Would backlog petition work?

V

Vanek

New Member
I am not quite sure how this I-485 backlog petition is going to work. It's basically e-mail without signatures therefore it can not be verified. Whom you are going to send it to? I doubt it would do anything but let our frustration out.
I appreciate any comments on this.
 
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unnoticed

I think it will have minimal efffect.

There is no TRUE DEMOCRCY yet in any country.

People's voice is still not heard well even great Democracy of America

This is just the mere case of .......................
 
lets get organized!

We are smart, intellegent, educated, hard-working, strong people. Not everybody is able to leave a comfort of familier culture for unknown promising better future country. We did. We've been able to endure a hardship and humiliation. We are cream of societies we came from. We are fuel for American economy. But being by ourselves, as reality proves it, we do not stand a chance against organized bureaucratic machine developed with a main purpose to discourage immigration.
Therefore we need to get organized. We need to found and to register a representative organ consisting of people interested in our cause-immigration lawyers and people chosed from our ranks by vote. The sole purpose of that union would be to promote our rights, to voice our requests, to promote positive image of immigrants in the US society (sponsoring orphanages, blood drives, contributions to anticancer drug development, etc). There are 60+ thousands of applicants for adjustment of status, even US government would listen then to us. The union would have means to organize us (website, telephone, fax, P.O. Box), funds to use media to speak on behalf of us (to buy TV time, newspapers, meet with political leaders), may be cooperate with BCIS/FBI in expedition of clearance and background checks.
I am personally ready to contribute $10 to $100 per year for that and I think many others do as well. Because it would save us money in a long run. All we need to start is a website and a few members. Please voice your opinion on this idea.
 
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Re: lets get organized!

Originally posted by Vanek
We are smart, intellegent, educated, hard-working, strong people. Not everybody is able to leave a comfort of familier culture for unknown promising better future country. We did. We've been able to endure a hardship and humiliation. We are cream of societies we came from. We are fuel for American economy. But being by ourselves, as reality proves it, we do not stand a chance against organized bureaucratic machine developed with a main purpose to discourage immigration.
Therefore we need to get organized. We need to found and to register a representative organ consisting of people interested in our cause-immigration lawyers and people chosed from our ranks by vote. The sole purpose of that union would be to promote our rights, to voice our requests, to promote positive image of immigrants in the US society (sponsoring orphanages, blood drives, contributions to anticancer drug development, etc). There are 60+ thousands of applicants for adjustment of status, even US government would listen then to us. The union would have means to organize us (website, telephone, fax, P.O. Box), funds to use media to speak on behalf of us (to buy TV time, newspapers, meet with political leaders), may be cooperate with BCIS/FBI in expedition of clearance and background checks.
I am personally ready to contribute $10 to $100 per year for that and I think many others do as well. Because it would save us money in a long run. All we need to start is a website and a few members. Please voice your opinion on this idea.
Click to expand...

Vanek, your ideas are heard..We are trying. This is the first step. Let us do it, keep doing it and continue the fight. We need more people like you to join and participate.
 
Vanek, you seem to to be new to this site. Some of us are are already making every effort to reach out to BCIS, DHS, Congress Men, Senators and media. Keep visiting this forum daily and take active part in the activities. You seem to be enthusiastic and a good future leader.
Coming back to your basic question of whether the Backlog petition is going to work or not, i would say that it depends on us, not BCIS. Just sending a petition will never work. We need to believe in ourselves and do a thorough follow up . We need to contact Mr Khatri after a week and ask him about the status. If we put a dedicated effort, then things will definitely work.
 
so when are we sending it to BCIS

any of you guys has a time frame? This petition has been here for months already.
 
Re: so when are we sending it to BCIS

Originally posted by Cole
any of you guys has a time frame? This petition has been here for months already.
Click to expand...
The petition was sent about 10 days back. We are waiting for feedback from BCIS ombudsman.
 
Unfortunately, looking at some petition responses at Sulekha etc. I feel that we have not done very well in terms of signatures (approx. 2200 ). We should have had an independent site. Even for what Vanek suggested, in terms of creating an organization with a broad support we need an independent site. I do understand that Rajiv has helped us a lot in his own capacity, but we have clearly failed to get signatures from other lawyers and their clients. The idea is to have our petition heard and one way to lobby politicians is with huge numbers and money to support our effort.
 
Re: Re: so when are we sending it to BCIS

Did they confirm with you guys after they received it? By using what (simply by email attachment?) was it sent? Any news? please clarify, thanks


UOTE]Originally posted by dsatish
The petition was sent about 10 days back. We are waiting for feedback from BCIS ombudsman. [/QUOTE]
 
Organizing

Sai, you are right. We definitely failed to get good number of signatures. Compared to the number of pending I485 cases (approx 400,000), we got less than 1% people's signatures.
Instead of creating a new website (timetaking and expensive), how about talking to ISN (www.isn.org) to use their website. It is popular and also it is not being used by them now a days. Also who is going to take initiave for collecting the money from all of us ? On whose name we will collect ? I think we better talk to some one from ISN group to know about these logistics. Instead of forming a separate group now, some of us can become active volunteers of ISN so that we can collect money in the name of ISN. Actually, 3 years back i have sent a personal check to ISN when they are campaigning for AC21 act.
Due to my personal constraints (bench time) i can't work on these ideas. Can some one volunteer to do this ?
 
I live in NJ and I am volunteering for this work. At least for now as a co-ordinator or facilitator.

