Can We settle on These Bases?

Re: Some thoughts and impressions

Dear Mr. Rajiv,

Well said!! I agree with you! At the same time, I just would like to add my comment on
Point # 4: “We are proposing “with immediate effect this ‘interim’ approval should be given on a walk-in basis in an orderly manner for the I-485 applications pending for 180 days”.

I know, this is well and good for every one and also you might have considered following factors:

(1) How all the local service centers are overcrowded!?.
(2) How adequate and efficient USCIS staffs are!?.
(3) At present, the no. of applicants are very high whose application pending for 180 days.
(4) USCIS already prioritizes backlog reduction in FY2005 budget in order to adjudicate all AOS applications with in 180 days.

Since approval on a walk-in basis in an orderly manner, I think we need to divide all the applicants (whose application is pending over 180 days) into groups and propose certain timeline priority wise against each group for USCIS to allow and issue ‘interim’ approval.

I think, these should be defined very well in writing along with our proposal (or verbally during meeting with USCIS) in order for our proposal looks genuine and acceptable.

P.S.: We have full trust on you and we all have our full support on whatever you think appropriate for the whole community regardless of difference in opinion among few members.


Originally posted by operations
Folks, I think we have about exhausted useful discussion. My general sense is that this is a good point to submit our settlement to CIS.

I want you to refrain from attacking each other's view points to the point of getting personal. No need. We invite ALL viewpoints, no matter how different they are from ours.


Every item on the 8-points is a result of my experience with your problem, thought and consideration and reflects your input. There is no way I will come up with a "perefct" solution. But I am trying to get as close to the root of the problems as possible.

The most important time is this coming week. I had asked the government to cooperate on our class action motion, so we can get a quick resolution. If they intend to oppose it, I know, chances of settlement are small. Becuase they, as an institution, do not understand unconventional, yet commen sense, approach to litigation and problem solving. My suggestion to them was simple, let us join together to get the class certified in a hurry, so we can move on to either the real litigation or to a settlement. I invited them to not delay matters and waste the court's time. Their first reaction was of surprise. No one had ever asked them to join in such a manner. But to their credit, they had agreed to think it over.

Now if they come back to me and say let us join together to narrow the scope of the litigation (instead of fighting over nonsense), we know we have a receptive (potential) partner, rtaher than an unthinking opponent. Once cooperation begins, I will present our settlement. If not, I will present it, but I will know that unless we get Congress involved, there will be no settlement.

I am also hoping that they will see the potential for goodwill here. They have been in the press as villains so long and so often, they need a face lift. If they agree to cooperate with us (the best possible class of people whom the govt can support - leglally here, professional/skilled, smart and responsible), I would want us to reciprocate by issuing positive statements that reflect the truth of their cooperation and consideration.

If they decide to fight, then I will make it my mission over the next few months/years to find every way I can to hasten the conclusion of this litigation. Rest assured.

Not much else to add. Be cool all. I will start a new thread, once I hear from the government.
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Double Attack

Lawsuit is our first attack on the USCIS. But these lawsuits may take long time to yield any result and also there is no guarantee that the court will give a favourable ruling to us. Never the less, i am a strong believer in the lawsuit against CIS because it puts enormous pressure on them (CIS) to change their way of working because they don't want their horrible way of working to be nakedly exposed in the court. So far they have enjoyed their unopposed freedom to work what ever way they like and they acted like they were answerable to none. This law suit reverses all that style.
There is a way to make CIS to take this lawsuit very seriously and force them to settle with us. We have to contact as many congress men and senators as possible and ask them to question the working style of USCIS. When those people start asking the CIS directors about the inaction of CIS, then they (CIS directors) will see a risk to their jobs and then they will look to really act and settle this lawsuit to avoid the public glare at them.
So we need to attack them from two sides. The core team(senior members of this forum have formed a team) has formed an organisation to fight the backlogs and we are almost ready to collect funds. We will use these funds to hire some lobbyists who will meet the congress men and Senators to present our problems to them. Sending Emails and meeting a few congress men by a few people has not really shown much results so far. We need to step up and do things in a more professional and sustained manner.
 
