Project "Ocean" : Become a U.S. Citizen by 2008 Election !!

Anna Eshoo (D CA 14th) Town Hall Meeting in Palo Alto downtown on 12/13/2003

Originally posted by 140_takes_4ever 13th December 2003 02:25 PM

Minutes of meeting with Congresswoman Anna Eshoo

Just got back from a Congresswoman Anna Eshoo's (14th District) town meeting. This was positively the largest town meeting I had attended till date, over 150-200 participants. Most of whom where senior citizens, concerned over the medicare package.

Kashmir and san_gcwait, had sumbitted their questions to be answered by the Congresswoman, and unfortunately she only answered Kashmir's due to lack of time and the number of questions she had from other people.

The most interesting thing was as she read Kashmir's name, she immediately recognised it, looked around the huge auditorium, recognised Kashmir's face and addressed the answer to him. This is definitely terrific news that she is aware of the problem and the efforts people on this forum have made to bring it to her notice.

What she basically said was, that she has spoken to Don Neufield about the issue and that he will be getting back to her on this backlog problems. She also said that she was aware of the issue and will raise it in the appropriate forums.

After the meeting, I did get the chance to speak to Anna as well as her aide personally, and she told me that Don Neufield's office has promised a detailed reply to the questions posed by the Congresswoman in the next 2-3 weeks.

All in all, a good meeting, we had a number of new faces and not many old ones. The people who attended the meeting were
  • Kashmir
  • san_GCwait
  • desi_mazdur + 3 friends
  • 140_takes_4ever
As usual thanks to all those who attended, I would also like to request all those who are in the same situation, to please help us in our quest. THIS IS FOR ALL OF US! If you come to these town meetings which don't take more than a couple of hours of your time each month, you will be making a huge difference. This is the only way that Congressmen/women, will learn that there are so many people involved. Your stories are important. Don't wait for others to fight your fight. Help US!

All the people who showed up for Congressman Pete Stark's meeting, please consider coming to other district meetings as well, as a show of solidarity if nothing else.

As a parting rejoinder, think about what would happen if people like Kashmir, san_gcwait and desi_mazdur, the regular few who are doing all the running around right now get approved. WHO will fight for you? Please participate or things will just die after their approvals. Hoping to see many more of you at the next town meeting.
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Originally posted by get_moving 13th December 2003 06:14 PM

Minutes of the meeting with Congresswoman Anna Eshoo

12/13/2003
Minutes of the meeting with Congresswoman Anna Eshoo

The meeting started at 10:00 a.m. with Anna Eshoo being introduced by the Mayor of Palo Alto. Prior to start of the meeting Anna Eshoo’s staff collected questions if any from all attendees which were to be answered by Anna Eshoo after her opening statement. She read out questions in sequence and publicly responded to each one of them. In response to the question asked by “Kashmir” about the delay in 485 processing, she said that:
a) They have written to Don Neufield(who is te CSC Director) questioning them about the delay.
b) She also mentioned that Mike Honda, Pete Stark and other Congresspersons of neighbouring Districts have already written to Don in this regard following petitions to them by 485 applicants and that there is some awareness of this issue in Congress now.
c) She also explained to the rest of the group about the 485 application process and mentioned that they enjoyed more legal protection than is given to other categories.

After the session ended, folks from Immigrationportal went up to speak to her and handed the petition for expediting the 485 process. She recognized Kashmir and told him that her staff is working on the issue.
When asked about what specific action was being taken and that we expected no less than an action plan, she said that action can only be taken by the agencies and that she and her staff would continue to hammer at them for results. When asked about what more could 485 applicants do towards the cause, she said that they have done a good job of organizing and bringing awareness as well as communicating and that her staff would not rest until some solution is reached.
She repeated that 485 applicants had legal protection not available to other categories to which team members from the 485 group mentioned that this was true only in principle. Basic issues like inability to travel out of the country due to delays in processing of the Advanced Parole document and changes in Job Descriptions resulting in adverse effects to the 485 application was definitely not protection enough.

A highlight of the discussion was that her staff member, Anne Ream had received a call from INS saying that they would respond to Anna Eshoo’s office in 3-4 weeks on the matter. The session ended at 11:30 a.m.

