Guys and Gals:
I sent the following letter to my congressional representative today. I suggest you all do the same. Please modify as you see fit. Your house rep\'s address can be found at www.house.gov. If you are also writing to you senators, they can be found at www.senate.gov
___________________________________________________________________________
July 4, 2000
Dear Congressman (Name):
Subject: Unfair practices of the INS
I am writing to inform you of unfair adjudication practices by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) that are hurting individuals and businesses in your constituency. I realize that your time is very valuable and will try to be as brief as possible. My complaint concerns the adjudication of employment based applications to adjust status to permanent residency (the I-485 applications) filed with the INS. It is the policy of the INS to adjudicate these applications on a first-in-first-out basis. However, two service centers, namely, the Texas Service Center (TSC) and the California Service Centers (CSC) have over the course of the last several months taken to adjudicating applications randomly. As a result of this applications filed very recently in the last quarter of 1999 have been approved while applications filed much earlier in the last quarter of 1998 to first quarter of 1999 remain unadjudicated.
While this is unfair to all earlier applicants, it penalizes earlier applicants from India and China in a particularly acute and painful manner. Since employment based permanent residency applications from these two countries are routinely oversubscribed, applicants have to already endure a prolonged wait to file their I-485 applications until visa numbers become available. This combined with the INS’s arbitrary, random and out-of-turn adjudication pattern penalizes them once again for no fault of theirs. There is yet another twist to this iniquity. Applicants from the Vermont Service Center (VSC) which has jurisdiction over the _Name of your town _ region, are affected in a very perverse manner. Since the VSC has been glacially slow in adjudicating employment based permanent residency applications, and since the TSC and CSC have been processing enormous number of cases in an out-of-turn fashion, Indian and Chinese applicants at VSC may suffer due to unavailability of visa numbers. Despite filing their applications in a timely manner these applicants have to endure undue delays due to the randomness of the INS process. They are in this unfortunate situation simply by virtue of their geographical location within the United States. We are not asking you to increase the resources available to the INS. We are not even asking for an increase in the allotment of visa numbers to India and China. Our request is actually much simpler that that. We are simply requesting you to ensure that the INS processes adjustment of status cases on a first-in-first-out basis.
Today, we celebrate the 224th anniversary of the day the forefathers of this great nation pledged their "lives, property, and sacred honor" to throw off the yoke of a tyrant. Today we request your help in ending the tyranny the INS continues to inflict on employment based permanent residency applicants. Employment based permanent residency applicants are law abiding, tax paying individuals who contribute in very substantial ways to the American economy. We are only requesting that due process be followed in adjudicating our applications for permanent residency.
Sincerely,
Your Name
I sent the following letter to my congressional representative today. I suggest you all do the same. Please modify as you see fit. Your house rep\'s address can be found at www.house.gov. If you are also writing to you senators, they can be found at www.senate.gov
___________________________________________________________________________
July 4, 2000
Dear Congressman (Name):
Subject: Unfair practices of the INS
I am writing to inform you of unfair adjudication practices by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) that are hurting individuals and businesses in your constituency. I realize that your time is very valuable and will try to be as brief as possible. My complaint concerns the adjudication of employment based applications to adjust status to permanent residency (the I-485 applications) filed with the INS. It is the policy of the INS to adjudicate these applications on a first-in-first-out basis. However, two service centers, namely, the Texas Service Center (TSC) and the California Service Centers (CSC) have over the course of the last several months taken to adjudicating applications randomly. As a result of this applications filed very recently in the last quarter of 1999 have been approved while applications filed much earlier in the last quarter of 1998 to first quarter of 1999 remain unadjudicated.
While this is unfair to all earlier applicants, it penalizes earlier applicants from India and China in a particularly acute and painful manner. Since employment based permanent residency applications from these two countries are routinely oversubscribed, applicants have to already endure a prolonged wait to file their I-485 applications until visa numbers become available. This combined with the INS’s arbitrary, random and out-of-turn adjudication pattern penalizes them once again for no fault of theirs. There is yet another twist to this iniquity. Applicants from the Vermont Service Center (VSC) which has jurisdiction over the _Name of your town _ region, are affected in a very perverse manner. Since the VSC has been glacially slow in adjudicating employment based permanent residency applications, and since the TSC and CSC have been processing enormous number of cases in an out-of-turn fashion, Indian and Chinese applicants at VSC may suffer due to unavailability of visa numbers. Despite filing their applications in a timely manner these applicants have to endure undue delays due to the randomness of the INS process. They are in this unfortunate situation simply by virtue of their geographical location within the United States. We are not asking you to increase the resources available to the INS. We are not even asking for an increase in the allotment of visa numbers to India and China. Our request is actually much simpler that that. We are simply requesting you to ensure that the INS processes adjustment of status cases on a first-in-first-out basis.
Today, we celebrate the 224th anniversary of the day the forefathers of this great nation pledged their "lives, property, and sacred honor" to throw off the yoke of a tyrant. Today we request your help in ending the tyranny the INS continues to inflict on employment based permanent residency applicants. Employment based permanent residency applicants are law abiding, tax paying individuals who contribute in very substantial ways to the American economy. We are only requesting that due process be followed in adjudicating our applications for permanent residency.
Sincerely,
Your Name