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Folks, I think we have about exhausted useful discussion. My general sense is that this is a good point to submit our settlement to CIS.
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Well said Rajiv, cannot agree more. we will wait at see what's happening next week.

dsatish, please just let us know when we could send in the funds.
 
Kasmir,

As you have highlighted in the senetor note: "I have been notified that due to pending litigation, he cannot comment on any more inquiries regarding this issue".

Let me describe my own experince (as I posted this detail in my previous post) that we also faced similar hurdle when we went to USCIS Atlanta local office to get an interim EAD on 02/17/2004 since our EAD expired on 02/21/2004. After counter lady refused to issue token since our 90 days were not over, I am able to convince security guy to help me out. He gave me the officer name and guidance on how/where to approach him. I met this officer and after explaining my whole situation, he asked me to contact main officer (who is authorized to sign) by giving his name. I met the main officer and told him that Mr. xxx had asked me to contact you for my interim EAD issue. He didn’t listen to any thing and asked me to meet the officer who is handling EAD card dept. Finally, I met the officer who was handling EAD card dept and he was finally ready to issue interim EAD card for 8 months after explaining my situation. He went to take the signature of that main officer, whom I already met, on my original filed application and when the main officer looked in detail and found that I am from EB category, he refused to sign saying that ‘forget it since you are from EB category’. He said he don’t care about my situation and comeback after March 04, 2004.

Event though, it was my mistake that I didn’t applied EAD renewal before 90 days, I felt that the main officer did a discrimination against me and EB category, since the two officers, including the officer who was handling EAD dept. were agreed to issue interim EAD before 90 days since my EAD was expiring and this officer couldn’t have gone to take signature at the first place, if they have strict rule/policy.

Thank you!

Originally posted by kashmir
http://immigrationportal.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=699763#post699747
Today, HowMuchLonger, one of CSC forum mebers, received a letter from Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D CA 14th) as follows: Our Litigation seems to have been informed to Service Center Directors who are Defendants.

CSC forum members had sent about 100 e-mails to Congresswoman Anna Eshoo and CSC Director Don Neufeld in January 2004
to follow up Don Neufeld's promise to Anna Eshoo so that Don Neufeld will significantly increase adjudication resource to I-485 by April 2004.

The Court is not only the place to fight.
Please be prepared to contact your Congressional members or Media in your area.
It is each one's responsibility not only for Plaintiffs and Core Team members but also for everyone to be involved in this litigation.
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Re: Double Attack

dsatish,

I agree with you..I am also in touch with Senator Saxby Chambliss office since I am in Georgia..I will make use of my 2 weeks of leave of absence due to EAD expired to meet him personly to explain my situation and our case also.

Thank you!


Originally posted by dsatish
Lawsuit is our first attack on the USCIS. But these lawsuits may take long time to yield any result and also there is no guarantee that the court will give a favourable ruling to us. Never the less, i am a strong believer in the lawsuit against CIS because it puts enormous pressure on them (CIS) to change their way of working because they don't want their horrible way of working to be nakedly exposed in the court. So far they have enjoyed their unopposed freedom to work what ever way they like and they acted like they were answerable to none. This law suit reverses all that style.
There is a way to make CIS to take this lawsuit very seriously and force them to settle with us. We have to contact as many congress men and senators as possible and ask them to question the working style of USCIS. When those people start asking the CIS directors about the inaction of CIS, then they (CIS directors) will see a risk to their jobs and then they will look to really act and settle this lawsuit to avoid the public glare at them.
So we need to attack them from two sides. The core team(senior members of this forum have formed a team) has formed an organisation to fight the backlogs and we are almost ready to collect funds. We will use these funds to hire some lobbyists who will meet the congress men and Senators to present our problems to them. Sending Emails and meeting a few congress men by a few people has not really shown much results so far. We need to step up and do things in a more professional and sustained manner.
Click to expand...
 
