Answer
The answer is typical. Nevertheless an edited version is posted.
June 13, 2004
xxxxxxx
RE: xxxxxxx
Thank you for your inquiry.
Based upon the information you provided, a formal inquiry has been
initiated with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). USCIS
should simultaneously issue a response to you and this office within
forty five (45) days. If a response is not received within the given
timeframe, this office will follow-up with USCIS to determine the reason
for delay.
Please be advised that the U.S Postal Service (USPS) does not forward
USCIS mail, even if you have provided USPS notification of your address
change. Therefore, in order to receive any related correspondence, it
is critical that you provide USCIS your current mailing address. You
can verify and/or update your mailing address by calling the USCIS
National Customer Service Center at (800) 375-5283.
I recognize the frustration you and others experience with existing
immigration processes. Under the Homeland Security Act, the Office of
the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman (CIS Ombudsman)
was instituted specifically to assist USCIS customers in resolving
issues, to identify problem areas in the immigration process, and to
propose changes to USCIS administrative practices. Within the past
months, the CIS Ombudsman has made substantial strides to that end, and
most recently was sufficiently staffed to respond to public inquiries,
such as yours.
In an effort to prevent continual recurrence of your reported issue in
the immigration process, please be assured that your concerns have been
noted and will be incorporated as appropriate into recommendations aimed
at enhancing USCIS administrative practices.
Again, thank you for the opportunity to be of assistance.
Sincerely,
Prakash Khatri,
Ombudsman
PIK/jrm
Office of the Citizenship and
Immigration Services Ombudsman
Department of Homeland Security
cisombudsman@dhs.gov
-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, June 08, 2004 12:03 PM
To: ciso
Cc: xxxxxxx, Khatri, Prakash
Subject: xxxx
Dear Prakash Khatri,
I am writing to you as USCIS Ombudsman to begin a dialogue with you and
express my opinion towards the backlog of immigration benefits and the
current state of affairs. Your honorable office was created by the
Department of Homeland Security Act and a year later, despite the
availability of funds the immigration services and backlogs got indeed
worse since then. The Century Foundation, the AILA, distinguished
immigration lawyers, independent think tanks, immigration advocacy
groups, business groups and the GAO, have documented all these in
several reports. It is also questionable whether the recent fee increase
will really substantially help alleviate the situation. Recent policy
memos only add to the confusion, already present in the adjudication
process. Shortage of personnel, lack of a coherent policy and the
security checks point to one thing: There is no light at the end of the
tunnel. Predictions for the future, whether it is 2006 or some years
later provide no current relief for a lot of aspiring immigrants,
including myself, who played by the rules and have been waiting for
their cases to be adjudicated.
Furthermore, the adjudication process does not seem to be fair as seen
from the current processing times. The dates that the USCIS posts for
the I-485 application have an eighteen-month span and this is just an
example. These dates are only useful and reliable to USCIS, in the sense
that they preclude any inquiries from people who have been living in the
dark for years. Congressional help often proves to be useless also,
suggesting that they are unable or not willing for any real bi-partisan
immigration reform and realistic plans for any backlog reduction. My
personal situation will exemplify some of these problems.
I filed my I-485 application along with my wife's in the second week of
August 2002. I completed my fingerprints in the last week of October
2002. Since then I have applied for three Employment Authorization and
Advanced Parole documents. The last ones are still pending. From October
2002, I have heard nothing about my "green-card" application. It has
been a rocky road in both my personal and professional lives. I worked
on an H1-B visa for seven years (AC-21 seven year extension) and have
been working on yearly EAD since then. I am a US educated person with
undergraduate and graduate degrees from xxxxxx University, where I also
taught classes as a teaching assistant and did research as a research
assistant.
Personal description……………………………………….edited.
