ab kya karun
Registered Users (C)
As many of you are aware there is proposal for a very significant increase in fees for various immigration related services and applications. This provides an opportunity to try to improve the overall situation. We need to do the best we can. I would urge you to post your comments at the congressional site for comments, so they can be heard and hopefully incorporated in any final plan. The following were my thoughts which I posted. You may use them or modify them or put your own comments, but I urge you to have your voices heard.
The fee hike is out of proportion to the benefit that is claimed by Director Gonzalez. An increase of 80% does not justify an improvement in performance by only 20%. The fee hike also represents a significant burden, as it would mean that each applicant awaiting their I-485 approval in general will need to pay $340 + $305 = $645 for EAD renewal and Advance Parole per year. A lot of people have been waiting over 6-7 years for their 485 approval. This means that for no fault of theirs, they will have to pay every yearover $1000 per family (assuming 2 people per family).
This increase should only be allowed with following pre-conditions:
1. People will not have to pay for any extensions or renewals of the EAD cards or Advance Parole. The fee's should be only one time for initial application. This is only fair, as the people having to extend/renew these are not at fault and are actually suffering.
2. USCIS should have set time for processing all applications, and this cannot be changed based on workload or other excuses.
3. Anytime any of the applications are not approved in the above time, USCIS will have to refund the money for application and provide service free of charge. If USCIS does not process the application, in twice the set time frame, then it should have to pay a fine as well as answer to a monitoring authority.
4. Some people are stuck in Namecheck process for over 4 years. This is a totally opaque process, with no accountability. A portioon of the revenue from the fee hikes should be used to improve services of FBI specifically for immigration related namecheck, and this process should be made transparent. No application, should take longer than 1 month for clearance. Again accountability and fines for poor performance need to be put in place to ensure compliance. Applicants should be able to inquire regarding status of their namecheck.
5. An audit of USCIS services should be done after 1 or 2 years of these fee hikes being put in effect to see if it has the impact that it is intended to. If not, the Director should have to answer to a Congressional inquiry, and the fee hike rescinded.
Director Gonzalez in his statements claims that this fee hike will solve a lot of problems. I seriously doubt it. Unless there are above pre-conditions, this fee hike should not be approved.
The following is the link I used to get to the site (taken from Axxe's earlier post)
http://www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main.
Once at that page, enter the following docket number under keyword/ID: USCIS-2006-0044, then click on the Comments Bubble in the far right column.
The fee hike is out of proportion to the benefit that is claimed by Director Gonzalez. An increase of 80% does not justify an improvement in performance by only 20%. The fee hike also represents a significant burden, as it would mean that each applicant awaiting their I-485 approval in general will need to pay $340 + $305 = $645 for EAD renewal and Advance Parole per year. A lot of people have been waiting over 6-7 years for their 485 approval. This means that for no fault of theirs, they will have to pay every yearover $1000 per family (assuming 2 people per family).
This increase should only be allowed with following pre-conditions:
1. People will not have to pay for any extensions or renewals of the EAD cards or Advance Parole. The fee's should be only one time for initial application. This is only fair, as the people having to extend/renew these are not at fault and are actually suffering.
2. USCIS should have set time for processing all applications, and this cannot be changed based on workload or other excuses.
3. Anytime any of the applications are not approved in the above time, USCIS will have to refund the money for application and provide service free of charge. If USCIS does not process the application, in twice the set time frame, then it should have to pay a fine as well as answer to a monitoring authority.
4. Some people are stuck in Namecheck process for over 4 years. This is a totally opaque process, with no accountability. A portioon of the revenue from the fee hikes should be used to improve services of FBI specifically for immigration related namecheck, and this process should be made transparent. No application, should take longer than 1 month for clearance. Again accountability and fines for poor performance need to be put in place to ensure compliance. Applicants should be able to inquire regarding status of their namecheck.
5. An audit of USCIS services should be done after 1 or 2 years of these fee hikes being put in effect to see if it has the impact that it is intended to. If not, the Director should have to answer to a Congressional inquiry, and the fee hike rescinded.
Director Gonzalez in his statements claims that this fee hike will solve a lot of problems. I seriously doubt it. Unless there are above pre-conditions, this fee hike should not be approved.
The following is the link I used to get to the site (taken from Axxe's earlier post)
http://www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main.
Once at that page, enter the following docket number under keyword/ID: USCIS-2006-0044, then click on the Comments Bubble in the far right column.