USC Green Card Petitioners' Committee

[Kaylara 814]

You can post a comment on the blog's page, and sign the Change.org petition.

http://uscgreencardpetitionerscommittee.blogspot.com/

http://www.change.org/petitions/president-obama-uscis-dhs-decrease-wait-time-for-i-130-petition-for-alien-relative

And you can also post to any traditional media and/or social media to try to get the word out. If you're on twitter and/or facebook, I'll be happy to friend you.

Just so you know, read the immigration reform passed by the senate... NO WHERE does it have a provision for US Citizens to get their spouse here any faster. Only for Pernament Resisdents does it help and Illegal immigration cases. Also there is I believe a 18 Month Wait time before anything will go into effect AFTER it becomes a law. This immigration reform will do nothing for us. I am not saying it is a bad thing the immigration reform, just stating it will not effect US citizens filing I-130's.

I also posted a complaint on Ted Cruz's Facebook page asking why K-1 Visa's for Pernament Residents are being processed faster than K-3 and I-130's.... Ugh Government fail.

Being a Texas Resisdent I called the senator office for help, Not knowing who Ted Cruz was, at first I thought he was better than the other old guy.... UGH my mistake.... I was told that He will do nothing to help with this injustice about why K-1 Visa's have faster processing times.

I wish I went the K-1 route... but I Wanted to have a traditional Javanese wedding with my wife my new family in Indonesia...

I did mention that in response to Mrs. Pelosi's answer yesterday.

[Beeeebs 19]

Oh Great. "Error submitting the form. Please try again later". It's like the universe doesn't want us to be with our spouses again :-(

[Ryan H 3,818]

***Several posts containing personal information have been hidden pending an edit.***

[spectrrr 14]

Alright.... Let the fun begin.

First off, count my wife and I in for reading for the video. That’s a step in the right direction. To the folks that have started this ball rolling, THANK YOU. Call me a “highly motivated pragmatist”. I am preparing to file the paperwork now to petition for a CR1 for my wife. When I last investigated this process a year ago, the picture was obviously quite different. Needless to say, now I’m a little worried.

Now, I do have to make a few comments about this effort, many of them cautionary in nature. It is my sincere hope that they can be used to improve the effectiveness of the message of this committee, and ultimately, contribute towards achieving the same goal we all share, returning the visa processing times back to a “reasonable” time frame. (Not like “reasonable” is a word that can ever be used to describe our broken system, even on a good day, but I digress!!).

As a quick point of introduction for who I am and what I do, I am nearly 30 years old, a professional photographer, aspiring programmer, and business entrepreneur at heart. Before you get your hopes up, I am NOT a graphic designer. I am fluent in using Photoshop to MODIFY images and content that already exists (improving upon it), but I have very little talent in the realm of creating something new from scratch. Although I could probablly download the Adobe Premier demo and figure out the video editing part without too much trouble, my internet connection here in Venezuela is pretty slow, making transfer of big media files back and forth a difficult task. But I can offer to lend a hand in any way possible with regards to media. Especially if someone else comes up with a rough draft of something, I am pretty good at polishing and refining it from there.

Some people have called me a geek, but honestly, that would be an insult to all the real geeks out there. I’m just somewhere in between. But I do live and breathe on the internet every day. I am not a social media genius, with thousands of twitter followers or youtube subscribers. I prefer to observe and analyze from a distance. But what I am is someone who truly enjoys asking the question “WHY” every time I see a story of success or failure. WHY is this youtube user cashing in the $$$ with millions of subscribers, and another youtuber who I think is far more talented and interesting, languishing with almost no video views? WHY does one social activism message about something relatively stupid get heard, and why do many issues of this day that are even more important go unheard? I believe there is an answer to those questions, and I enjoy the mental exercise of finding it.

That’s it for the introduction.... next post coming in a few minutes with some thoughts and ideas about the road ahead.

Edited October 31, 2013 by spectrrr

[Kathryn41 3,205]

Please remember that this forum is publicly accessible to everyone, including non-members. In the interest of your own personal safety, please do not post personally identifying information like full names, addresses, case numbers or anything else that could put you at risk for identity theft.

I have edited out full names in the preceding posts. When you continue to post ongoing discussions or communication exchanges, please XXXXX out last names or addresses or other such personally identifying and potentially sensitive information.

Thank you

Visa Journey Moderation

[En-oh-eh-to now 147]

Alright.... Let the fun begin.

Glad to have another committed member!

alaskafan, Kaylara, Blueberry Pancake, bobby299, AnnaTaka, Jayr&Kirstine, lucybelle, ShamoLisa, en-oh-eh-to now, thedude6752000, Ana&Sean, Macau PDX, r060106, londonwalker, YulingZhu, Kurt and Rose, spectrr, and YOU*

*Unless you like helplessly waiting and waiting.