Re: Double Attack

Originally posted by dsatish
Lawsuit is our first attack on the USCIS. But these lawsuits may take long time to yield any result and also there is no guarantee that the court will give a favourable ruling to us. Never the less, i am a strong believer in the lawsuit against CIS because it puts enormous pressure on them (CIS) to change their way of working because they don't want their horrible way of working to be nakedly exposed in the court. So far they have enjoyed their unopposed freedom to work what ever way they like and they acted like they were answerable to none. This law suit reverses all that style.
There is a way to make CIS to take this lawsuit very seriously and force them to settle with us. We have to contact as many congress men and senators as possible and ask them to question the working style of USCIS. When those people start asking the CIS directors about the inaction of CIS, then they (CIS directors) will see a risk to their jobs and then they will look to really act and settle this lawsuit to avoid the public glare at them.
So we need to attack them from two sides. The core team(senior members of this forum have formed a team) has formed an organisation to fight the backlogs and we are almost ready to collect funds. We will use these funds to hire some lobbyists who will meet the congress men and Senators to present our problems to them. Sending Emails and meeting a few congress men by a few people has not really shown much results so far. We need to step up and do things in a more professional and sustained manner.
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I fully agree to you dsatish. I am waiting for such a group to be formed. As I read in some other post that this group wll work for ALL issues pertaining to group as a whole - makes it even more worthwhile. Idea gets better once we pool funds for lobbying from Senators and Congress Men - we are strongest community in terms of money - we must know and everyone else must know it too. Money speaks - we must utilize it to save our interests.

Rajiv - not just for this lawsuit but also for providing a portal to express, share and bring people together - the whole group owes you a lot. I owe some more for my off-track arguments whenever provoked. Thanks a lot Rajiv and good job dsatish. Keep updated.

P.S. dsatish - could you send link of your and group's effort so that I can follow it?
 
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IMPORTANT

I think we laid down a lot, but a couple of points need to be summarised:

1: How about using the term "GC or Permanent lawful resident" instead of any other term including "interim", "conditional", etc.
otherwise, we invite discrimination and accept the Security Checks and multiple FPs, which not only are the root cause but they are also unconstitutional. Why our GCs should be any different than the ones six months ago, for example? After all we are not even qualified for a DoD or any other Top Security Clearance (as we are not Citizens) and this one takes only a shorter amount of time than an adjudication of a I-485.

2: If Citizenship problem (derivative of I-485 backlogs) is purely with Congress, what else can we ask for the people who have been waiting for two years or more?

3: If there is no good will, let them know that they most probably violated the allocation of numbers of visas for the EB-I-485 category for the years 2001-2004. The number of 140,000 was never fully utilized per year! (see Asylee case also).
 
Re: Double Attack

Originally posted by dsatish
Lawsuit is our first attack on the USCIS. But these lawsuits may take long time to yield any result and also there is no guarantee that the court will give a favourable ruling to us. Never the less, i am a strong believer in the lawsuit against CIS because it puts enormous pressure on them (CIS) to change their way of working because they don't want their horrible way of working to be nakedly exposed in the court. So far they have enjoyed their unopposed freedom to work what ever way they like and they acted like they were answerable to none. This law suit reverses all that style.
There is a way to make CIS to take this lawsuit very seriously and force them to settle with us. We have to contact as many congress men and senators as possible and ask them to question the working style of USCIS. When those people start asking the CIS directors about the inaction of CIS, then they (CIS directors) will see a risk to their jobs and then they will look to really act and settle this lawsuit to avoid the public glare at them.
So we need to attack them from two sides. The core team(senior members of this forum have formed a team) has formed an organisation to fight the backlogs and we are almost ready to collect funds. We will use these funds to hire some lobbyists who will meet the congress men and Senators to present our problems to them. Sending Emails and meeting a few congress men by a few people has not really shown much results so far. We need to step up and do things in a more professional and sustained manner.
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GOOD WORK ALL OF YOU. Thanks again to Mr.Rajiv for the timely help to the immigrant community.

