Raise awareness about labor certificate process backlog

[USCISisMockery]

I think we should collect money hire Rajiv to help us through. I think every body in the trap are willing to pay some money to do that.

Time is ticking please do something to break this trap


- Thanks

You might have seen

how much it cost to file class action

Its out of reach for us to have class action. There are still some other means, easiest one is to send letters/emails to related officials.

 

[sanjay_41]

Department Of Labor Funded $ 72 Million in 2004

The following site has interesting information. Whitehouse and DOL knows that there is a big problem in foreign Labor Certification. But looks like so called capitalist politicians have their own stack in not letting certification process flow.


http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2004/labor.html


The following in an excerpt from the above web site

"Fixing the Foreign Labor Certification Process
Currently, DOL’s processing of employer applications for permanent certification of foreign workers is labor- and time-intensive. It can take up to six years for a foreign worker to be certified as eligible to work in the United States, which undermines the program’s purpose and encourages employers and workers to break the rules. Federal and state reviews are duplicative, contributing to the problem. In 2003, the Department will make changes to the permanent program that will prevent future backlogs by expediting certification and eliminate altogether the state role in the processing of applications. The Department has already streamlined certification for H-1B high-tech workers. The 2004 Budget includes $72 million as the first part of a two-year drive to eliminate the 300,000-case backlog in the permanent foreign labor certification program."

They mentioned that state and reginal level labor certification is duplicative. They have the solutions also as they mentioned that they trimmed down the H1b certification. Why not labor then? Simply, they do not want to work on ....

 

[sanjay_41]

Human Rights

We must send USCISisMockery's draft to human rights wing of White house also. we are paying tax, ss, medicare, etc. we are obeying all the rules and regulations of society. when it comes to protect us, GOVT. is reluctant to protect. what are your thoughts immimates?

I appreicate all the inputs on this move.

Thanks

 

[GOD_BLESS_YOU]

source: http://www.immigration-law.com/Canada.html
06/02/2005: Clogged Foreign Labor Certification System Without Light at End of Tunnel
The reengineering of the nation's foreign labor certification system is facing a serious crisis as both the PERM program and the Backlog Reduction program reveal serious flaws. One doubts whether anyone within the DOL would have anticipated such serious problems when they had worked out this labor certification reengineering process. The nation's labor certification system is practically under seize at this time. Reportedly, the Backlog Processing Centers still have a huge number of boxes of files which have yet to be opened just for data-entry and until the data entry is completed, cases may not be adjudicated except a few oldest cases pending early 2001 or ealier than that. There is no end in sight. Since the Backlog Reduction program was first announced in the federal register, more than eight months have passed by now with no visible results and adjudication of applications. It appears that the serious flaws in planning and operation of the backlog reduction process are related to the concept of "national queue" and "FIFO." First problem existed in the management of this concept. The DOL should have known which states and which regions had the oldest backlog cases. Some small states did not even have any backlogs at all. We thought the leaders in the FLDC were aware of this issue and planned and scheduled shipment of cases from the states and regions in the order of assumedly heaviest backlog locations. As we all know it, San Francisco was picked first for this reason. If this plan worked perfectly, the oldest San Francisco cases should have been gone out of the labor certification processing pipelines while back. The same should be true with other earlier shipment state cases. The current backlog in opening boxes and completing data entries for later shipped cases from the least backlog states should not have halted the adjudication process for the earlier shipped cases. It is horrendous to draw a picture of limited number of analysts and certifying officers in the Backlog Processing Centers beginning to adjudicate over 300,000 cases sometime in the future after completion of the data entries and 45-day letter processing. Supposedly, a large number of these cases are traditional regular applications which will have to go through the time-consuming supervised recruitment process. The announced schedule of 24-30 months removal of all these backlog cases may turn out to be a dream, considering the fact that over eight months have already gone by without completion of preparation phase for processing of the cases. Unless the leaders of DFLC seriously relook at the current plan, operation, and management, they may have to deal with a tough political challenge in the Congress as they will have to hand out begging additional tax-money appropriations. One wonders how the DFLC will be able to persuade the tax payers and the Congressional leaders for the additional money and failures.
The other problem is the flaws in the PERM program. On the surface, there is no noticeable backlog in the new PERM system, but it is a completely false picture for the three reasons. Firstly the flaws in the PERM program have led the employers distancing themselves from filing new applications, particularly refiling cases. Secondly, even though there is no announced statistics, the community has learnt by now that whatever cases the employers filed have faced massive denials. These denials were made by the computer in less than an hour! When the cases are denied so swiftly, there should be no backlog in the pipeline, right? Wrong. It appears that massive denial of the online filing has led or forced employers to file the applications by mail. Unconfirmed sources indicate that there is a heavy backlog of data-entry of these cases by contractors into the online system. This is the third problem which probably the DFLC would not have anticipated in planning the PERM system. The PERM system discourages mail filing but at the same token forces the employers to stay away from the online filing and go for mail filing. It appears that all of the current problems stemmed from the computer software programs that did not properly incorproate various issues which only human beings can adjudicate after considering the totality of circumstances, facts, and evidences. One attorney reports that when the job required a "business" degree and the alien had a "commerce" degree which is another term of the specialty in many countries in the word, including Japan, Korea, India, etc, etc, such application has been instantly denied by the computer. The problem of the PERM system lies with the PERM planners who had overestimated the capability of the computer programs, ignoring the legal process that mandates adjudication of applications based on evidence in totality. Computer "matrix" may work when something can be quantified. The legal adjudication process is not something that can quantify the various evidence which should be considered in many different contexts and circumstances and probably the current PERM program may be seriously violating the rules of the administrative laws. The failure of the computer program to recognize no distinction between the commerce major and the business major is indeed "a tip of iceberg" that the current PERM program has revealed, producing massive denials of applications "instantly." At this point, probably no one has answers to the questions as to how the FDLC will be able to fix these problems. Now, reportedly the two National Processing Centers have recruited the required resources of analysts and certifying officers. This reporter see no other way of fix for the current problems unless the DFLC removes computer matrix decision and has the analysts and certifying officers review the computer results before making a decision. Otherwise, the system not only has a management issue, but also will have to face a serious legal issues in courts.

