Help Us Decide : What to do with the Fund Collected

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ar13 said:
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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We have discussed about joining hands with isn.org , but then decided to be independent because (1) The co-ordination with them might be difficult and might slow down the decision making process (2) Currently isn.org is not active at all and they are not doing any thing.
 
The board of directors of ip.org will have a discussion on this week-end to finalize the action plan (how to utilize the fund) and we will post the details immediately.
 
dsatish said:
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.
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dsatish,

You said you need 10 K per month to hire a lobbying professional. You already have more than 20 K (2 months of money). Why can't you hire the firm now, keep collecting the money for next 2 months, by which time you would have the remaining money also. (If not we can always lay him off, or put him on bench ;) !!!) I don't understand why you need all the sum right at the start ? Can't you proceed with what you have now, and keep collecting for future ?

sertra2002
P.S. BTW don't you think 10 k per month looks like a lot of money to pay to someone for a months work ??
 
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sertra2002 said:
dsatish,

You said you need 10 K per month to hire a lobbying professional. You already have more than 20 K (2 months of money). Why can't you hire the firm now, keep collecting the money for next 2 months, by which time you would have the remaining money also. (If not we can always lay him off, or put him on bench ;) !!!) I don't understand why you need all the sum right at the start ? Can't you proceed with what you have now, and keep collecting for future ?

sertra2002
P.S. BTW don't you think 10 k per month looks like a lot of money to pay to someone for a months work ??
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Thanks for your suggestion. We both are on the same plane on this issue, but i guess that we are not sure about what the majprity opinion is. The core team could not conclude it's decision because of diverging opinion and that's why we brought the discussion to the people. Here also we have found diverging opinions. So we are not yet close to conclusion. If only more donors give their feed back, we will know which way to go.

PS: The $10,000 per month figure includes expense reimbursements to our lobbyist for his travels to meet congress men.
 
dsatish,

I guess, this post is asking people for their opinions on a subjective basis. If you make it objective and give a set of choices to select from we may find a majority view emerging. (I know your first post did that, but then it got side tracked with lots of other discussions, leading to the conclusion that none of the options were liked too much).

My suggestion would be to put this idea to the vote, whether we can go ahead with the fund in hand, pay with what we have now and continue the fund collection for future needs. Seeing something put to action will garner much more support and you will see a spurt in donations, beleive me.

May be we can have a poll on this option ? Simply YES, NO and NOT SURE would be good polling options to the above idea?

sertra2002
 
Action Plan decided

Yester day, the board members of ip.org had a pretty good discussion about how we should spend the money collected so far. Fortunately, this time every one was on the same wave length and we all agreed on our final decision which is to spend the money for the purpose for which we have collected it, namely, to hire a person or lobbying firm to work for our cause. This way we would have kept our word. It is very important for us to do what we promise.

The discussion then weered around how to get a person or lobbying firm to work for our cause. The problem with hiring a lobbying firm, if at all we can find one that works for 20K, is that they might work only for 2 months for this amount and we may not be able to achieve any thing in 2 months if we have to successfully get a bill introduced and passed in US congress to address our issues. The alternative solution is to hire some individual to work for us either full time for 2 months or part time (4 hrs / day) for 4 months. It is decided to talk to Rajiv if he knows some one who can be put on this job. We will pay to that person for the time he spends on ip.org. I will be talking to Rajiv about it. But our first preference is to hire a lobbying firm, if we can find one, that is capable of influencing congress to introduce and pass a bill incorporating our key demands.

So here is our action plan for the next week or two :
1) All the board members will do some research on internet about lobbying firms in DC area and talk to those firms and get an idea of how much they are expecting to make the congress pass a bill with our demands. So i request all of you to do some research on internet on lobbying firms and talk to them if possible and post the results here.
2) All the members(or some) will do research on current bills which are under review in congress and which have highest support. We should do research to find out if the congress men supporting these bills, will include our demands in those bills. Kashmir, edison etc are pretty good in this type of research. But let as many people as possible work on this research.

