Help Us Decide : What to do with the Fund Collected

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I agree with dsatish - help who contributed

Dear dsatish,
I agree with you. The reality is that people will be approved not following FIFO.
Whoever filed for GC in late 2003 - 2004 will not contribute ever. US Immigration is declining now. This is happening with several reasons, including discrimination, decreased "american hype" and changed of immigration policy.
The US are going to lose a lot on the long term for this reason and in 6 or 7 years (by the time we will get citizenship) it will be a place you would not love to grow your children in. This is happening gradually and it is due to the various discriminating rules and regulations approved after September 11.
In the meantime people like me, without FingerPrinting and with a I485 Notice Date of 09/2002 will be in the process for more time, possibly even another year. Now that will be if we don't, as an organized small group of people, contact 1, 2 or more congressman/woman willing to help us out.
I completely agree with you dsatish, we contributed, then use the money to push our cases, so we get the card, and we keep going....
Now I honestly don't know where, the clouds in the sky are black and they say it is going to rain , a lot... who knows even if we will be here by the time we can apply for citizenship....

Regards

andreab67
 
We need RESULTS

What are we going to hire a person for? What could be achieved in 2 months??? - I also agree on going back to earth. Fighting backlogs is too general. We need specific goals.

My Suggestion: Use the money to hit the mass media and create awareness about the backlog problem, create preassure at USCIS and at Congress, generate support for our cause and the complaint.

How?? --> I will use the funds to publish an article in Wa Post and other media, with Rajiv name on it so we can generate interviews on TV and Radio. The more noise the Better.

We have to be wise on how to maximize the final result. We cannot "fight backlog" with 20k, but we can support the fight and preassure we already started in court to make it even more effective.
Elnegro
 
Baykarår ♥ said:
so that they can hire some help to process old applications.
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and then that money will be used so Mr Aguirre can pay his monthly dues to his Country Club :) :) :) :)
 
rawager said:
I Just contributed my 3rd. Will keep doing so every month until you ask me not to.
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Thanks for contributing again and again. And here is my official request to you not to contribute any more. I always feel bad when some one contributes too much. I look forward to more people contributing smaller amounts. That way, even if our efforts does not pay, no one loses much.
 
I understand

dsatish said:
Thanks for contributing again and again. And here is my official request to you not to contribute any more. I always feel bad when some one contributes too much. I look forward to more people contributing smaller amounts. That way, even if our efforts does not pay, no one loses much.
Click to expand...

DSatish, I understand what you are saying. But 'more people ARE NOT contributing little' and my logic is thus: I have not volunteered for anything else - meaning to do some work like join the committee, send fax, etc. so my way of contribution is monetary... which I can do right now - and hopefully in future.
I strongly feel that EVERYONE must contribute one way or the other. Time, work, money. All of them are required for the success and implementation of the thoughts and ideas everybody puts forward (from behind the desk! - in most cases and expect others to carry them out for them.)

Not, that I have a lot of money but I would like to continue making my contribution to the cause. Please don't ask me to stop because you feel bad that others are not doing their part. Plus, I am still under few who contributed $500. My thought is to provide little everymonth so our efforts can go on and not dry up after we spend the initial collection.

Thank you.
.....R
 
Hmmmm.....

I guess we can call this effort of "Help us decide: What to do with the Fund collected" a quit. No one except a few want to come up with any ideas how this should be handled. No debate whatsoever is going on. Not even from the handlers of the fund.

dsatish, you keep telling that we need between $30K-$35K to engage a lobbyist. Can you give some breakups to better gives an idea how you got to this figure?

On the lighter note, if we cannot come to a conclusion,lets give to Rajiv. Atleast, it will do some justice for what he has done for us so far.
 
Kadamtal,
I don't have any answers to your impatience. You want everything done in a matter of days just because you have contributed some amount. Remember that ip.org is not run by any full time members. Some things do happen behind the scenes which you may not be knowing. I am also working on "complaint to congress men" letter.
To make the answer clear to you, you will not see daily response or daily action in this thread. Your attacks on the core team members are unwarranted. Kashmir did not stop his activities after his approval. He just took a 1 month break after his approval. Don't you allow him to savior his GC approval after all that fight ? You have crossed all limitations in your expectations. While some people in CSC forum are accusing kashmir for his extra efforts in fund collection (and a lot of people are admiring him for his extra efforts), you simply came from no where and making reverse allegations.
The purpose of this thread is not to discuss about what activities we have done in the past 2 months, but to discuss about how we should spend the money. Please don't deviate from the topic.
We didn’t collect the money from people promising non stop action. We told that we need money to hire a person /lobbyist. That is the reason Kashmir, myself etc have concentrated on fund collection effort. How can we spend this money for some other activity when we mentioned that the main purpose of fund collection is to hire a person?
Now that we seem to be in a crisis of getting the target money, we are re evaluating our plans. This is common methodology every where. You have to re evaluate your plans at certain critical times.
 
