S. 1932 Status

WP,

Why is it not over yet? You said it was last night!!!! What makes u think that efforts will work? Have you something positive....

Just kidding :)

anyway, I could hardly sleep.

BTW, you may be right abt friday being the decision day. My established contact at Senator Mikulski's office had asked me to call friday evening so he could tell me the fate of sec. 8001 for sure! I missed him by 5 mins and he is not available on weekends!

S.


WaldenPond said:
Guys, Would like to request that please do not stop calling and sending faxes. It is not over yet. The provision is not in the final version at this time but the final version is still being negotiated. Please continue to send faxes and make calls to Congressman's office. Most important once are three Congressman from House of Representative i.e. Congressman Sensenbrenner, Smith and Conyers. It is not over yet .... and still being negotiated .... please send faxes ..... more importantly make calls and attempt to talk to Congressman itself ....
Click to expand...
 
From ILW: there is still hope

From ILW.com...there is still hope. Keep making the calls and sending the faxes. Also, ditch the email method, it does not have as much effect.

Immigration Daily has learned that Section 8001 of S. 1932, sorely needed by the immigration community, was included in initial drafts of the budget reconciliation conference report, and was later pulled, ostensibly under pressure from a handful of Republican House members who threatened to vote against the reconciliation conference report if it included immigration benefits relief provisions. Given the number of controversial provisions in the large bills currently being crafted, it is reasonable to believe that there must exist many provisions for which a group of 20 Republicans would threaten withholding of their votes unless their desires were capitulated to. It is unlikely that the House or Senate leadership would be fazed by such blackmail. Unfortunately, several key business immigration lobbyists gave up the issue as lost, and some have reportedly left the Beltway to be with their families for an early holiday season.

The fact is that this is a new battle for pro-immigrationists - the arguments are not about human rights or humanitarian considerations, nor about the competitiveness of American employers - instead the arguments this time revolve around money - not money for campaign contributions, but money for Uncle Sam's treasury - a not-insignificant half-billion dollars plus (CBO estimates) is at stake in exchange for the immigration benefits in Section 8001 of S. 1932. With money scarcer than hen's teeth right now inside the beltway, and with intense pressure to finish appropriations, pro-immigrationists have a strong hand, if they have the ability to play it right (one example is to try to secure the immigration benefits for a higher L fee than S. 1932 mandated if necessary). In addition, Immigration Daily has learned that hundreds of calls and faxes are flooding Congress supporting the inclusion of Section 8001 in the final reconciliation conference report.

Currently, one of three things appear to be possible: (A) the final Act will include Section 8001 of S. 1932 (providing for retrogression relief, and recapture of significant quantities of H numbers and permanent EB numbers) in exchange for a lot of money for the US Treasury, (B) the US Treasury will sock it to L visa users in exchange for nothing at all (except for establishing the appalling precedent that monies for visa processing can be diverted to the general treasury, and not be applied toward benefits processing or some other designated immigration-related purpose), and (C) nothing will happen, the status quo will prevail.
 
You have got to be kidding

spgtopper said:
BTW, you may be right abt friday being the decision day. My established contact at Senator Mikulski's office had asked me to call friday evening so he could tell me the fate of sec. 8001 for sure! I missed him by 5 mins and he is not available on weekends!
Click to expand...


Doofus, you mean to say we could have known this on Friday :p

You are a brave man admitting that in this forum..

Kidding, kidding. All those calls yesterday were worth it. By the 5th one I was a well oiled machine.
 
If you read my messages from last 2-3 days, I did request all to call the congressmen more, so I am sure some readers heeded to the request.

Also,
I did my best to call congressmen - I am from MD, additionally, I called congressmen from Washington State, Montana, MA etc too!

S.

stucklabor said:
Came to know yesterday that Laura Reiff, a partner in the law firm my company uses, wrote much of the text of Title VIII of S1932.

I wish I had known this earlier so we could have been a little more organized in fighting for this in terms of 'who to call, when to call, what to say' etc.

Knowing what we know now, we should have called more of the House guys earlier and tried to find what their objections were to Title VIII and tried to work around.

Oh well, live to fight another day.

Immigration-law.com suggests that we keep calling Lamar Smith and get him to bend.
Click to expand...
 
