We are aware of the recent presentations of Mr Eduardo Aguirre, the honorable director of Unites States Citizenship and Immigration Services, about the backlog reduction plan. After reading the backlog reduction plan and the milestones, we would like to make the following submissions to you.

1. Manipulating Average Cycle Time
In their recent backlog reduction plan milestones, US CIS has shown that they will bring down the average cycle time to 20 months by the end of FY2004. The average cycle time was defined as the average time taken, over the last 12 months, to approve an application. Currently Vermont Service Center is showing the official processing date as 04/17/2002. That means that on an average, official time taken to approve the application, is more than 26 months. We are wondering how the average can come down to 20 months within the next 3 months . If the applications are processed in a serial manner, then to achieve the average processing time of 20 months by September’30 of 2004 (FY2004), the official processing date has to advance to 01/31/2003. It is just hard to believe that they can advance the current processing date by almost 9 months within the next 3 months. Based on recent approval trend, we believe that US CIS is trying to achieve the target results by approving a large number of very recently filed applications so that it will bring down the average cycle time because the average cycle time depends on the wait times of the approved cases in the last 1 year. This is a creative accounting method chosen by US CIS to show the congress that the backlogs are reducing where as the applications pending for more than 2 years are not going to see much change in the pace of approvals.
Suggested Solutions :
a) Every quarter, US CIS should publish the number of un adjudicated cases in all the CIS offices together, for Employment based I485 applicants. These backlog figures should be published for all the months beginning October’2001 to October’2003. This will give correct picture of justice done to old cases.
b) The current processing date published by CIS at all the four service centers should properly reflect the current backlog. If the official current backlog is 20 months, then the current processing date should be 20 months prior to current month.
Currently US CIS is publishing the incorrect current processing date and using that as a tool to prevent intervention of congress-persons to render justice to the suffering applicants.
c) Instead of starting pilot projects to approve I485 in 90 days, CIS should concentrate on developing some projects to adjudicate the severely backlogged cases i.e those cases which are pending for more than 18 months because CIS has mentioned 18 months as the processing time in the receipts to I485 applications.

2. Transfers to District Offices
In many instances, US CIS is transferring a large number of cases from the four main service centers to its district offices in various states. While we agree that US CIS has full rights to schedule interviews to any applicant, we are concerned at the time taken to schedule the interview at the local office for these applicants. In some district offices such as Atlanta, it is taking up to 2 yrs to schedule an interview. In the recent days, we have seen that US CIS is transferring a large number of cases to Missouri Service Center (MSC). Most of those people who got their applications transferred to MSC, have not got an interview schedule in more than a year. This is in addition to the large amount of time that the application was kept at the four main service centers mentioned above.
Suggested Solution :
The interviews should be scheduled within 90 calendar days of transferring the application to a district office or at least the date of filing the application should be treated as the Receipt date instead of date of transfer to the local office.

3. RFE Delays
In most of the cases, US CIS is asking the applicants to submit certain documents before approving the case. We have recieved several complaints from our members who have submitted all the required information in a timely manner and still could not get any decision from US CIS for more than 3 months.
Suggested Solution :
US CIS should adjudicate all such cases within 30 days of receiving the response from the applicants.

We believe that US CIS is accountable to the United States Congress and our only hopes of justice in this land of fairness, rest with a representative like you. We request you to ask US CIS to address the above concerns correctly. We will be looking forward to favorable action from US CIS. Please let us know if you have any questions.

Regards,
( )
President
Immigrationportal.org

[dsatish]

I was thinking of sending this letter in the next 2 or 3 days. Today VSC has changed processing date to 4/17/2002. This is a good news. I need to change the relevant content of this letter to reflect the new processing date.
Actually i am happy that VSC has shown improvement in its processing speed, but i am still concerned at the randomness and transfers. That's why i concentrated on these two issues in the letter.

[dsatish]

I have changed the content to reflect the new processing date at VSC for I485. It's (later version) ready to go now.

[CS001]

dsatish has done an excellent work in composing this letter and right to the point. I especially like how the letter points out how US CIS is manipulating the case approval to achieve their 6-month average processing time. Hopefully the senators can see that and put some pressure on US CIS. They really need some basic inventory control. I think FIFO is the only fair way to go.
--------------
RD: 03/12/2002
2nd FP: 11/12/2003
RFE: 3/11/2004 (received by US CIS)

[rajum]

I am veering towards two faxes. In the first fax, we send out "thanking you" and telling more about immigrationportal.org and in the second fax, we will will spill our views.

