I-140 Backlog Campains

candie

Registered Users (C)
Let's try our best to push I-140 backlog campain, starting from contact via Fax, Letter, Townhall meeting or physically visit their local office to the congressman and senators.
 
draft petition letter, from other thread

Dear Congress man/Woman....,

We are writing to you regarding the unreasonable delays in adjudication of the Employment-Based I-140 cases at the California Service Center (CSC) of the USCIS. According to CSC’s progress report, 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. 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-140 and I-485 filed non-concurrently. 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. Since security check can take anywhere from a few month to a few years, I-140 can wait for I-485's adjust-ready for a few years. If for some reason, the candidate loses the job during this period, which in the current economic situation is quite likely, his/her green card processing stops, leaving no option to fallback on AC-21 provisions. 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 use AC 21 i.e. change jobs after 180 days has passed by after filing I-140 and I-1485 concurrently, irrespective of I-140 status.

We, as immigration portal community request you to please expedite I-140 processing so that it will give required relief to I-140 filers as well as I-140 and I-485 concurrent filers. It will provide a required relief to a lot of people who have been waiting so long for their approval. Even though the USCIS is a government agency, it should never be above the law. Thus, we urge you to enforce legislations passed by members of the Congress and hold the USCIS to higher standards of service. <As a member of the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims, we believe you will take appropriate actions.... may not true for other congressmen>.

In summary, we would like to request your help to 1) contact the CSC of the USCIS and express frustrations with the I-140 processing delays; 2) USCIS interpretation of AC 21; and 3) request Mr. Don Neufeld to move some reasonable number of adjudicators from other operational units to the I-140 unit.

Sincerely,

Name
I-140: Case Number

<E-Mail Id>
 
Sent E-mail to respresentatives.

I have sent the following message to

1.) Zoe Lofgren
2.) Senator Feinstein
3.) Senator Boxer

Please send and post a message here about the same.

=========================================================
ImmigrationPortal.Com
5225 N. Wilson Blvd, Arlington VA 22205

Dear <Representative name>

We are writing to you regarding the unreasonable delays in adjudication of the Employment-Based I-140 cases at the California Service Center (CSC) of the USCIS. According to CSC’s progress report, 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. 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-140 and I-485 filed non-concurrently. 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. If for some reason, the candidate loses the job during this period, which in the current economic situation is quite likely, his/her green card processing stops, leaving no option to fallback on AC-21 provisions. 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 use AC 21 i.e. change jobs after 180 days has passed by after filing I-140 and I-1485 concurrently, irrespective of I-140 status.

We, as immigration portal community request you to please expedite I-140 processing so that it will give required relief to I-140 filers as well as I-140 and I-485 concurrent filers. It will provide a required relief to a lot of people who have been waiting so long for their approval. Even though the USCIS is a government agency, it should never be above the law. Thus, we urge you to enforce legislations passed by members of the Congress and hold the USCIS to higher standards of service. As a member of the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims, we believe you will take appropriate actions.

In summary, we would like to request your help to 1) contact the CSC and express frustrations with the I-140 processing delays; 2) USCIS interpretation of AC 21; and 3) request Mr. Don Neufeld 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

==========================================================
 
askgc: Expect an automated response from Senator Feinsteins office. I sent her an email once too, and they picked up on some keywords contained in my message, and sent me a form response that was completely unrelated.

At least other senators I have contacted have sent me a real individualised reply in the mail.

Doug.
 
I got specific reply before

dgarstang said:
askgc: Expect an automated response from Senator Feinsteins office. I sent her an email once too, and they picked up on some keywords contained in my message, and sent me a form response that was completely unrelated.

At least other senators I have contacted have sent me a real individualised reply in the mail.

Doug.

I have got a real specific mail earlier from Senator Feinstein in the past
and I have posted the same in 485 group, well what you siad may also be
true but the point is I want to do just what I want to, no matter whether
it goes to the bin.

Let me know details about other senators you believe will respond with
specific message, we will try to send to them to. ideally we should send to all
senators / congress person on immigration sub comitee.

Also as far as I know Zoe, Feinstein are on immigration sub commitee and
can influence quite a bit. If any of these people help a bit in the sense
that check with USCIS we have acheived what we want. For instance
Anna Eshoo has checked with USCIS and other congress persons followed
with the same for 485. Now we see how 485 is going.