Numbers of congressman/senators

Name Phone Fax
F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R - 05) 202-225-5101 12022253190
Lamar S. Smith (R - 21) 202-225-4236 12022258628
John Conyers, Jr. (D - 14) 202-225-5126 12022250072


Senator Richard C. Shelby (R- AL) 202-224-5744 202-224-3416
Senator Jeff Sessions (R- AL) 202-224-4124 202-224-3149
Senator Ted Stevens (R- AK) 202-224-3004 202-224-2354
Senator Wayne Allard (R- CO) 202-224-5941 202-224-6471
Senator Saxby Chambliss (R- GA) 202-224-3521 202-224-0103
Senator Charles E. Grassley (R- IA) 202-224-3744 202-224-6020
Senator Tom Harkin (D- IA) 202-224-3254 202-224-9369
Senator Mitch McConnell (R- KY) 202-224-2541 202-224-2499
Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D- MA) 202-224-4543 202-224-2417
Senator Max Baucus (D- MT) 202-224-2651 202-224-0515
Senator Judd Gregg (R- NH) 202-224-3324 202-224-4952
Senator Kent Conrad (D- ND) 202-224-2043 202-224-7776
Senator Arlen Specter (R- PA) 202-224-4254 12022281229
Senator Patty Murray (D- WA) 202-224-2621 202-224-0238
Senator Michael Enzi (R- WY) 202-224-3424 202-228-0359
Senator Pete V. Domenici (R- NM) 202-224-6621 202-228-0900
Senator Paul S. Sarbanes (D- MD) 202-224-4524 202-224-1651
Senator Daniel K. Inouye (D- HI) 202-224-3934 202-224-6747
Senator Patrick J. Leahy (D- VT) 202-224-4242 202-224-3479
Senator Jeff Bingaman (D- NM) 202-224-5521 202-224-2852
 
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Calling Congressmen

spgtopper said:
If you read my messages from last 2-3 days, I did request all to call the congressmen more, so I am sure some readers heeded to the request.

Also,
I did my best to call congressmen - I am from MD, additionally, I called congressmen from Washington State, Montana, MA etc too!

S.
Click to expand...

Spg, I meant more than calling and requesting support. There are a couple congressmen that were stumbling blocks to this whole thing. If I had known about Laura Reiff writing this legislation a month back, I would have called her and tried to find out what we needed to do. In hindsight, it looks like we needed to meet Sensenbrenner and Lamar Smith and other Congressmen who were complaining about major EB reform in a budget bill. We could have met them and showed that our pathetic situation warrants immediate relief. This is not something that can be done at the last minute.

Honestly I am a little skeptical about relief being given EBs in a comprehensive Immigration reform bill in an election year. That is when they all fall over themselves to show the public how tough they are in an election year.
 
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thank you!

I think all of us should have also preceded our calls with one simple question:

"Can you please tell us if the conference report includes sec 8001 of S.1932.ES?"

If we were actually reading the forum messages, we knew they were meeting on friday! I got this on thursday, and imme. urged everyone on this forum to call the washington dc offices with our request. that is really all we could do then.

Next time we should now ask our established contacts what will be most effective, and then make a big plan.

Anyway, we have lots to learn and improve.





stucklabor said:
Doofus, you mean to say we could have known this on Friday :p

You are a brave man admitting that in this forum..

Kidding, kidding. All those calls yesterday were worth it. By the 5th one I was a well oiled machine.
Click to expand...
 
Awesome energy

Waldenpond, sunder, stucklabor, ruch... and all the others...

your unbounded untiring efforts are highly commendable. Bravo!

Last night's "media-email-fax-blitzkrieg" is simply fascinating and unfortunately, I had to read all of this wonder-eyed. Speaks of what we are capable of doing once we set our eyes, reminds me of the slog overs ;)

I want to only point one thing...there are already a ton of websites catering to select audience. All we need is to create a drag-net.

1. isnamerica.org(27000 members)
2. yahoo techworkers1 group (835 members)
3. www.sulekha.com
4. us.rediff.com
5. indiahq.org (does it have forums) and
6. all new indian newspapers.
7. all immigration websites (immigration.com, immigration-law, aila, fragomen, hammondlawgroup etc).
8. All american newspapers - I dont know what their feedback mechanism is.
9. I dont know about others...but you can add to this...

These are all individual beads which have to be strung together using the "internet" and phone, last but very important, human2human meetings.

There is no excuse for most of us using the internet on a daily basis not to achieve this.

However, I strongly feel that there should be one place from where all this effort has to originate. There has to be one voice. ISNAMERICA has already provided the platform. We should make use of it...

Your thoughts please.
 
ANTICIPATED FLOOR SCHEDULE --- Sunday, December 18, 2005

spgtopper said:
Is S.1932 going to be voted today in the house + senate?

any news on that?Also, what if it is rejected?
Click to expand...


