Please work together, TSC I-485 applicants
The following is a letter that will need TSC I-485 applicants send or fax to your senators or congressmen. Let us work together to push TSC to solve I-485 backlog problem and approve our application in a timely manner.
Dear Sir/Madam:
We wish to bring to your notice the stoppage of approvals for 485 applications from the Texas Service Center (TSC). We have observed there have been no 485 approvals from Texas Service center for the past 3 months. Even considering that TPS (Special work permit cases for El Salvador applicants) are being given priority, we have seen quite a few 485 approvals coming from Nebraska, Vermont and California service centers. It has only been the Texas Service Center that has virtually stopped all 485 approvals.
This has caused many problems for not only applicants waiting for their adjustment of status, but also for the TSC in taking additional workloads and delaying an increasing number of cases. Applicants have been forced to extend their EAD (Employment Authorization document, one year duration) and AP (Advanced parole, one year duration) multiple times. In addition, the fingerprinting required of applicants are valid for only fifteen months, so many applicants have had to do fingerprints for the second and third times. (TSC has had to reassign its internal source to review and approve those second or third time applications of EAD, AP, and fingerprint). All of this is going to cause additional cases to become backlogged. If TSC had reviewed and approved I-485s in a timely manner, it would not have become necessary to redo those EAD, AP, and fingerprint jobs again. Now, it appears there are no signs of any approvals at all from TSC. Consequently, it can be expected that more and more applicants will have to do their EADs, APs, and Fingerprints for the second and third time, while others will have to wait longer than usual for their first EADs, APs and fingerprints.
We have sent many letters and faxes to the TSC Director about this problem with no apparent effect. Probably, our requests didn’t reach the person who could escalate the problem to the higher officials. Everyday, many people are calling the INS (after waiting for more than a year) and being told by the Immigration Information Officers that it is the TPS cases that are causing the delay. The Texas Service Center is apparently unaware of this problem.
A possible solution might be to reassign the cases pending for more than the usual time frames to Nebraska, Vermont and California Service centers, thereby reducing some of the backlog at the Texas Service center. This will benefit not only the applicants but the service center itself in getting rid of a lot of backlogs and start adjudicating cases in a speedy manner.
Unless this situation is corrected, many people will continue to suffer. We would greatly appreciate your taking this issue to the TSC Director. If resolved, thousands of people will benefit from your kind intervention. Thank you for your assistance in this matter.
Sincerely,
XXXXXX