Seven people from the forum made it to the meeting and more participation would definitely increase visibility. Kashmir, 140_takes_for_ever, San_gc_wait, extra_dry_gin, todo_or_not_todo + 1, mazdur_desi and get_moving were present.
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Anna Eshoo encouraged us to continue to voice up our issues.
Also, she told us SILENCE was worst and that nothing would happen.
We have just started fighting against unfairness and injustice by one of the federal agency.
-kashmir
 
Rajiv - dsatish, Edison, 140_takes_4ever - 12/12/2003

Originally posted by 140_takes_4ever 12th December 2003 02:39 PM

We just got off the conference call with Rajiv, it was an extremely satisfactory discussion about the grounds for the lawsuit and various other topics.

Rajiv explained some of his thinking behind the lawsuit and what he hopes to acomplish from this excercise. He seems to have taken most of our concerns into consideration. At the rate he is progressing towards drafting the lawsuit, we should see some concrete action at a some point of time in the near future.

Rajiv has also requested everyone to post their ideas about the lawsuit, to give him more food for thought. (We are hoping to create a seperate thread for this discussion soon.) This is where people can post the reasons they feel the lawsuit should be filed.

Thanks to everyone who could make it for the conference call, and a special thanks to Rajiv for taking the time to answer our questions.
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Originally posted by dsatish 12th December 2003 03:26 PM

Why BCIS should process your case within 1 year ?

Hi all,
Rajiv is thinking of filing a Lawsuit on behalf of us (I485 applicants). What do you think is the basis for the Lawsuit ? Please discuss in this thread so that we can compile valid points / arguments and send them to Rajiv. Let every one bring their logical genious out here. How are we going to argue that BCIS must process our applications in 6 months or 1 year ? What are our valid arguments ? People may post their hardships in this thread .
Let me start with mine
--------------------------------------------------------------------
I agree that we do not have any right for speedier processing. The huge workload at BCIS along with security concerns have resulted in these delays. But my question to BCIS is what did they do in response to the increase in number of case and increased security concerns ? Did they increase the man power and did they atleast start approving as many cases as they receive daily ? This is the minimum thing expected of them in order to see that the delays do not increase. But over the last 1 year the processing started going up and it never came down. BCIS has not announced any action plan.

Most of the current immigration laws are archaic and they are causing a lot of problems under the present circumstances . The duration of validity of an EAD,AP, FP etc were kept at 1 year (FP is 1 yr 3 months) assuming that the I485 should be approved within that time. But the current circumstances are forcing us to apply for not only 2nd EAD, 2nd AP but also 3rd EAD, 3rd AP and now 3rd FP. Where is the end to this ? Who caused this situation ? Certainly not the laws. It's the BCIS working style that has resulted in these stupid things which are causing so much problems to us. The law does not state that you need 3 EAD extentions and 3 AP's and 3 FP's to get a greencard. So BCIS can't escape the blame stating that there were no laws stating that every application should be processed in 6 months (There is a law to this effect , but it's going to be effective from 2006 only).
BCIS is responsible for all the hardships that we are facing. It's not the Laws that are bad, it's BCIS working that's bad. They have no action plan and no concern for baclog reduction eventhough congress passed a law to that effect. The 2 yr waiting period (3 yrs for texas) is very orbitrary and creation of BCIS . It only reflects BCIS inefficiancy and insensitivity to the applicants who are its clients. The court must order BCIS to speeden up the process and submit an action plan to it. It can't get away with human rights violation (forcing us to work with the same employer for 5 years).

-dsatish
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Project Ocean 2004

Happy New Year !!

2003 might be the worst year for EB I-485 process,
however, I had lots of valuable experiences through ImmigrationPortal.Com and a couple of projects.
We started contacting Congressional members directly and filed a lawsuit finally.
Many talented people join our fight and it's being organized.
I believe we can achieve our goals.

However, the approval rate is still very low,
and Don Neufeld, Director of CSC, has not commited anything.
CSC has not been able to show us any actual plan for backlog reduction.
Of course, a lot of transfers or 2nd fingerprint notices don't mean anything for backlog reduction.
I believe we should accelerate our acitivities toward our goals.

Get a Green Card for everyone here within a year,
and get U.S. Citizenship by 2008 !!
 
Petition - List of Signatures

We started Immigration Benefits (Permanent Residence and Naturalization) Backlog Petition in September 2003,
and its Current List of Signatures grows too big.
It takes a long time to display and to print the list.

