I think the best person to contact about exemption will be
melanie.nezer@hias.org she is a wonderful person. She always emails back and she has the most updated list. You can also ask her specific group too.
I had posted this email in the past I am not sure if you had chance to look at it but, it looks like OLF and MQM where submitted to DHS at the same time January 2012
You should hear something very soon. Please make sure to email Melanie.
We met with USCIS earlier this month and there have been some modest positive developments. That said, DHS continues to be moving extremely slowly, despite the fact that the U.S. government pledged to UNHCR that they would clear all cases and revisit some of their current legal interpretations (for example, what constitutes “material” support) by the end of 2012. Please note that these are not official notes from the meeting, just what I understood and wrote down during the meeting, the acronyms for groups may not all be correct:
The Secretary of Homeland Security signed an exemption for the KLA on June 5, 2012. Currently 59 KLA cases are on hold.
The government’s interagency working group has recommended exemptions for the following groups (this means that these groups now need to be cleared through the DHS Secretary’s office, there is no indication how long this will take, but USCIS did say they expected some of these to be signed by September):
· Pending at DHS since 2011
FMLN/Arena
DEMLEK
ELF
EPRP
TPLF
NDA (includes Umma Party between 1995-1997)
· Submitted to DHS between January-March 2012
o OLF
o Iraqi Uprising
o MQM
The interagency working group is considering making recommendations for exemptions for:
Burmese groups: The Awami League, BMP, others
Ethiopian & Eritrean groups: EPLF, COEDF, EDU, EPDM/Amhara National Democratic Movement, EPRDF, ESDL, WSLF, GPLM, KPF, OALF, SLF, UDPLF, possibly others
Bangladeshi groups
SPLA/M
· The following groups are no longer considered Tier III:
· Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dash-Nak) after 1986
· The April 19th Movement (Colombian) – after February 1990
· MLC ( Congo ) after March 2007
· PCN (a defunct political party from El Salvador ) between 1967 and 1979
· National Movement of Iranian Resistance after September 1984
· Forum for Restoration of Democracy in Kenya
· UDPCI ( Cote d’Ivore)
· Los Pepes (Pablo Escobar) - Tier III Group only from January to November 1993, not a Tier III group any other time
· The interagency group is considering a timeline/tiered exemption for the AFRC ( Sierra Leone ), Fatah, Tahreek e Jarfaria ( Pakistan ), Al Jabah Al Watanya, Gin Bot 7, Akramiya.
DHS is setting up a website where information about 212a2b cases will be available in one place. They plan to have this live by June, 2012. In the meantime, inquires about cases can be sent to
trigquery@uscis.dhs.gov.
· No cases have been denied pursuant to the November 20th Revised Guidance on Hold Policy
There was a good article on the TRIG issue in April:
http://www.citypages.com/2012-04-25/news/the-terrorists-next-door/
I will try to respond to your emails as quickly as I can, but please be patient. Our next meeting with DHS is on September 13. Again, I am sorry you are all going through this, I hope you will all have green cards and be reunited with family very soon.
Best wishes,
Melanie
Melanie Nezer
Senior Director, US Policy and Advocacy
HIAS
1775 K St. NW #320
Washington, DC 20006
direct 202-212-6025
fax 202-212-6001
http://www.hias.org/