Nationwide I-140 campaign.
Hi, all,
Below is a copy of CSC's I-140 petition letter.
ImmigrationPortal.Com
5225 N. Wilson Blvd, Arlington VA 22205
Dear Ombudsman Prakash Khatri,
First of all we want to thank you for the suggestions given by you to reduce the backlog in the process of immigration related cases and for helping our friends from this forum on 485 processing delays at California Service Center.
We are writing to you regarding the unreasonable delays in adjudication of the Employment-Based I-140 cases at almost all of the Service Centers of the USCIS and USCIS memo, by Director Fujie Ohata dated March 31 2004, which invalidates the PL 106-313 (AC 21 public law) due to concurrent adjudication of I-140 with I-485.
According to CSC’s progress report, CSC is adjudicating the I-140 cases filed before July 2003. Also USCIS has not shown any progress for most of the I-140 cases since August 2003. Please note that the CSC was adjudicating I-140 EB2 cases filed around July 17 2003 as of August 1 2003. Congress has expressed repeatedly that the reasonable adjudication period is 6 months for immigration cases.
As per new USCIS memo of concurrent filing for I-140 and I-485, the cases will be adjudicated concurrently. Even if I-140 is filed concurrently, it will take the same time as adjudicating I-485. Since I-485 is taking anywhere between 24 - 36 months to process in CSC, not adjudicating I-140 before hand will not allow candidates to use AC 21. This defeats the purpose of the AC-21 law. The caveat here is, USCIS interpretation, that candidates could change jobs only if their I-140 petition is approved and I-485 petition is pending for over 180 days. Ideally the candidate should be allowed to change jobs after 180 days has passed by after filing I-140 and I-1485 concurrently, irrespective of I-140 status.
In summary we, as immigration portal community, request you to 1.) Please bring this up with USCIS and expedite I-140 processing so that it will give required relief to non-concurrent I-140 filers as well as the concurrent filers; 2) correct the USCIS interpretation of AC 21; and 3.) request Mr. Don Nuefeld to move some reasonable number of adjudicators to I-140 unit from other units such as I-485 where there has been significant improvement recently.
Sincerely,
Name
140 Case #
Address
Regards,
As iknowitall suggested, we should include all service centers. So when aws talks to Rajiv, you may want to mention that so that we have a uniform nationwide campaign.
Thanks!
fiveice