I created 4 HTML pages from the list as of 3:30pm 1/6/2004.
It includes just 4,000 signatures after removing duplicated data,
so each page includes 1,000 signatures.
I think it's proper size for printing.

list1.html.zip
list2.html.zip
list3.html.zip
list4.html.zip
 
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GAO Report to Congress of 01/05/2004 Urges USCIS to Study Required Operation Funds to

http://www.immigration-law.com/Canada.html

01/08/2004: GAO Report to Congress of 01/05/2004 Urges USCIS to Study Required Operation Funds to Avoid Further Backlogs

  • The GAO submitted a report on January 5, 2004 disclosing its finding on sources of problem to resolve the current backlogs and to achieve the President's 6-month processing plan. The report indicates that the fee funds are insufficent to meet the cost of operation of the USCIS. However, currently the USCIS has no information as to how much fund is necessary to meet its operation cost and to reduce the backlogs. Accordingly, unless the USCIS is required by the Congress to study and determine the required funds for its operation and for the backlog reduction, it may see further backlog in the future, damaging the President's commitment to reduction of processing times to six months. Readers are encouraged to read this 53 pdf-page report to understand the GAO view of the sources of problem relating to the backlog.
 
Received Anna Eshoo's letter with Don Neufeld's reply to her

I received a letter from my representative Anna Eshoo today.
Don Neufeld's letter to her is attached.
-kashmir
 
Anna Eshoo's letter


January 9, 2004

Mr. (my name)
(my address)

Dear Mr. (my last name),

Thank you for contacting me recently regarding the back-log of the EB I-485 Applications for Adjustment of Status at the California Service Center (CSC). I contacted CSC Director Mr. Donald Neufeld directly in November, 2003, to inquire about the unreasonable delay.

I have received his response and I'm enclosing it for your review. As you can see, these applications are being reviewed continuously. Mr. Neufeld also assures me that the goal of the CSC is to reduce the processing time for these applications to 12 months or less by the end of September 2004. This is definitely a step in the right direction for this new agency that has gone through major restructuring and adjustments due to new security measures. I hope you find this response helpful and informative.

Thank you again for the opportunity to address this issue on your behalf and as always, whenever I may be of assistance to you in the future, just let me know.

Sincerely,
(Anna Eshoo's signature)
Anna G. Eshoo
Member of Congress

Enclosure
 
Donald Neufeld's letter to Anna Eshoo


December 22, 2003

The Honorable Anna Eshoo
Congress of the United States
House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Congresswoman Eshoo;

Thank you for your recent letter seeking information about the backlog of employment based Adjustment of Status applications (Form I-485) at the California Service Center (CSC).

I want to assure you that the CSC continue to adjudicate adjustment of status applications despite the slow progress of our published processing time. In fact, our records reflect that we have approved, denied, or relocated for interview more than 86,000 such applications since January 2002.

Unlike most other applications, I-485's are not necessarily adjudicated in receipt date order. Adjudication can only occur after all background checks have been conducted, relating files located, and underlying petitions retrieved from file strage, including those of family members. With the added safeguards that were mandated after September 11, 2001, most applications required additional background checks before they could be properly adjudicated. As response times in conducting these checks varied greatly from case to case, these additional checks further disrupted the chronological processing of applications and significantly delayed the overall adjudication process. Even though we continued to adjudicate thousands of applications as checks were completed, our published processing time remained "frozen" while the background checks remained pending for many of the oldest cases.

As we make progress in completing the older background checks, the processing time for I-485's will begin to improve. However, because of the competing need to adjudicate approximately 60,000 El Salvadoran applications for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) prior March 9, 2004, we do not anticipate assigning any additional staff to process I-485s until the latter half of this fiscal year. We do plan to significantly increase resource allocations to I-485 adjudications beginning April 2004. Based on current workload projections, our goal is to reduce the processing time for Adjustment of Status applications to 12 months or less by the end of September 2004.

I hope I have adequately addressed your concerns. I would be happy to discuss this further should you or someone on your staff wish to contact me by telephone. I may be reached at (949) ***-****.

Sincerely,
(Don Neufeld's signature)
Donald W. Neufeld

DN:cm
 
my comment #1 for Don Neufeld's letter

At first, it is one of the most significant achievement of one of our goals to get CSC Director's plan through Congressional office.
Thanks to all participants with Project Ocean.
-kashmir
 
my comment #2

In fact, our records reflect that we have approved, denied, or relocated for interview more than 86,000 such applications since January 2002.
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I had a doubt about the number 86,000 at first, but It seems reasonable because:
1) most of them were processed in 2002.
2) CSC has received about 3,000 applications per month in average since December 2002, but CSC had received more applications in spring of 2002 due to LIFE Act.
3) actually, CSC reduced the backlog between January 2002 and October 2002.

