I agree that getting more people involved to send a letter is better than doing it separately. However I don’t think that individual will be totally useless, at least it better than nothing before sending a letter with multi-signature.
Actually today I send a letter to Secretary of DOL, Elaine L. Chao. Since her e-mail address is not available, I have to send it by mail.
If you go to
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/ , you may find e-mail address of President, Vice-president and … . The e-mail address of President is
president@whitehouse.gov
I believe if we, in the same boat of DOL Backlog Elimination Center, should stand up and help ourselves.
Following is what I send:
03/18/2005
The Honorable Elaine L. Chao
Secretary of U.S. Department of Labor
200 Constitution Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20210
Dear Secretary Chao,
First at all, thank you very much to read this letter. I take this
opportunity to congratulate you on your 2nd term as Secretary of US
Department of Labor.
I am writing to you because I am looking for your help to pay attention to
my situation. That is my Alien Employment Certification which is pending to
the DOL (San Francisco DOL regional office) more than 2 years.
The current progress in San Francisco DOL regional office is very very slow; they started process the application received by March 2003 since last December, now they are
still stay in March 2003. There are a lot of cases was backlogged.
According to this pace, some of applicant may retire before their case is
processed.
Actually there are thousands of applicants like me are undergoing the same
pain, the pain of waiting continue day and day, week and week, month and
month, year and year, some of us have been waiting 4-5 years. I am one of
them. No one tell us how long we have to wait.
Recently I got to know the DOL started 2 Backlog Elimination Center to
handle all the backlogged case. I saw a ray of light at that time.
However 6 months passed, it made me disappointed again. I can’t believe it.
Backlog Elimination Center didn’t speed up the processing at all and create
more backlogs. How many cases they processed so far: Zero. To my
understanding, two more unnecessary procedures were created and cause new
delay. (Blue words are my comments)
(1) Take several months to transfer or input case data manually from
regional office (It is said what Backlog Elimination Center are doing now.
Does it mean the cases are not input in the DOL computer system at all when
the cases stay in the regional office, or nothing happened to those case
during several years, what are they doing?)
(2) Take another several months to send and receive so-called 45-day letter
to verify whether the applicant want to continue their application or not
(It is said that only no more than 0.75% case was withdrawn so far,
therefore this procedure may be eliminated, on the other hand, if the case
was handled timely, this procedure is absolutely not necessary at all)
The most important is when Backlog Elimination Center start to process case?
Backlog is still backlog if no any processing at all.
Furthermore, I have another big concern. It is said that DOL will start a
new program, PREM (Permanent Labor certification Program), to process Alien
Employment Certification and it will make a decision in 60 days once the
application is received. If it were true, that would be a supreme irony for
us, already waiting Alien Employment Certification for several years. Should
we give up current application and turn to PREM? Suppose the average waiting
time is 3 years for each applicant, 300,000 applicants mean we waste 900,000
years. I don¡¯t think it is a fair. Some of us in the same boat will appeal
to Senate, House and President for this issue, 60 days vs several years.
What I request here are
(1) Please turn your administration's attention to implementing to make a
clear definition about current application and PREM, we should have the same
treatment as PREM. Finish current federal labor cases before moving to PERM
or move the backlogged cases to PREM
(2) Please turn your administration's attention to implementing Backlog
Elimination start process case immediately
(3) Please turn your administration's attention to implementing Backlog
Elimination to make a clear process timetable and set up a track system to
let every applicant know the case status
I believe this request is not only for myself also for thousands of
applicants.
Thank you again for your time and patience.