 

[cacheline]

Backlog hurts *native* U.S. workers first

Guys, I totally agree that writing letters to Senators and media is our
only hope to make DOL move. I think that we can make our petitions
much more effective if we point out that backlog is primarly hurting native
U.S. workers. Let me propose a few ideas for discussion.

The LC backlog and visa retrogression binds immigrant to an employer
and a job for a few years. Let me explain how this reduces salaries
of native U.S. employees and decrease number of jobs available to them.

First, backlog puts immigrant in a very weak negotiating position when
discussing salary. Quitting usually means loss of priority date, or even
legal status if H-1B was extended beyond 6 years, so immigrant applied
for GC is unlikely to leave. This makes GC applicants accept lower
salaries than they deserve and drives average salaries in industry down;
therefore affecting salaries of native U.S. workers

Another consequence of weak negotiating position of an immigrant is
that it allows employer to hire less people. There is no reason to open
additional job positions when GC applicants can be "asked" to work
12 hours and on weekends.

The lengthy GC process pins an immigrant to a single job making him/her
overqualified for the position. This backfires on native U.S. workers.
To be competitive in job market now natives have to demonstrate higher
skills and experience than they would have to should GC applicant be
allowed to move up in career ladder and free up the job.

Finally, multi-year backlog prevents immigrants from starting their own
companies and creating jobs for native U.S. workers. Quite a few high-tech
companis were co-founded by people from abroad.

Now, if eliminating backlog is beneficial for native U.S. employees, how to
speed it up. I think the first step should be to make BEC operate more
transparenly. They should provide regular reports showing number of
cases and date ranges in each stage of processing. For problems like
software error that Philadelphia BEC is presumably experiencing, the
management should explain what steps are take to fix them, and what
is expected timeframe of the fix. These repors would immediately
make bottlenecks and inefficiencies in BEC operation visible to the
public. The next step then would be removing these inefficiencies.

 

[sagar99]

Green Card processing awareness

Hello All,
In my opinion, we should first hire Mr.Rajiv Khanna as he is a very influential and experties in this field. he will guide us to proper channel and can also guide us how to represent this case so that it become an effective one.

Best Wishes,
Sagar

 

[sagar99]

Hello All,
In my opinion, we should first hire Mr.Rajiv Khanna as he is a very influential and experties in this field. he will guide us to proper channel and can also guide us how to represent this case so that it become an effective one.
for me, i should go for option 3 (hire Rajiv Khanna)
Best Wishes,
Sagar[3]

 

[melindwang]

How about using media? Has anyone have connections to major newspapers?

 

[USCISisMockery]

How about using media? Has anyone have connections to major newspapers?

AILA has very good search for contacts to take action. I listed it on first post. Even if NYT or WT gets 100 emails from us, its editor will dig deep and research.

