I have sent the following email to my senator

Kate31

Registered Users (C)
Hi

I have been in the Grren Card process of Green card for 4 Years now. It started in 2004 when my company started giving
ads in News papers and then LC in 2005. I-140/ 485 filed in June 2007. I -140 approved and still waiting for 485. Frustated by
the long process. Dont know what can be done to improve. Have always been a silent reader of different forums..Finally decided that I will go ahead and reach to the Senators and Representatives and bring the issues with Legal Immigration to their attention and this will continue irresepective of when I get my green card and even if i get my Green card. I will also write emails to other states officials as well...I would also urge the people reading this post to do the same..lets not other decide our fate..lets do something about it...If nothing happens..fine... atleast we tried somethign..Here is the email that I just sent to Virginia Officials (Jim Webb, John Warner).

Dear Sir

I want to bring to your attention the issue of Legal Immigration.This is about the people who came to USA legaly to work
& now they want to be part of American Dream as they love the way of life in USA.There is a lot of talk about illegal
immigration but very little is said about the issues with Legal immigration.

Currently the process of Legal Immigration is painfully Long & time taking. The wait time to get a green card
is somewhere between 4--10 years.Legal immigrants have to wait years for the green card process to complete. Not to mention the costs which are somewhere between 10,000 to 15000 US dollars including attorney costs.

So where is the problem & what can be done to fix it:

1. The number of Employment based Immigration Visas available per year are not enough to grant green cards compared to
the number of people applying for Permanent Residency. Increasing the number of Immigrant Visas per year could
help streamline the process.

2. The processing of Green Card by USCIS is higly inefficent. Many people are stuck in the process due to long processing &
administrative delays. This is a typical bureaucratic behavior & There is no way around it. I think that generally we can
understand the policy on immigration allowing certain number of people to get their permanent residency (Green Cards) every
year.However what is frustating is the long delays caused due to the bureaucratic and inefficeinct processing of green card by
USCIS. As a result the Legal immigrants are going through the pain very few are aware of.Apart from the costs associated
with the Green Card filing, in most cases Legal immigrants cannot travel, change jobs & sometimes are even abused by the
employers in terms of consistently low salary and benefits compared to the existing Market rates. I beleive that once
a certain number of applications are received by USCIS; either applications for Green card should not be accepted by USCIS
based on the prevailing immigration policy or else if USCIS has decided to accept the green card applications then it should
process these applications in a reasonalbe timeframe which could be 2-3 years.

3. So what are the indicators that USCIS is not working efficently. A huge number of Employement based Immigrant visas
could not be granted in last 10 years and went wasted as USCIS could not process them. The result is a big line of legal
immigrants waiting in queue to get their Permanent residency. If the current trend continues, it will probably take another
5-10 years for the legal immigrants to get Permanent Residency.This is on the top of 4-5 years that we have already been
waiting. If these unused visas could be recaptured, this could definitely help.Recently Following bill (HR5882) was introduced:
On 4/23/08, a bill was introduced by Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) that would recapture
employment-based immigrant visas lost to bureaucratic delays and to prevent losses of family and employment
based immigrant visas in the future.Plz support this bill & suggest other creative ways to find a solution to this.

4. One of the major reasons of delay for granting green cards has been security checks. Although we do understand the
importance of security post 9//11 but at the same time, the security checks which include name checks normally takes years.
The question is if there is a possibilty that an immigrant might be a security risk, shoudlnt such a person be pointed out
as early as possible instead of waiting years to find out. So not only is this putting the security of USA at risk but also
is frustating for people stuck in name and security checks for years with the average waiting time of 5 years.Plz note that
security checks includes name checks and some other internal checks.

In the end I would thank you for your time.Kindly let me know your thoughts on this matter.

Regards
ABC
Cell no:
 
I sent the same email to a couple of senators in new jersey and here is reply of one of them:

Thank you for contacting me. Due to the volume of e-mails, I can only respond to constituents with New Jersey mailing addresses. If you need further assistance, please contact the Senator from your home state.

Thank you
 
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