The reason why we are not seeing any action from other ip.org members is simple : I am acting as the spokesperson for ip.org in this thread. Obviously we don’t want 10 diffeent people talking 10 different things.
 
immediate plan

Hi Guys,
As I have said before, our first task is to explore if we can find a lobbying firm to work for our cause for a brief period for $20,000. While the core team members will be exploring this, I request every one here to come out with suggestions on how we can go about this firm hunting ? There may be some entrepreneurs here.
My ideas :
1) News paper advertisement in DC area
2) Search Yellow pages
3) Ask Rajiv Khanna if he knows some one ( I have already asked him this about 10 days back)
4) Do some research on internet
5) contact some existing organizations which have hired a lobby firm

Guys, please add your ideas.
 
dsatish, a bit of correction if you will. I did not create this thread demanding what the HECK you have been doing with the money. you did, asking what we should do with the money we contributed.

As for me, I have contributed not seeking any clarifications whatsoever. Now that you are getting personal, not going into further details, i resign. Do whatever you want with the money.
 
No doubt that Rajiv is our main contributor, we as a community didn't match the efforts of Rajiv. Also further steps will be discussed with Rajiv and we can plan accordingly.

On the side note, Even though my first choice is hiring professional lobbyist but I don't think it is practically feasible with this minimum fund, so let's utilize the minimum fund we have effectively with the help of experts(Rajiv,Contributors..........) suggestions.
 
kadamtal,
I have tried my best to restrain myself for the past 3 days when you are making snide remarks on us. Each time i was typing some strong reply and then changing my mind in the last minute to avoid unnecessary issue here. But there has to be some end to these attacks / snubs from you and that's why i had to let my feelings out. Just as you cherish your self respect, we also do our's. I welcome criticism from any one, but it need to be gentle, and not attacking in nature. Even if it is attacking in nature, it should not be repeatetive. You felt bad just because of 1 post from me, but you haven't realized how much we felt bad because of your postings.
Anyway, let's put this minor issue behind and move ahead with our discussions. I definitely appreciate your role in stirring up a strong discussion.
Have a good week-end.
 
I don’t think the hiring the lobbyist would be wise. Since we have the limited funds, we should be inventive. What about setting a web interface for mass fax campaigns where an user can send a pre-defined text with his/her signature and address to multiple recipients (congressmen, senators).
 
kadamtal said:
dsatish, you keep telling that we need between $30K-$35K to engage a lobbyist. Can you give some breakups to better gives an idea how you got to this figure?
Click to expand...

I have arrived at the figure based on following calculation :
3 months salary for a lobbying professional : 3*$10,000 = $30,000.
Organizational expenses (paying to accountant, other Fees, Min balance etc) = $5000.
Total = $35,000.
 
How about 'Unifying' IP.org?

My humble thoughts as to...

IP.org:
Although a non profit org the core idea was/is to fight backlog reduction and issues related to it. Like few have said before... this is being done due to various reasons. President,law suit, congress, media and other small and big pressures.

Fund Collection:
Not all people contribute... this I think is partly because
1. "Why should I? I don't see any reason, activities etc. Let others do and whatever results the efforts brings... I will benefit from them." attitude. Now I could be totally wrong... but these seems to be a case for a lot of people.

2. Our campaign haven't reached a lot of people. Few posts about our agenda posted in this forum somewhere and occasional visitors stumbling across them and getting convinced or trusting enough to contribute is like buying lottery tik.

3. Have you considered collecting used items and then doing tag sales at community levels - to collect funds? - just another thought - not sure if people are open to these kind of ideas.


Spending the Money:
This will address the issues I have mentioned above

1. Spend money to collect more money. All fund raising costs some capital - be it bingo, raffle, walk, run, rallies, appearances, concerts etc.
Our efforts should be targeted at all the immigrants. Where ever we have email addresses we should send emails. We have Mailing address we should send personal mails. Enlisting our long term and short term goals and the advantage the person will recieve.