DSatish,
Tell us how we can help you in sending funds, organizing funds and any other possible way. Let us all fight this together and see if we benefit as it goes...
 
Core Team Activities

Check for various thread on I-485 forum, especially VSC, CSC, TSC and NSC I-485 forum for Core team activities or Project Ocean activities.
 
Advertisements

Good idea.

The general and reasonable opinion in media today seems to that the "immigration system in this country is broken."

Through advertisement, we could bring more attention to our efforts (petitions, lawsuite, etc) towards making the immigration process reasonable.

Print media may be better to begin with and cheaper (although i don't question our ability to raise funds if thats what we focus on).

Also, probably a good idea to stay away from controversial or political issues.

In the end what most of us (despite our somewhat passionate differences) are looking for is a reasonable immigration process and I belive we share this point in common with the larger US population who is also interested in fixing a "broken" immigration system.
 
Re: If they don't settle

This is one idea, but I personally think hiring lobbist is more effective and has a more direct and quicker influence on legislator. Of couser, if we can clollect enough money, we can even have triple or quadruple attack.


Originally posted by ClevelandGuru
If the goverment is not willing to settle... Our next step should be to get as much attention as possible to this litigation in the media. Such an attention during an election year will force the goverment to do something about this. I think we started the litigation in the best time. Thanks to Mr. Rajiv. All we need is to plan, ways to get media attention. Letters to congressmen won't be enough.

Here is a crazy idea.

How about a paid advertisement in TV. The advertisement shouldn't give much information to public. It should make people ask what the heck that advertisement is all about. The curiosity should make the media investigate and present the clear picture in news.

The adverstisment should show hard working people all over the world living in misery coming to US and then a goverment putting a lease on them and making them work like slave.


Siva
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Google AdWords pointing to a website explaining our issues may be the most cost effective way. All we really want is for some print/tv journalists to pick up on this issue.
 
Govt. has refused to cooperate on one issue at least

Here is some of the relevant parts of their e-mail:


"Sun, 22 Feb 2004 16:30:43 -0500 (EST)
Rajiv, I wanted to get back with you regarding your class cert. stipulation proposal. We had two meetings over here to discuss your proposal. However, after review of your proposal it does not look like DOJ can agree to it.....Finally, when can we expect your list of proposed settlement topics? Best regards"


At this point, I intend to present our settlement request this week. If they do not agree, we will go full steam ahead with the litigation. I intend to hire one more law clerk to devote full attention to our case. Upon refusal of our proposal, we will expose the shamfeul results of these delays. We have cases of people suffering horribly because of CIS.

Take care all. Do not lose heart. We won the day we filed the lawsuit. Rest all is just effort.
 
Clarification of government response?

Mr. Khanna, could you please clarify the section that you copied into your last message? What does "class cert. stipulation proposal" refer to? How is it different from the list of settlement topics you have compiled?

Thank you.
 
Re: Clarification of government response?

Originally posted by mustbepatient
Mr. Khanna, could you please clarify the section that you copied into your last message? What does "class cert. stipulation proposal" refer to? How is it different from the list of settlement topics you have compiled?

Thank you.
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Read my last post on this thread please.

http://boards.immigration.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=114165&perpage=15&pagenumber=27


The most important time is this coming week. I had asked the government to cooperate on our class action motion, so we can get a quick resolution. If they intend to oppose it, I know, chances of settlement are small. Becuase they, as an institution, do not understand unconventional, yet commen sense, approach to litigation and problem solving. My suggestion to them was simple, let us join together to get the class certified in a hurry, so we can move on to either the real litigation or to a settlement. I invited them to not delay matters and waste the court's time. Their first reaction was of surprise. No one had ever asked them to join in such a manner. But to their credit, they had agreed to think it over.

