Petition Version 1.0:
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To Citizenship and Immigration Ombudsman
BCIS
Subject: Employment based Immigration backlog
Dear Mr. Prakash Khatri,
First of all we would like to congratulate you on your appointment as the Citizenship and Immigration Ombudsman at Department of Homeland security. We, the immigrant community, have long awaited for someone with deep experience and liasons with the industry to be appointed so that we could communicate effectively with Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services.
We are writing this to request you to device proper measures to reduce the perpetual delays for processing the employment based immigration applications and to convey the hardships caused to the individuals and the United states due to the perpetual delays for processing the employment based immigration applications.
Immigration is not undermining the American experiment; it is an integral part of it. Since the inception of this country, the people and customs of America have been built by immigrants. Even today, immigrants play an important role in the economy, communities, and everyday life of America. It is important to understand that immigrants, particularly those with high skills, are not just critically important to the success of some of the large corporations of the United states but are benificial to the economy as a whole. Contrary to the popular myth, Immigrants do not take American's job but infact immigrants have developed new products and started new business ventures that have created employment opportunities for millions of Americans. Immigrants stimulate the economy in general. Immigrants have enriched American culture and enhanced the United states influence in the world. It is important to maintain the United states long tradition of welcoming immigrants to the United states to pursue the American dream. The success of the United states rests upon its successful pro-immigration policy.
However, in the wake of September 11, 2001, the immigration policy of the United States has changed drastically. And this has affected the employment based immigration application processing and it has caused immense hardships for the applicants. In late 2002, Legacy Immigration and Naturalization Service (Legacy INS) has temporarily freezed all immigration application processing due to the audit process which was followed by the newly enforced FBI security check impacting the immigration application processing time negatively. Earlier this year, the INS was disbanded and incorporated into the Homeland Security Department as Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Service(BCIS) causing even further delays in processing employment based immigration applications. In June 2003, BCIS has terminated the customer service at all service centers and centralized it to National Customer Service Center (NCSC) and it became difficult to obtain the case specific information at NCSC. Lately, various service centers announced that they planned to halt the processing of employment based immigration applications to expedite processing of religious worker's immigration applications and also to meet deadlines related to Temporary Protected Status (TPS) programs. Recently, Mr. Eduardo Aguirre, director of the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services explained the reason for backlog of immigration applications and expressed that his main priority is to reach the goal set by the President of the United states of America, Mr. George W. Bush to reduce wait times on immigration benefit applications to no more than 6 months by the end of 2006. To achieve the BCIS goal by the end of 2006, we would welcome some positive actions right now to reduce the backlog of employment based immigration applications.
We would like to suggest few measures which would advocate the backlog reduction of employment based immigration applications at BCIS. We request BCIS to consider employment based immigration applications as high priority and expedite processing of the employment based immigration applications affected by the interminable delays. BCIS should consider the adversity of the employment based immigration applicants due to the perpetual delays for processing their immigration applications and it should recommend the interim Permanent residence for them or it should consider issuing the Employment Authorization Document(EAD) and the Advanced Parole for travel with multiple year validity which will also stimulate the backlog reduction of immigration applications at BCIS. Also the cost saving measures like extending the validity of Finger printing report, enhancing the online case status by providing the detailed information about the present status of the applications and accelerating the security check process will contribute towards the backlog reduction of immigration applications.
Immigrants have been crucial to America's dominance and dynamism in the global economy. Immigration policy must focus on the admission of individuals with the high skills that will benefit American society. The legal immigration process has to be reformed and implement steps to reduce massive backlog of employment based immigration applications, so that we could continue America's tradition of welcoming immigrants in to the United states while also providing proper comfort and security for all American citizens.
Sincerly,
Immigration applicants and their well wishers
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