 

[USCISisMockery]

Guys, I totally agree that writing letters to Senators and media is our
only hope to make DOL move. I think that we can make our petitions
much more effective if we point out that backlog is primarly hurting native
U.S. workers. Let me propose a few ideas for discussion.

The LC backlog and visa retrogression binds immigrant to an employer
and a job for a few years. Let me explain how this reduces salaries
of native U.S. employees and decrease number of jobs available to them.
....

Backlog is never good for anybody except lawyers.

 

[sdtny]

CNN News

In my opinion we should take up this matter with CNN news channel as our grievances. Looks like non of the authorities are giving a damn to what's happening with LC' & our tax money is being misused.

LC Patient :

 

[whereismy_gc]

Hi,

The idea of raising awareness through fax,emailsetc is really good. I have couple of other suggestions too:

1.Have like a kickoff meeting in several U.S cities where we can invite a guest speaker (immigration attorney?) and ask people to join the meeting to raise the awareness on backlog issue.The guest speaker will talk about how we can lobby our cause to US congress more effectively. For example I live in bay area and I can advertise in sulekha website requesting people to come join us for the cause.We can also get petitions signed at the same time.
2.Ask people to volunteer in front of indian stores etc to sign petitions.(I have seen people asking for signing for petitions for eg in front of safeway stores etc)

This way we can get lot more petitions going on and can create momemtum.

I will be able to volunteer for this in bay area if I can get support for this activity. We can have similar arrangements setup in other parts of US too.

Yes, let's get the momentum going. I am with you SiriInfo. In the worst case they will think of throwing us out of this country. At least people will understand our pain.

I live in BayArea too.

 

[scorpio76]

written to Kron4 and San Jose Mercury News in the Bay Area, CA. Lets see what happens.

Waiting since 2001....

 

[gcby2020]

There is one solution which may work. Expose the mess of DOL in a full page advt in wall street journal. Why WSJ?? It is most widely read newspaper in US particularly by the business community. This is most efficient way of exposing DOL to the general public. This will put tremendous pressure on DOL to speed up things. Lawsuits wont work. And if we have some more $$ to spare, advt in NY times will also help. Given the number of people affected by BEC mess, it shouldnt be that difficult to raise the money.

 

[USCISisMockery]

Also nice suggestiono by Igor

http://www.immigrationportal.com/showpost.php?p=1184834&postcount=2706

 

[GOD_BLESS_YOU]

Also nice suggestiono by Igor

http://www.immigrationportal.com/showpost.php?p=1184834&postcount=2706

sending letters and emails to Officer Of Inspector General may result some positive impact on BEC processing

Main Address and Phone Number

Gordon S. Heddell, Inspector General
George J. Opfer, Deputy Inspector General
Office of Inspector General
200 Constitution Avenue, NW
Room S-5502
Washington, DC 20210
Telephone: (202) 693-5100



OIG Hotline: Report Fraud, Waste, and Abuse

200 Constitution Avenue, NW
Room S-5506
Washington, DC 20210
Telephone: (202) 693-6999 or 1-800-347-3756

hotline@oig.dol.gov

 

[ben123]

sent an email written by nilekum to NBC4

Hi,
I just sent an email written by nilekum to the NBC4 news channel(washington DC metro area prime news channel)www.nbc4.com. I know that their consumer and community news provoke response, most of the time. Let's hope they really bring out the issue in a manner that positively affect us.

 

[USCISisMockery]

This is edited version and I couldn't find my original post so I am posting it here.

========================================
Thank you very much for taking the time to read this letter.

We are group of professionals (around 300,000) who were promised “land of opportunities”. But after many years of faith in American democracy system, we are loosing hopes and we need help from influential leaders like you.

We will present story of “Jhang" from China whose plight is shared by us. Jhang, since childhood was dreaming of wonderland like "America". As brilliant he was, he came to US as student for higher studies after completing his bachelor from China. Using his family savings, he completed his masters and his dream came true when he became part of most dedicated and efficient workforce in the world. His employer couldn’t find match for his position after rigorous recruitment effort so the company applied for his Labor Certificate. It was around May 2002 when his application was filed at NJ SWA (State Workforce Agency). By that time all SWA agencies were completely backlogged by 245(i) applications (April 2001) from “illegals”. Hoping that DFLC (Division of Foreign Labor Certification) status page will change from April 2001, Jhang spent more than 18 months waiting. Then one day he discovered NJ SWA is moving forward and processing May 2001 cases, and he got assurance that there is still justice in the system.

