Planning to go tommorrow
vidsampath said:
Hi Askgc:
I would be happy to go with you to Mike Honda's office.
Also, we were planning to go to Lafgren's office - do you know if anybody was able to set it up?
Thanks,
V
Hi vidsampath,
I have requested gc369 if he can come as he is from CA 15th district (Mike
Honda's district). I am also from his district. I dont think we need an
appointment to visit and handover the petition. I guess we need appointment
for talking to the Congressman.
I am planning to go tommorrow. We can go together if you want to. Please give me private message about how do you want to meet and go.
Kashmir can you throw some light here about taking appointment ...?
By the way I have gone through his website and changed the letter little bit
from the original.
ImmigrationPortal.Com
5225 N. Wilson Blvd, Arlington VA 22205
Dear Congressman Michael Honda,
First of all we want to thank you for your support to the legal immigrants, who are contributing a lot to the economy of the United States, by co-sponsoring the HRES 384 IH and joining members of Congress to Address Immigration Petition Backlog.
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 dated May 04 2004 which invalidates the PL 106-313 (AC 21 Law) due to concurrent adjudication of I-140 with I-485. 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 then 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 congress 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) correct the 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