-rajum

[rajum]

I modified the original version produced by dsatish and here is my version...
A sample PDF looks like this...

-rajum


To,
xxx
Congress member
California xxx Dist

Subject : Expressing our appreciation for your letter to USCIS to reduce the backlogs.

Dear Sir,


We want to express our appreciation for the support you have extended to the immigrant
Community by putting pressure on USCIS (formerly known as INS) to reduce the immigration backlog. Your support on behalf of immigrants gives us a sense of hope and sense of belonging to this land of opportunities.

ImmigrationPortal.org is a non-profit organization formed by members of legal immigrant community, who intend to voice their concerns about and help contribute towards legal immigration reform in the United States of America. We, as legal immigrants, felt the need for a collective voice to dispel the poplar stereotype that immigrant is one who violates the law of the land in various forms either by border crossing, illegal staying and/or by forged documents. We want to strengthen the democratic character of USA by giving voice and thereby ensuring a smooth transition of legal immigrants into the American main stream.

We are for honest, accountable, strict and transparent immigration policy. As an organization and as individuals, our common interest lies in the security of this nation and we cannot compromise on this objective. But at the same time, we believe that it is our solemn duty to ensure that security issue cannot be misused to hide the inefficiencies of the immigration process. This should not be used as a catchall reason.

Having said that, we want to draw your attention to the excruciatingly slow and random progress of Employment based I-485 applications (Green Card applications) at California, Nebraska, Texas and Vermont Service centers. We are aware of the recent presentations of Mr Eduardo Aguirre, the honorable director of Unites States Citizenship and Immigration Services, about the backlog reduction plan.

After reading the backlog reduction plan and the milestones, we would like to make the following submissions to you.

1. Random Processing & Published processing dates are misleading
All the four service centers i.e. California, Nebraska, Texas and Vermont are processing the Employment based I485 applications in a highly random manner. We are observing abnormal variation in processing times even after the considering the fact that every case might be different. There is no rational in the adjudication times. We have several members who have filed their applications in 2001 and still waiting for adjudication where as we started seeing many approvals for people who have filed their applications only in 2003. There is no rational linkage between the published dates and the cases Service center is working currently. This kind of randomness indirectly reduced the effectiveness of congressional enquiry and congressional intervention on behalf of an immigrant.


2. Possible attempt to manipule Average Cycle Time by approving the latest filed cases
In their recent backlog reduction plan milestones, US CIS has shown that they will bring down the average cycle time to 20 months by the end of FY2004. The average cycle time was defined as the average time taken, over the last 12 months, to approve an application. Currently Vermont Service Center on an average, official time taken to approve the application, is more than 26 months. We are wondering how the average can come down to 20 months within the next 3 months. Statistics says that if we approve 2 months old cases along with 28 month cases, the average processing time will fell down to 15 months. In a way, statistics at times can hide the gross malfunctioning though for a short span time.
If the applications are processed in a serial manner, going by current processing speed it is difficult to achieve the average processing time of 20 months by September’30 of 2004 (FY2004).Based on recent approval trend, we believe that US CIS is trying to achieve the target results by approving a large number of very recently filed applications so that it will bring down the average cycle time because the average cycle time depends on the wait times of the approved cases in the last 1 year.

3. Transfers to District Offices
In many instances, US CIS is transferring a large number of cases from the main service centers at California , Nebraska, Texas and Vermont to its district offices in various states. While we agree that US CIS has full rights to schedule interviews to any applicant, we are concerned at the time taken to schedule the interview at the local office for these applicants. In some district offices such as Atlanta, it is taking up to 2 yrs to schedule an interview. In the recent days, we have seen that US CIS is transferring a large number of cases to Missouri Service Center (MSC). Most of those people who got their applications transferred to MSC, have not got an interview schedule in more than a year. This is in addition to the large amount of time that the application was kept at the main service center such as California, Nebraska, Texas and Vermont. We request that interviews should be scheduled within 90 calendar days of transferring the application to a district office.

We are coming to you with a great sense of hope. We got faith in the inherent fairness of
American people. As a representative of people, we are looking forward to understand the plight of legal immigrants in a sympathetic way. We will be looking forward to favorable action from US CIS. Please let us know if you have any questions.

Regards,
For Immigrationportal.org


Member Name: _________________
Email : ___________________
Ph.no : ____________________

[hzmyron]

Dsatish:
Thank you for doing this great job.

[gcfarmer]

do we need to sign anywhere ? for supporting this...?

[goodluck_140]

Did anyone send this letter to congressmen and and got any feedback?