After adjudicating 10 months of backlogged case within a year or so, DOL came up with idea of completely scraping the existing labor certificate system and introducing new "faster" system called PERM. So logically its safe to assume that DOL will adjudicate all existing backlogged cases before implementing new system. But no, DOL added more red tape ness to already chaotic system by eliminating all SWA and created 2 backlog elimination center (BEC): Philadelphia and Dallas. DOL also created 2 centers (Atlanta and Chicago) to process PERM application. It’s ironical that DOL will adjudicate applications that are filled this year (through PERM) before applications filled in 2001.

Since December 2004, BECs are data entering the cases and its being estimated that data entry will continue till end of this year.

Once data entry is completed, DOL will add one more level of entropy by sending "45 day letter" to lawyers and employers and mandating them to acknowledge it. DOL is estimating that all backlogs will be eliminated within 24-30 months, but looking at current pace it seems very optimistic estimate.

Conservative or liberal, democrats or republicans, sane or insane, everybody agrees that legal immigration is better than illegal, but DOL discounted legal immigrants like Jhang so that they can process thousands of 245(i) applications who came to this country illegaly or overstayed their status.

Jhang is waiting now to get his 7th year extension to his H1, so that he can stay in the country for one more year. At the age (31) when he is supposed to consolidate his family, raise his children, he is living in uncertainty. In spite of substantial savings, he is renting because he is always 6 months away from his labor. But “labor certificate” is mirage for him now. He is postponing expanding his family so that he doesn’t have to raise his new born in new environment if he has to go back to China. These years he denied all promotions, ignored opportunities just so that he doesn't have to start labor process from the beginning. Her wife already spoiled her career because her being on H4 status, couldn't work.

Nobody, not even his employer or lawyer knows where his file is. DOL doesn’t have any status page where employer or lawyer can get information. Even though he is invaluable employee to his company for 6 years now (and he is being handsomely rewarded), he might have to abruptly stop his life not because of his inability but because of DOL delay.

While in US for 8 years, he contributed financially (paying thousands in taxes, investing in American companies) and socially to the society and now he is more Americanized than Chinese. His everyday food is burgers and not noodles.

As a legal, tax-paying and productive member of society, Jhang's career and his spouse’s working status is stalled by this seemingly never ending unfair wait in the American legal immigration system and is very discouraging and possibly detrimental to the interest of the American global economy in the 21st century.

To honorable officer, we would also like to mention that labor certificate is only first step to gain permanent residency in U.S. With visa retrogressed back to many years, that’s another battle (many years of wait) for Jhang to fight before he sleeps.

Here are some of the suggestions that we think will help our cause.
- Divert resources from Atlanta and Chicago center to eliminate current backlog.
- Set stringent target for DOL to adjudicate all backlogged applications by March 2006.
- Request senate to allocate more funding to DOL for this cause.
- Stop "45 day letters" formality.

We request you to set up an inquiry to DOL backlog and take immediate action to eliminate it so that many “Jhangs” keep on serving the greatest country on earth.

 

[GOD_BLESS_YOU]

Public attention

In addition to all above suggested.,
I have a simple suggestion to get our surrounding public attention on this Backlog labor issue..

We need to write a one page-- ONLY one Page write up with a strong catchy heading ... How DOL is misusing PUblic funds in the name of Back log,and the problems of LEGAL immigrants with this labor back log ...etc

I think we can utilize the existing letters on letter compaign to write this one.,

Once this is ready and reviewed ... every one who is interested need to take PRINTOUTS of this word document from this site ffrom USCISMockery thread Raise awareness about labor certificate process backlog ..

Place the print out whereever you see a public notice boards..Your work place notice board,
Community Centers,Library Notice Boards,Railway/bus stations,Apartments Laundry rooms,school/colleage notice boards,super makets notice boards whever you think appropriate...

Even you can place a copy in your car window..
we need to post the same message on all public bullition boards on Internet sites...
won't it get some public attention

 

[GOD_BLESS_YOU]

another suggestion

This is for those interested in persuing an activist approach...

http://judiciary.house.gov/reportfraud.aspx

This link is to report the commitee of judiciary of the US congress about the fraud, abuse or waste of government resources....
This commitee has oversight of immigration matters...
We have to generate enough volume in US Congress that they get interested in out plight....If this commitee starts demanding hearings on this subject then that would make some difference......They can generate decisive pressure...

Also these are the people who can demand additional funding to this program...

Anybody who decides to write please be very polite and concise....