Re: simple
Originally posted by tombaan
You joined the forum in july 2003 and have logged in more than a 1000 messages. You are taking all this intiatives and pain and wanted to know more about ur part of the story..
I've been silent visitor to Immigrationportal.com for long time eventhough I registered only few months back. Also Immigration.com is my first reference point for any legal issues since 1996 or 1997.
I don't have any touching GC story. My GC story is nothing compared to stories in our petition(Kid's education, Service error,...) and many unheard stories.
I came to US in early 1996 but never bothered to apply for GC till October 2000 since there was long wait for GC due to per country limit. After AC21 bill was signed by President in October 2000, per country limit became meaningless and also we can get 7th year H1B. So my GC labor was filed just 10 days before the end of 5 years on H1B. At that time it was taking just 1 or 2 months for labor certification at NJ and another 1 month for federal labor. Labor department sent RFE but my company never received that. That mail was lost during that Anthrax scare days at NJ postoffices. Since labor department never heard anything for the RFE, they returned my LC application to my company and my company refiled the application with explanation just few days before the expiry of 6 years on H1B, also MI state labor was also filed based on my request to my company and also my company filed 7th year H1B hoping that I'll get old priority date and also AC21 was modified just in time for me to include 7th year H1B for labor pending applications since they allowed 7th year H1B only for I140/I485 pending cases at that time. I was lucky to get the same old priority date which was very crucial for me since I've to get my 7th year H1B based on that. Also if they would have assigned new priority date it would have been after April 2001 when lot of amnesty cases was filed, so I would have been still waiting for LC approval. My file was reopened with old priority date and both State and and Federal labor was approved after few months. The day my company informed about my GC labor approval, INS announced about the Concurrent filing of I-140 and I-485. So I filed I-140 and I-485 concurrently at VSC, eventhough I live in NSC area since my company's headquarters is in VSC area I filed at VSC. I got RFE for I-140, this time my company got the RFE in mail and we replied immediately. But I didn't get my EAD or AP. I was in need of EAD since my 7th year H1 was about to expire and my company don't want to spend about $1500 for another 1 year H1B extension. So I tried to get interim EAD at local office, the officer told me that usuallly they issue interim EAD after 90 days of waiting but he also added that he can't issue EAD to me since the service center put a hold on EAD and AP and he don't know the reason behind that hold on EAD and AP. But I understood that it was due to RFE for I-140. I convinced that officer that the hold was due to I-140 RFE and also showed the print out of I-140 case status that BCIS received my reply for RFE just a day before. He was convinced and decided to give interim EAD for me but since he questioned about hold to his manager, he told that his manager will not let him issue that so he asked me to stay away the eyes of his manager and asked me to sit along with the other people waiting there. As he said his manager came to him with in few minutes and discussed something but atlast that officer asked me go for photo session and issued EAD. Also the same day my company filed 8th year H1B. With in a week after that my I-140 was approved and then within couple of days EAD and AP was approved. For then on I'm just waiting .............
Tomorrow I'm applying for EAD and AP renewal.
VSC service center is better than other service center. Eventhough my I-485 approval is not around the corner, it's just a matter of time (few more months of wait time for me). Actually this petition should have started from TSC forum. But long wait stories at TSC really affected me a lot.
I understand it's not impressive story, it's just like any other GC applicants' story. It was a mix of bad and good luck at every stage of GC, but I was not happy with the bureaucracy at INS/BCIS/USCIS. Also seeing lot of sad stories in this forum I felt that if we don't voice our concern they will ignore us and I decided to fight against this bureaucracy. So I initiated this petition process.
Also I feel that we should be compensated for our I-485 wait time. That's the one of the reason we are requesting Congress to reduce the wait time for us to become US citizens.
Let us all voice our concerns till they listen to our issues.