Possible Consideration of Conference Report on H.R. 4241 - Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (Subject to a Rule) (Sponsored by Rep. Nussle / Budget Committee)
 
I sent fresh round of fax to conference committee members.

I also sent fax to all media (posted in this forum)

Great momentum !!! I am very please that many people did lot of hard work since few days.

We will not give up. Take the inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi and fight for truth until we achieve our goal.

I think, if this section drop (God will never do this), we all 400,000 should meet Washington DC and show peace demonstration to Capitol and White House
 
Immigration Support Groups to contact .........

Immigration Support Groups to contact:

1) Immigrants Support Network
http://www.isn.org/
Liaison@ISN.org

President: Murali Krishna Devarakonda, Fremont, CA
Email: Murali@Isn.org
Voice/Fax: (509) 357-6421
Vice-President: Shailesh Gala, Budd Lake, NJ
Email: Shailesh@Isn.org

2) National Immigration Forum
http://www.immigrationforum.org/
Douglas Rivlin
Director of Communication
National Immigration Forum
Washington, DC
Contact Phone: 202-347-0040 ext. 5989

Frank Sharry is the Executive Director of the National Immigration Forum. The Forum, based in Washington D.C., is one of the nation’s premier immigration policy organizations, and has a membership of over 250 organizations nationwide. The Forum’s mission is to embrace and uphold America’s tradition as a nation of immigrants.

3) National Network for Immigrant
and Refugee Rights
310-8th St., Ste. 303 Oakland, CA 94607, USA
510-465-1984
510-465-1885 (fax)
nnirr@nnirr.org
http://www.nnirr.org

The National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR) is a national organization composed of local coalitions and immigrant, refugee, community, religious, civil rights and labor organizations and activists. I

4) US Immigration Support
http://www.usimmigrationsupport.org
info@usimmigrationsupport.org

5) Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service
700 Light Street
Baltimore MD 21230
lirs@lirs.org
410/230-2700
Fax: 410/230-2890
http://www.lirs.org/
 
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Great Job, Inrisk!

Inrisk said:
This is what I wrote for Senator Arlen Specter. I'm from PA..thanks BoxofChocs, I got inspired by your letter.


Dear Senator Specter,

First, thank you very much for your policies in the home and abroad that enables us to enjoy the American way of living.

I would appreciate your effort to include Section 8001 of S. 1932 in the final version of the deficit reduction bill and address the major problem of unavailability of green card faced by legal skilled immigrants.

Let me try to explain my case,

For the record, Employment based Green card applicants are one of the successful communities in the US, which includes doctors,engineers, scientists, IT professionals etc. They not only contribute to America as a group than any other would be immigrant community.

The problem is currently the USCIS s heavily back logged that they are processing applications that were filed on 1999. That means there are people in America who has been waiting 6 years with out an answer from USCIS.

Also there are peculiar cases like mine,*******

I would ike you to support Section 8001 of S.1932, so that people like me do not need to wait for 3-4 years to be with my loved ones. There are thousands of people like me, who has to wait to join his/her sppuse because the priority dates have retrogressed.

We want to live in America, we are legal, law abiding residents, but these issues are driving us away from the dreams we chased for all our lives.

There are provisions in Senate bill S.1932 which can give extra money to the administration so that USCIS can be overhauled.

Senator Sir, you proposed this bill so that people like us, who are legal to stay and work in the US for the betterment of the country. Literally its hard on us guys who did nothing wrong but came to America to have a decent living. Please support our cause, ofcourse we dont have votes, but what you did was the right thing, to fight for voiceless people. I guess thats what America stands for...hope. I still have hope in America, so please include the EB relief section in the final bill.


Thank you very much

Yours Sincerely,
****
Click to expand...
I don't know if, for certain, everything is over, but if Specter puts his foot down it can still be done. He repesented the Senate's voice (88 votes that defeated Byrd's amendement).But, it seems like he would not do it for us, even though he will fight for TO!
I am disappointed if it is true that we will get nothing from this! Let us keep badgering them everytime this comes up in any legislation, till we get it done! The reality is, all of us, even with a million faxes cannot do much! They know that we don't have a vote. All this died down when AILA gave up the fight to preserve this issue for the next round.
It is so strange - many of these lawyers pretend to be our true friends & wellwishers, but left us in the lurch. Till we are citizens, these Immigration lawyers will keep making money from us for one petition or the other! Why would they risk their income? But, we cannot get anything done without them, too! I do not know how, but let us also try to keep AILA with us as well!
It is true - your or my letter has a chance to be read by the Senator, not the thousands of generic faxes generated from a single source. They are not fools, they know that actually a single person can sit at a place and generate literally thousands of such faxes! Don't get me wrong - these faxes are an important tool but if you are in their place, you will discard them the way you & I discard junk mail & email!
Of course, unlike some people here, I don't claim to know everything, and will never do!
But, it will be good if we got something from this effort! Thanks for your effort! If you are from PA, I suggest you can try to keep mailing the Senator even on other issues! Try to keep in touch with him and his staff - he will be important on all issues in the future too! BTW, I also sent him a Christmas wish and mentioned his health!
 