So that's our action plan, agreed unanimously.
 
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progress report

So far we have got $23,000. Right now the I485 processing has picked up momentum and that's why we have decided not to spend all the money for hiring a full time employee for just 2 months (that's all we can afford to, with this money). We have decided to request Rajiv Khanna to put one of his office staff to work part time for immigrationportal.org and we will have pay him for the amount of time he spends on our acivities. In a way, we will be putting some one on a part time work basis for a long term tenure. That person will communicate with congress men, ombudsman , CIS officials etc. We are hoping that we can get a person to start working for us in the first week of August. I will post the details when we are ready to go.
 
Finally we have put a person on the job

Hi All,
Finally , as decided earlier, we have put a person to work on a part time basis (like a consultant to us) for immigrationportal.org. Her name is "Savita Krishnamurthy". She will be creating a user-id (mostly today) and joining this thread. She will also work with congress men to work for immigration reforms (changing certain immigration laws). Since we will not need much of her time, we will be able to keep her on the job for a longer period (may be one year). So we are in for a longer innings here. Let's hope thatwe will be able to bring in some immigration reforms in the next year. Please wait till you hear something from Savita, and once she introduces herself here, then all of you welcome her to our immigrationportal.org.

Her main tasks :
----------------
1) Help escalating long pending individual cases.
2) Work with congress men to introduce immigration reforms related to employment based category immigrants
3) Sending Letters to congress men with issues concerning I140 and I485 delays.
 
Introducing Savita Krishnamurthy

Please be advised, I am Savita Krishnamurthy and have recently joined Immigrationportal.org. I have a law degree. I will be happy to answer any questions on this forum and assist you with any concerns.
 
Attn MS Savita Krishnamurthy

Welcome aboard. Can you please provide status/updates on work you have done so far?

Thanks for your time.
 
kailashr said:
Welcome aboard. Can you please provide status/updates on work you have done so far?

Thanks for your time.
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Kailash,
As i have said, if you have a long delayed case, then you can send an Email to Savita or call her (703-908-4800 X107) and talk to her about how she can help you on your case. It is inappropriate for every one to start asking her about progress report. She works for us (ip.org) only on part time basis (just about an hour a day) and we pay only nominal fees for that. If you are more interested in knowing more about ip.org, then the best thing would be to join our team and participate in our Emails and conference calls. Let me know if you are interested in being a volunteer.
 
dSatish,
In that case, would it be too much to ask to create a new thread where in every month (if not more frequent) Savita can post a monthly update on work done regarding

2) Work with congress men to introduce immigration reforms related to employment based category immigrants
3) Sending Letters to congress men with issues concerning I140 and I485 delays.

for the benefit of all the ImmigrationPortal donors ?

Thanks for your time and efforts,

K-

dsatish said:
Kailash,
As i have said, if you have a long delayed case, then you can send an Email to Savita or call her (703-908-4800 X107) and talk to her about how she can help you on your case. It is inappropriate for every one to start asking her about progress report. She works for us (ip.org) only on part time basis (just about an hour a day) and we pay only nominal fees for that. If you are more interested in knowing more about ip.org, then the best thing would be to join our team and participate in our Emails and conference calls. Let me know if you are interested in being a volunteer.
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kailashr said:
dSatish,
In that case, would it be too much to ask to create a new thread where in every month (if not more frequent) Savita can post a monthly update on work done regarding

2) Work with congress men to introduce immigration reforms related to employment based category immigrants
3) Sending Letters to congress men with issues concerning I140 and I485 delays.

for the benefit of all the ImmigrationPortal donors ?

Thanks for your time and efforts,

K-
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Kailash,
Savita can keep us updated about her activities in this thread. There is no need for another threead when we have this thread exclusively for ip.org activities.
 
dsatish, i'd like to tank you for the time you put in this project. It's admirable.

However, I do think one hour per day will not have much impact. I myself spent more than one hour per day to contact AILA, CSC, Senators, Congresswomen in the past month or two. And you bet I haven't seen much progress yet.