However, we have to pay attention that it includes transferred cases.
 
my comment #3

For CSC's plan:
We do plan to significantly increase resource allocations to I-485 adjudications beginning April 2004. Based on current workload projections, our goal is to reduce the processing time for Adjustment of Status applications to 12 months or less by the end of September 2004.
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It's almost the same as CSC Liaison Meeting Summary for 12-15-2003:
Adjustment Applications (I-485)
These types of cases, as mentioned above, are not a priority at this time. The JIT Report Processing Date continues to reflect a December 16, 2001 date. It is expected that between now and April1 2004, the time line to adjudicate these types of cases will continue to be approximately two years. It is hoped that by the end of this fiscal year, i.e. September 30, 2004, the adjudication of these types of cases would be within six months of filing.
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But, the processing time of 9/30/2004 is changed from 6 months to 12 months.

This means CSC plans to process 21 months (Jan 2002 - Sep 2003) of applications in 6 months (Apr 2004 - Sep 2004).
3000 x 21 / 26 = 2423 per week
2423 / 5 = 484 per day
484 / 16 = 30 officers required (if one officer adjudicates 16 cases per day)
This number 30 equals to one that CSC had requested in November 2003.
California Service Center (CSC) Updates (11-29-2003)
I-485 Processing backlog
By mid November 2003, CSC is expected to complete processing the religious worker program cases that had been reviewed prior to September 30, 2003. Currently, ten people are adjudicating adjustment of status cases, however the division has requested that 30 people be assigned to these adjudications.
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my comment #4

We can see another excuse as usual.
However, because of the competing need to adjudicate approximately 60,000 El Salvadoran applications for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) prior March 9, 2004, we do not anticipate assigning any additional staff to process I-485s until the latter half of this fiscal year.
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It's almost the same excuse as one that was 3/9/2002 deadline of EAD for TPS El Salvador a year ago, however, I-485 process never resumed even after 3/9/2002 deadline.
Also, it must have been easy to imazine this TPS deadline of this year, but no action has been taken by CSC.

Can we believe that CSC would resume I-485 process from April 2004 ?
 
my comment #5

IF it would be real, the overall processing schedule should be:
Code: 
Jan-Mar,2004 : Dec,2001
Apr,2004 : Jan-Apr,2002
May,2004 : Apr-Jul,2002
Jun,2004 : Aug-Nov,2002
Jul,2004 : Nov,2002-Feb,2003
Aug,2004 : Mar-Jun,2003
Sep,2004 : Jun-Sep,2003
but most unlikely ...
 
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my comment #7 - specific numbers required

Don Neufeld's plan to significantly increase resource allocations to I-485 adjudications beginning April 2004 is not specific at all.

We need to confirm:
1) how many officers shall be allocated
- specific number such as 30 or 100 instead of significantly increase resource
2) how many cases shall be adjudicated per month
- specific numbers such as 6,000 in April and 8,000 in May, 100,000 in June, ... etc.
 
my comment #8 - priority

CSC still sets low priority to EB I-485.
Obviously, it is lower than TPS El Salvadoran.
However, because of the competing need to adjudicate approximately 60,000 El Salvadoran applications for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) prior March 9, 2004, we do not anticipate assigning any additional staff to process I-485s until the latter half of this fiscal year.
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Also, CSC wants to do something between 3/10/2004 and 3/31/2004, thus EB I-485 is lower than "somethng unknown".

Considering the similar situation last year,
it's very doubtful for Don Neufeld to significantly increase resource allocations to I-485 adjudications beginning April 2004.
Most likely, there woiuld be another excuse in late March 2004 or in April 2004.
Or simply no resource allocation without any excuse.
 
my comment #9 - continue to adjudicate AOS applications BUT BACKLOG GROWING

I want to assure you that the CSC continue to adjudicate adjustment of status applications despite the slow progress of our published processing time.
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We have already known that CSC has been adjudicating less than 100 I-485 cases per week (according to Project Kashmir).
The issue is not whether the CSC had freezed EB I-485 process or not
but the fact that the backlog has been significantly growing due to such a slow pace of process.
 
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