Please share your experience. I am excited to see atleast whether congressmen understood our problems and are ready to take action.

[Brij523]

DSatish and other

Do you have the final letter ready!!!
I am ready to fax or e-mail the letter to Senator or congressman/woman in NC.
Count me in.

[gcfarmer]

DSatish,

Do u think that we should attach signatures of people who fall under the points u have mentioned..? This is just to stregthen the case...

[hrithikroshan11]

dsatish,

have you faxed this complaint to congress men already? they are still taking 17+ months to process 485 applications which is a lot more than their target goal of 6 months.

[OneMoreStupid]

DSATISH,

Good work.

I felt the status inquiry response was incomplete and service centre does not have information to respond to follow-up questions.

Will an item on statun inquiry responses help?

[dsatish]

The following letter was faxed to about 45 congress men today.

To,
XXXXXX
Congress member
XXXXXX Dist

Subject: Highly random processing of Employment Based Green Cards by USCIS despite appreciable efforts for backlogs

Dear Sir,

We appreciate your support to the immigrant community through your letter to USCIS (formerly known as INS) to reduce the immigration backlogs. Your support for legal immigrants gives us a sense of hope and sense of belonging to this great land of opportunities.

ImmigrationPortal.org is a non-profit organization formed to voice their concerns and help towards legal immigration reforms in the United States of America.

Off late, USCIS is displaying great efforts to reduce the backlog. California Service Center (CSC) moved the processing date to Jan.2004 from Jan.2002 in a span of 4 months. Similarly, Vermont Service Center has moved the processing date to June 2003 from Feb 15, 2002 in a span of four months. More or less the other two centers are showing the same statistics. It is indeed a laudable effort considering the fact that these Service Centers moved processing date by only four to five months in two years prior to this.

However, we would like to bring to your attention the high degree of randomness that has crept into the System. While USCIS presents a rosy picture of current processing dates on it’s web site, the reality is that thousands of people who have applied their Adjustment of Status application (I485) in 2001, 2002 and early 2003 are still waiting for their approval where as USCIS is approving a lot of cases which were filed in late 2003. The cases which were left behind, were not pending due to security checks, but they were pending because USCIS does not seem to have proper methodology for processing cases in First In First Out (FIFO) basis. The above observations are based on our daily monitoring of thousands of adjudications of our members. Please see the following site for a sample list of unadjudicated cases.
http://boards.immigrationportal.com/...7&page=1&pp=15

We laud your efforts in reducing the backlogs. We deeply appreciate the recent efforts of USCIS in reducing the backlogs. We believe that the random processing of the applications is more due to lack of attention to that specific problem. The degree of randomness has reached such a serious proportion that we need your intervention to request USCIS to maintain a systematic queue processing. With full confidence in your sense of fairness and with extreme faith in American System, we appeal you to intervene and ensure that all the cases get fair treatment. If you have any questions, please contact the undersigned at xxx-xxx-xxxx

Regards,



Secretary, Immigrationportal.org

[gcfarmer]

Hello DSatish,

Was this letter faxed to the
1. Director of Homeland Security ?
2. Directors of the different Service Centers (VSC, NSC etc..) ??

Thanks

[marlon2006]

Here is my suggestion:
Replace this
"...like you have put enough pressure on US CIS..." by
something like "...like you have worked to improve the processing times at USCIS..."

I would address EAD processing times.

I also would scrutinize the AC21 portability:It could be a great benefit transfer jobs while my I-485 is pending for several years. However, the idea of moving only to "jobs of same or similar occupation" and making the new employer draft the AC21 letter to USCIS many times make the potential new employer walk away from the job offer. My suggestion is that the AC21 portability rule should just let people "transfer jobs" after I-140 is approved and I-485 > 180 days. Simply eliminate this need to prove "same or similar occupation" since that is associated with a qualitative approach that may be subjective and lead people to refrain from using such AC21 portability rule. Yes, the greencad was filed based on a specific job offer, but after 5 years working for same employer and waiting for such greencard that requirement has been fulfilled already.

[Sandeep_N]

Dsatish and others,
A great initiative and effort. You might like to also take a look at http://usembassy.state.gov/posts/rp1/wwwh3227.html - the embassy at Manila. It looks like the system is so much messed up that the dates have gove back to Jan 98 for EB3 for India. There should be a concerted effort to address this retrogression for our countries. Please visit http://www.immigrationportal.com/sho...2&page=1&pp=15 and http://groups.yahoo.com/group/techworkers/ so that we can join hands.
Sandeep