Now if they come back to me and say let us join together to narrow the scope of the litigation (instead of fighting over nonsense), we know we have a receptive (potential) partner, rtaher than an unthinking opponent. Once cooperation begins, I will present our settlement. If not, I will present it, but I will know that unless we get Congress involved, there will be no settlement.
Click to expand...
 
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Re: Govt. has refused to cooperate on one issue at least

Originally posted by operations
Here is some of the relevant parts of their e-mail:


"Sun, 22 Feb 2004 16:30:43 -0500 (EST)
Rajiv, I wanted to get back with you regarding your class cert. stipulation proposal. We had two meetings over here to discuss your proposal. However, after review of your proposal it does not look like DOJ can agree to it.....Finally, when can we expect your list of proposed settlement topics? Best regards"


At this point, I intend to present our settlement request this week. If they do not agree, we will go full steam ahead with the litigation. I intend to hire one more law clerk to devote full attention to our case. Upon refusal of our proposal, we will expose the shamfeul results of these delays. We have cases of people suffering horribly because of CIS.

Take care all. Do not lose heart. We won the day we filed the lawsuit. Rest all is just effort.
Click to expand...

Rajiv,

I am sure of victory the day you started. I know it is matter of time(maybe a little longer now). All the best from core of my heart.
 
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Re: Double Attack

Originally posted by dsatish
Lawsuit is our first attack on the USCIS. But these lawsuits may take long time to yield any result and also there is no guarantee that the court will give a favourable ruling to us. Never the less, i am a strong believer in the lawsuit against CIS because it puts enormous pressure on them (CIS) to change their way of working because they don't want their horrible way of working to be nakedly exposed in the court. So far they have enjoyed their unopposed freedom to work what ever way they like and they acted like they were answerable to none. This law suit reverses all that style.
There is a way to make CIS to take this lawsuit very seriously and force them to settle with us. We have to contact as many congress men and senators as possible and ask them to question the working style of USCIS. When those people start asking the CIS directors about the inaction of CIS, then they (CIS directors) will see a risk to their jobs and then they will look to really act and settle this lawsuit to avoid the public glare at them.
So we need to attack them from two sides. The core team(senior members of this forum have formed a team) has formed an organisation to fight the backlogs and we are almost ready to collect funds. We will use these funds to hire some lobbyists who will meet the congress men and Senators to present our problems to them. Sending Emails and meeting a few congress men by a few people has not really shown much results so far. We need to step up and do things in a more professional and sustained manner.
Click to expand...

I agree 100 % with dsatish. Is there a seperate thread to discuss fund-raising efforts?
 
Brain Storm Session

Rajiv,
How about having a brain storming conference call (with 10 selected members from this thread) to go over and if necessary refine our proposals to CIS ? I suggest that we do it on Tuesday noon. If we make it during the lunch time (12pm to 1pm) atleast those who can make it can dial in from their cell phones during lunch break. If you agree for the conference call, then let us pick 10 people based on their level of participation and diverse views.
Since you told that you will be sending the proposals this week, it's better to have this conference call within 2 days.
 
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Core Team

Originally posted by Pineapple
I agree 100 % with dsatish. Is there a seperate thread to discuss fund-raising efforts?
Click to expand...

Many of you are asking about Where do Core team members discuss their actions. The core team is formed about 6 months back to fight the I485 backlogs. We used to discuss our course of action in the following thread. How ever, for the past 2 months, we are communicating only through Emails(we have set up a yahoogroups Email ID for core team). We are a team of about 15 people. In future we will expand the size and at that time, we will invite some of the active members lhere, ike Jharkandi, hidden_dragon, functionalert etc.

Core team thread :

http://boards.immigrationportal.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=699877#post699877
 
Great work Rajeev (and offcourse all of you) who have given so much time and effort for just cause.

Please let us know if we can help in anyway apart from the monetary aspect. Like sending emails or mails to the congress person thru our citizen friends or something of that nature.
 
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