WTH

[SusieK 3]

Of course most of you have seen this article today, but the word "diverted" caught my attention - I would think this would cause some people to raise their head and say hmmm..........I do believe it is old news but the article speaks of interesting facts for all phases of immigration. The article is not old news, just posted today, but I am thinking about the fee money issue.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080209/ap_on_...ArN0jMHsrVh24cA

Note on this one subject line:Since 1988, the work of Citizenship and Immigration Services and its predecessor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, has been largely paid for by revenue from application fees. Congress has provided money for specific projects over the years, but generally those have been limited to a few years. Sometimes fee money has been diverted for things like detention centers

hmmmmmm i hope to god they were not in the throws of a backlog crisis at that point hmmmmm whacks head against computer screen and says I gotta go back to school and learn how our government arrives at these decisions.

growling and still goes to USCIS website to see if case can be accessed, ok that didnt work, bangs head again and says oh my can we have those fees back that people paid for their applications to correct some of the problems going on now.

[thermophile 0]

this is a constant appropriation issue. Right now the only politicians that are even talking about immigration (and there really aren't that many of them) are generally in the "lock them out and toss the rest in prison" camp and not actually talking about real immigration issues that could be leading to the influx of illegal migrants such as the unreasonably long waits for visas. (yes I know that there are some that would come illegally reguardless of the waits but we can't fix those problems right now, economic disparity etc.)

So, everyone that is tired of the wait should at least email your congressperson and senators and let them know that they have constituents who are concerned about fixing the legal immigration system. A significant portion of the system could be sped up with just a few procedural changes and just a little bit of money. This is the season for federal budget allocation, let the people representing you know that you think they should increase funding for USCIS. No one person can change much, but there are thousands of people on VJ if even 10% actually contacted their representatives some things could change.