Sample Letter for Congressman on Retrogression

[mdh3000]

People have asked me to post the letter I sent to my congressmen on the recent retrogression.

Here it is. I suggest you use it only as a template. Put it in your own words before you send it. If a congressman gets a ton of "form" letters, it won't have the same impact as fewer letters that are originals.

I also suggest you either fax or mail the letter. If you mail it directly to Washington, DC it will be held up for 6-8 weeks for security reasons. Either mail it to your congressman's local office or fax it.

You can find out who your representative/senators are on www.congress.org.

mdh

Your name
Address



September 16, 2005

Senator XXXX
Washington, DC


Senator XXXX,

I am writing you concerning an immigration issue that I believe needs your attention. As you may or may not know, the State Department has recently released the October 2005 “Visa Bulletin”. In that bulletin, the State Department annouced the “priority dates” for the month of October.

Priority dates are crutical to those immigrants seeking permanent residence (“a Green Card”) in the United States. An immigrant may not apply for, or receive permanent resident status unless their priority date falls on, or before, the date annouced by the State Department. An immigrant’s priority date is most commonly the date the US Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) receives that immigrant’s initial application (“labor certification”) for permanent residency.

For October 2005, the priority date annouced for “skilled workers” was March 2001, which is more than one year earlier than previously annouced priority dates. For those immigrants from India, China, Phillipines and Mexico the priority dates have been moved back even further. This means that unless an immigrant filed their labor certification before March 2001, their application will not be approved until the date moves forward. If the immigrant has not yet applied for permanent residency, and their labor certification was filed after March 2001, their application will not be accepted. The State Department has also stated “forward movement of the cut-off dates in these categories is likely to be limited.”

As you can imagine, this lack of employment-based visas has become a problem. Tens of thousands of immigrants will see their already delayed applications for permanent residence delayed even further.. The most obvious solution to this problem is to increase the current yearly limit of 140,000 employment-based visas. This would benefit the country as such immigrants provide skills that are in high demand in the US and fill jobs for which employers cannot find US workers. Employment-based immigrants are highly skilled, law-abiding people whose benefit to this country is immesurable.

Please inform me of your opinion on this matter and what you believe you can do to improve the current sitution.


Sincerely,


Your name