2. Make IP.org an 'association or Union' of immigrants. Past, present and future. Requires an annual membership of X dollars. With some advantages being
a. representation
b. legal advises - a quick what to in a situation for all kind of questions (think of 'prepaid legal advise' options by credit card companies - similar of course care should be taken as to what is included and excluded like IP.org does not file cases).
c. Voicing general immigrant concerns (a member is an immigrant as long as they are not a citizen) a list of representation can be drafted - and it changes as things(laws,processing) moves.
d. Develop code of ethics and expectations from members.
e. Work like a union org.
f. Help and provide guidance for other temproray visa petitions.
g. Negotiate with Insurance companies to provide lower cost benefits - this will help members, when they are on bench, unemployment (but cannot get US state benefits) etc to sustain the blow and still have decent benefits/insurance.
h. Build ties/relationships with CC companies, AAA, Credit unions (DCU) etc for mutual advantages.
...... the list can go on. I am just jolting down some examples for an alternative direction of thought.
I am sure, if people see benefits, they will join. The more people join more strength. Providing something free does not have value (even if it has tremendous value) Genetically, we will take anything that is free and not give anything back in return. Don't tell me the majority of the subcontinent does not resonate with this attitude.

3. I do NOT support hiring a person for 1, 2 or 3 months for lobbying, lobby what? nothing constructive can happen. Instead HIRE a professional fundraiser to collect more funds to the major cause. Does not matter how we collect the fund or from where - idea is to collect it and use if for the cause mentioned. I am willing to contribute $50 everymonth. I have been doing this and can keep doing this as long as I have my job.

Accountability:
Lots of ideas have been floated for spending the collected money. Based on that and others, I suggest comming up with a list of actions that can be taken for x dollars. for eg.
$10K - will enable faxes and letters to xxx peoples, orgs etc.
$20K - will enable us to do xxx and yyy.
$30K - will support zzz activity.

Viability, feasibility, cost and expected result of each activity should be spec'd and estimated and results posted. If we don't see any expected results - no need to waste time, money and efforts.

This way we are setting expectations, timelines and results.
Definitely everyone has a say on the activities and its timelines but decision should reside with the directors of the ip.org. Also a list 3 or 5 actions can be listed and voted for the majority.

Personally, I strongly feel that we should spend our collected money to collect more money and also allocate a certain monthly budget for the same.

.....R
 
Realize the FACT !

Good to know that everyone got more suggestions to do some thing good for the immigration community.

But at the same time,

***********realize the FACT********************************

Congressmen or Senators may listen your individual cases and may check your case status through different channel but it's not going to help the entire skilled professional category permanent residency ! You could pay 10K or 100K to hire a legal consultant to work on our issues, in fact most of us already paid nearly $3500 to Attorney to process our GC ...You get very little help in terms of reducing backlog. So money is not the main criteria to resolve any issue, but understanding the fact and coming up with the right strategy is more important.

Ok... Here is the fact,

First of all no Senators or Congressmen listen "skilled professional - Permanent Residency" backlog issue, some may listen but they don't react. It's a human tendency that people never listen or act if you're not providing any value to them directly.

You may think that you're working very hard for US companies , struggling for GC and causing more anxiety, which is bad for you and also to your employer.
Your employer have every rights to ask "US Senators / Congressmen " or any other political parties to support their employee since they have paid millions of dollars (as Tax, even election campaign funds). So why don't we come up with a plan to explain all our immigration issues to our employer. Most of our immediate Manager understands our issue, but they can't provide any direct help to resolve.

So we need to escalate our issues at the executive level diplomatically with persuasive words. I strongly feel that this is the place where I would like to put my money to form the right strategy.

You may feel that employer may terminate me if I raise any immigration issues at the executive level, that's the reason we need to come up with a plan to execute it diplomatically.

I know some of us working for a small consulting firm and may not have the option to escalate further. But remember, one way or other you will be supporting a larger US companies.
 
isn.org

What do we know about isn.org, aren't they trying to achive some similar goals?
Does anybody knows how successful they are at doing it? I remember a few years ago they were very active Can we join efforts or at least learn something from them?
This is probably a bit offtopic and pardon me if it has been discussed previously (amazingly couldn't find any related postings in this forum)
 
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