What I would propose is to have Savita work at least three hours a day, very focused tasks to work on, follow up with all the politicians. Contact Medias, etc. Those take a lot of time, believe me. I was trying to work on the Medias in Bay Area but haven't gotten time to do it.

Meanwhile, we should continue to raise funds for her work! Also if Savita can post her progress at least once a week, more and more people will contribute! I myself will continue to put in time and money to support what I believe to be a better immigrant environment in the US.
 
Also for this topic, why did you put it under Vermont? More people will be aware of it, very likely to denonate if you chose the right forum and communicate with as many members as possible consistantly.

Now Savita will really make a difference if she can show good progress to the forum. I do not think getting enough money is a big issue. The issue is how to really make an impact using Savita as a resource. Money will follow.
 
whorl1quote said:
dsatish, i'd like to tank you for the time you put in this project. It's admirable.

However, I do think one hour per day will not have much impact. I myself spent more than one hour per day to contact AILA, CSC, Senators, Congresswomen in the past month or two. And you bet I haven't seen much progress yet.

What I would propose is to have Savita work at least three hours a day, very focused tasks to work on, follow up with all the politicians. Contact Medias, etc. Those take a lot of time, believe me. I was trying to work on the Medias in Bay Area but haven't gotten time to do it.

Meanwhile, we should continue to raise funds for her work! Also if Savita can post her progress at least once a week, more and more people will contribute! I myself will continue to put in time and money to support what I believe to be a better immigrant environment in the US.
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I agree with you that this 1hr/day formula is not a good one. It's not working.
we need to take a complete relook at our options and strategies. About 3 months back i have advocated returning the fund to the donors (keeping a marginal amount for running expenses). But that time people were not really interested in returning the money to the donors. But one important thing change has happened in the last 3 months and that is improvement in processing speed at all service centeres. With the current rate of progress, people are not really desperate or willing to fight against INS.
In a nut shell, i am waiting for the class action certification result. If it is certified, then we better return the money to the donors because INS may not fall back to old methods (delays). But if the class action is not certified, then there is a probability that the processng speed may slow down and we may need the fund to apply pressure through a hired person.

PS: I think that you are a good fit to join our volunteer team. If you want to join us, please send me your Email address through a private message so that i can add you to our yahoo group. If any one else is interested i taking active part in backlog reduction activities, they are welcome to join us by sending your Email address to me.
 
dSatish
I think communication/updates from Savita needs to be in a dedicated thread and not under "485 issues in Vermont Service Center". We are
looking forward to the first update. This will show donors that their donation is neing put at good work.

Thanks for ur time and efforts
K-


dsatish said:
Kailash,
Savita can keep us updated about her activities in this thread. There is no need for another threead when we have this thread exclusively for ip.org activities.
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dsatish, we shouldn't return the money to the donors as many of the previous posts suggested. It shows lack of organization and goals of the campaign. Also Savita's work should be consistant/focused and in a long-term and it should not depend on the 485 lawsuit. Fighting for a better immigrant environment takes not only one lawsuit. We cannot afford to fall back into the previous horrible delays and start another new campaign to address it. We should have a dedicated person, Savita, continue to communicate to the press (so many press in the US), to the senators (so many of them too) and to AILA. Even though uscis has showed a little improvement, it's still far away from our goal. Why not keep the campaign a continuous effort by having Savita continue to advocate what our immigration community wants and needs to all possible sources, meanwhile we should continue to raise the money. As I said, as long as Savita showed good and consistant work, I do not think we cannot raise enough money to sustain her.

again, this campaign should not depend on the law suit's intermidiate results. Also Savita's consistant update/progress will make fun raising a much easier task.

I have been on the core team's yahoo group. However, I did not always join the conferences because I am mainly pushing for AC21 and I140 cases. However, I donated to this campaign because I do support what you are doing. I hope it's a continuous and longer-term work from Savita. That's the only way to make our voice out.
 
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