Lets make a list of things to do. Any comments....
 
ISN

I had contacted ISN last month and received this email from them. If several of us folks are interested we can contact ISN directly. They were successful in lobbying to get AC-21 passed a few years ago.

Thank you for your very well-expressed email.

I understand your frustration and don't have an answer that will
satisfy you as to why we couldn't respond to everybody. I only hope you'll understand that we're going through growing pains and there's only so much a person can do. We do need people to step up, but we don't want to take up more than what we can handle reasonably.

If you *really* want to contribute, please email me the following
details, and I'll call you this weekend (please mention appropriate time-windows on Saturday & Sunday, and I'll confirm a specific time).

1. Your contact information: non-work Phone, non-work email,
city/metro-a area, and the state you're in.
2. Your immigration status: H-1B or other, GC status, (optionally:
dependents's status), how long in the US
3. Your professional background:
Title/area-of-speacialization/(optional:company), years of work
experience
4. *Any* experience, no matter how insignificant, in leadership or
organizing, at any level (starting from your school days).
5. What motivates you? What would you like to do at ISN? (think in terms of the following: are you looking to go out in the field, organize meetings, lead delegations to congressional offices? or do you see yourself working on the ISN web-site? or is it something else in between? The important thing is
to be honest with yourself and set goals that are incremental and
achievable).
6. Are you looking to do something short-term only, like the lobbying against the backlogs? (It's perfectly ok, it's just crucial for us to know in order to assign people to the appropriate tasks best suited for them and to help them succeed).
7. Optional: If you're also interested in a long-term (no less than 6
months, and preferably at least a year), please mention briefly what you'd like to do.

Also, understand that working for ISN is going to be demanding, and you can't just hop-in and out. We've been more hurt by well-intentioned people joining us and then leaving us mid-stream, than by people who never volunteered. It's very hard for a grass-roots organization like ISN to absorb the impact of some one leaving without achieving his/her objective.
The minimum responsibility that you'll have when you are ready to leave ISN is to groom some one else and delegate to that person to take over your responsibilities. (this does not mean hand-picking your buddy- it just means that you must identify and delegate to someone competent and motivated to carry on from where you leave).

That, in a nutshell, is how it's going to be. There's a lot more to it,
but it's all in details.


Regards,
Murali
__________________________
Murali Krishna Devarakonda
Immigrants Support Network
http://www.ISN.org
mailto:Murali@ISN.org
 
Look creating such an organization is a full time job, and very few of us would be committed to it full-time. I would suggest hiring some folks(part time), to do the work of creating web sites, sending petitions, taking care of media responses and putting ads in newspapapers. Some of us should be on the governing committee, to guide our vision.
We should use our collective knowledge and funds to help supervise such an activity instead of doing it ourselves.
Rajiv could be on its governing body, advising us.
 
I believe our petition to immigration ombudsman (delivered by FedEx) will have some impact. We have not yet heard from him. We should give him sometime to review the petition and digest our suggestions. Expecting an immediate response is impractical.

We are pushing our effort further by petitioning the congress and contacting the media. We should extend our effort even after GC. The purpose is to fight for our (the new immigrants community) rights.

I entertain the idea of independent web site. Let's gather some suggestions on how to do it. Here are the initial steps

1. Register a national not-for-profit organization, e.g. New Immigrants Network
2. Register a domain name for the web site, e.g. www.NewImmgrants.net
3. Find a host site (there are many)
4. Collect some money to get the thing started
5. Elect volunteer officials
.....act quickly.....

If we have enough support we can have this thing online in a couple of weeks.
 
FOLLOW

Hello guys,

All your points are welcome. Let us make them public and to Edison (anybody else fro conference call with Rajiv?).

1: Petition. Discuss the signatures and ways to increase. I saw a post in "Murthy" forum and the webside for the petition was REMOVED!.
2: General status. Any delivery receipt back from the receipients?
3: Congress. Individual mailings as well as upcoming Congress/Senate mailings.
4: Organizations. AILA and AILF willing to help?
AILF take donations also as ISN. The AC-21 was not a milestone but a perpetuation of a problem.
5: Contacting more immigrant advocate organisations (posted already from AILA), contacting Religious leaders (Religious leaders went to the Capitol with Hispanic organisations.),
contacting media (Ethnic or otherwise, targeted or general), contacting companies and business associations (EX. Intel, HP, etc), contacting professional associations (IEEE, etc), contacting Think tanks (Heritage, etc), contacting Universities and sending/contacting the ACLU.
6: Can assign persons per STATE (CA, KAshmir for example, responsible for the COngress/Senate, Press there, Elections, etc).
7: Can create e-mail groups and make them available to the forum, so it is easy for others to follow. For example, sending one e-mail can reack all the members in that group (Congress, Senate, Government, Media, radio, TV are possible Groups, etc)
8. establish a founded group (our group) with clear foundation, under this host or somewhere else. Create a fund for money.
 
Cinta,
All your points are well accepted, but the basic question is this:
Do we think like entrepreneurs, or do we end up doing the work ourselves. I would rather hire professionals, to get to our vision.
We are not talking about a lot here. Just a paralegal and a secretary (who knows web stuff).
 
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As dSatish said before, I would stick to using the services of ISN because they have already done something like that and they are good at that. The best thing we all can do is become ISN volunteers and move the petition to them and take it up from there. Why do you want to reinvent the wheel?
 
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