Also this is just the start I beleive if guys here help ourself then we can
expand this campagin to others in USCIS (like Ombudsman, Director etc).
 
(Originally posted at honeybee's I-140 Backlog Petition thread)


kashmir said:
(Originally posted at Project Ocean main thrad)
About a dozen of people attended Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren's town hall meeting in Sa Jose yesterday on 8/8/2004.
The half were members of (formerly) I-485 CSC forum to pursue the above 2nd agenda.
Another half were members of I-140 CSC forum for I-140 backlog petition that askgc's leading.
After I talked to Congresswoman Loe Zofgren, we handed hundreds of pages of documents and our petition letters to Ms. Sandra, the Chief of Staffs.
We will follow it for the detail dicussion later.
I recoomend everyone to join candie's I-140 Backlog Campaign
to send your petition letter to your representative (House), two Senators, and Zoe Lofgren,
also to visit your representative's district office to appeal directly to Congressperson's staff handling Immigration issue.


Please post your message here at this thread to encourage others once you send your letter to those Congressional members.
 
askGc,

Could you please post the email address of the representatives to whom you have sent email. It will save us all time for searching their email addresses on internet.

Thanks,
-Honeybee
 
Emailed the petition to Representative Eshoo and Senator Feinstein.
Hope we all together can make some progress on I140 processing timings.
 
Follow up to campaign effort, if you can.

As kashmir pointed out, we should have at least couple of people in each congress district to talk with the congressman office, and visit their district office. That will be very useful. Sometime just send an email and/or fax without fax just turn out to be a little bit better than nonthing. The follow up is more important, which will show the congressman how series you view the problem. They receive tons of email and fax every day, but they do not receive so many phone calls or visit.
 
One more note about I-140 petition / backlog campaign

Since we are all working together and try our best to solve the following problem:

(1) extra delay of I-140
(2) binding of I-140 processing to I-485 and security clearance, which will virtualy nullify AC21
(3) Interpretation of AC21 by USCIS, which requires I-140 approval in addition to AC21 law itself.

Since we are try our best effort to solve the problem now. If the problem persistant or get worse, we may need to get a class action for I-140 to ask the help from the court. In case we have a class action for I-140, we need to:

(1) show that we have try everything else to resolve the problem, therefore, it will be wise to have some record (probably not everyone) that show our effort, such as our petition, fax copy to USCIS director and congressman etc).
(2) show that we really form a class, i.e., we have the same interest and feel the same pain.

It is probably too early to say we need a class action (that will take long time too). However, our current effort will not be wasted.
 
Fax/E-Mail (Target 20 by 8/13/2004)
  1. askgc - ZL(CA16) DF(CA) BB(CA)
  2. bluegcsep - AE(CA14) DF(CA)
District Office Visit (Target 5 by 8/13/2004)
  1. ...
 
All,

I have filled up form on Senator Dianne Feinstein website. Also send email to Senator Barbara Boxer and Adam Schiff.

Thanks,
-Honeybee
 
This is happening at all service centers not just CSC. The pattern is a mystery. They are approving some concurrent and semi-concurrent applications, while many of them are pending. How do they define concurrent applications, that is the big question?
 
Guys,
I would like to join the campain as well, can you please direct me what exactly I need to do.? I missed the forum for the past couple of days else I would have participated in the town hall meeting in San Jose.

-Raj

- LC for GC approved.
- Filed 140/485/EAD on Oct 7 2004.
- RFE(intent to deny) received in Jan 2004(reason: Company financial situation)
- Finger printing for 485 completed on March 27th 2004.
- Accepted response for RFE by INS on April 22 2004 but looks like they have not touched it yet.My company did a very good job in submitting all the docs necessary to satisfy INS.
- Current status 140/EAD on HOLD.
- Sent inquiry through liasion to lift the HOLD on 140/EAD on June 24th 2004 by my lawyer(no response yet.)
- H1-B duration May 1 1999 to May 1 2005.
- Waiting for 140 approval.
 
Good work guys - I have also sent emails

I have also sent emails to

1. Senator Diane Feinstein
2. Senator Barbara Boxter
3. Representative Fortney Stark
4. Representative Zoe Lofgren
 
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