spgtopper said:
WP,

Why is it not over yet? You said it was last night!!!! What makes u think that efforts will work? Have you something positive....

Just kidding :)

anyway, I could hardly sleep.

BTW, you may be right abt friday being the decision day. My established contact at Senator Mikulski's office had asked me to call friday evening so he could tell me the fate of sec. 8001 for sure! I missed him by 5 mins and he is not available on weekends!

S.
Click to expand...

Dittoo .... Could not sleep .... However, the intent of my post yesterday was to let everybody know the facts on the ground as I learnt them and where this is headed and my take on the reasons for it ....

I did not convey the mesaage that it is over .... and if I conveyed that in anyway, I should apologize as that was not the intent.

People are still negotiating for the provisions in final version of S 1932 as part of the Committee report. And that is the reason I say that there is still chance as few good members in that committee may still working towards including this provision .... and to give them a chance .... we need to do our part with Congressman.

Also, if I may add, this is a Great forum to let everybody know what is going on. But the drawback is there are lot of lot of anti-immigration people looking at this too. Just as I am member of some of the anti immigration forums to find out what they are doing .... did not want to disclose this here but couldn't help. Based on so much cut-throat environment on this issue it is so easy to convince anybody towards being anti-immigration with sort perception that all immigration is ILLEGAL, as it is so superficial and easy. It makes Senators and congreeeman look political right even though working against legal immigration does not help the cause of stronger society.

Here is my take on the effort, if guys on this forum really want to achieve more than where we are today, we have to start a cordinated effort. This forum is good but public so there is no way to work on strategy and it's implementation. And we can get lot of organized help from other pillars of the society if we are organized. At this time we are bunch of motivated guys who are putting in lot of effort but in uncordinated manner. One such example of possible help from the pillars of society is involving writers, authors and reporters. There is a presentation and sort of introduction/discussion on the book 'The flight of the Creative class - Richard Florida' on BookTv (i.e. Cspan) at noon which will talk about how legal immigrants help the creative society and help build stronger communities and nation.

I will write more and send my ideas on how we could cordinate these efforts .... and everybody here are welcome to share your ideas ....

What do you say?
 
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Least we can do it TRY!!

Sending the webfax is easy! If they get a big enough flood with the same theme, they might just start thinking about it. Lobbying is the only way to get things done in Congress!!! JUST DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!

USE THIS LINK:
Please login to Members Panel to send webfax:
http://www.isnamerica.org/loginform.asp

This sends a webfax straight to the key conferees...
 
Then how do we know..?

How many of us are there?
How we can be contacted?
Which areas we are all from?

What is the best way for us to learn that?

This is a great thread but there are too many different things happening in this thread. (important information gets lost because there are so many pages to go through).


How do we organize all the valuable information in this thread so that it is easy to find?

Sunjoshi & others...please put some thought into how we can do this?
 
Is anyone able to get to a human at the congressman office

Is anyone able to contact any congressman. All I am getting is no answer from one, VM is full from the other two.

Does anyone know of any alternate numbers that we can use to call.
 
WP,

Thanks for the info on the discussion of the book on C-Span.

You are right about this being unco-ordinated effort. Sandeep is working diligently on this forum and ISNAMERICA. Only if all the guys on this forum and ISNAMERICA can come together and maybe think about making a private forum over there...it will be awesome.
 
Hopeful_123 said:
How many of us are there?
How we can be contacted?
Which areas we are all from?

What is the best way for us to learn that?

This is a great thread but there are too many different things happening in this thread. (important information gets lost because there are so many pages to go through).


How do we organize all the valuable information in this thread so that it is easy to find?

Sunjoshi & others...please put some thought into how we can do this?
Click to expand...

Exactly .... Very good points Hopeful_123. I totally agree with you. I would urge Sunjoshi, pkdakwala and evereybody else to please join in this discussion and lead this effort. To succeed we must make a strategy and better organize ourself. Because in a months time we will all be here discussing the same things with the next similar bill which is sure to be introduced for discussion.
 
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