• There's some good progress around here. We got a good question directed at Pelosi, but didn't get an ideal response to say the least. Thanks, for nothing, Pelosi. To make matters worse, the author messed up the article, but our committee made sure that was corrected. Sign up for Disqus and add comments.
• Our Twitter account has 100 followers. Not enough. Please help by signing up and retweeting us. We are finding more and more of us through Twitter!
• The committee page has 4,000 hits, but that is still not enough.
• We just don't know what USCIS has in store for us with their latest stunt - transferring our files again. As an attorney responded to us on Twitter: "USCIS responds when they feel pressure so I would keep making noise." We must continue our campaign until we see results!

Keep up the pressure!

[spectrrr 14]

Sorry, didn’t have time to finish writing this post until now. I think the length of my first post and this one will tell you why I don’t use twitter... writing in shorthand is, unfortunately, not one of my skills. But here are some of my thoughts about social media, getting people to CARE about our message, and the road ahead we’ll have to navigate in order to affect a change in the process. Apologies for the verbose nature of it.

We truly live in a unique time in history, one which many people have not yet fully adjusted to. In today’s digital world, where nearly everyone has both an opinion about something in the world, and the digital means with which to express that opinion, getting that message heard above the deluge of noise is an increasingly difficult task.

We use terms like “going viral” to describe one of those rare messages that are successful at breaking through the noise. Just about every person with a message, also has dreams of it “going viral” and their problem heard. But it is not such a simple task. There are messages that have, simply by luck, struck just the right chord with people and, almost accidentally, gone viral. This is what most people with a message aspire and hope to have happen to them, HOWEVER the reality is that this is not like trying to win the raffle at your local supermarket. This is more akin to the odds of winning the state lotto.

There is another way that things go viral, and that is one that is purely intentional. A brilliant, carefully crafted marketing campaign, spreading just the right message, exquisitely tuned to strike just the right chord with people who see it, supported by meaningful and accessible engagement activities which people can participate in afterwards. None of this happens by accident, or with only a little organizing. This happens with very careful and coordinated planning, and even then, the internet is littered with well organized and well funded campaigns to take something viral that, despite appearing to be well designed, never made it off the ground and never got noticed.

-------------------------------------------------------------

That is the sandbox we’re playing in if we want to talk national petitions. We need more people to sign and get involved than JUST the people waiting for their CR/IR visas to be processed. Which puts us in the same realm as business and marketing --> define the market, figure out what product we have to sell to the market, and then market it in a way they’ll buy it.

Target market: If we’re talking whitehouse.gov petitions, then we’re talking about getting people involved who are not directly involved or had prior involvement with immigration visas. The fundamental principle of activism is first and foremost, make people CARE. People already involved in the visa process obviously care. But someone who has never applied for a visa before has no idea of the hell that we have to go through just to be with those we love. And note that just telling people about it doesn't automatically mean they'll care. knowledge of the facts doesn't mean caring about them. It has to be a message that strikes a chord in people in a unique way.

Making someone care… that’s the tricky part… I’m not sure how we go about doing that. Immigration is a hot button issue in America today…. LOTS of people care a lot about it… but generally only the part they see as affecting them. Lots of other people hear the word “immigration” or “visa” and have a strong negative association with “illegals crossing the border”. A successful message has to make the issue relevant and relatable to people, WITHOUT getting lumped in with the illegal immigration issue which a lot of people are tired of hearing about, or simply want to “throw them all out and be done with it.” (I’m not starting a political discussion here, just observing the climate in which we have to spread our message). Pushing the family separation issue like we have been seems like a good direction.

All of the above that has to be balanced by the fact that anyone not already involved in the immigration issue has a very short attention span. “tl;dr” is a common internet saying, which means “too long; didn’t read” ..... This post easily qualifies as such. It is way too long. Talking about CR-1 visas and K-3 visas and i-130 forms is a great way to lose people who are uninformed or uninterested in the issue, which is the majority of people. In the end, there’s just a few short steps to getting signatures. Yeah, it’s oversimplified… but frankly, this post is too long already!

Step 1: Get people to read or listen to the message. If it’s a wall of text, most people get bored after 4 sentences and close it. I skip watching youtube videos that are more than 4 minutes unless it REALLLLLLLY interests me. Don’t have time.

Step 2: make the message such that the people who read it understand it enough in that limited exposure to become motivated and care about it.

Step 3: give them something to do with that motivation (sign the petition).

-------------------------------------------------------------

The letter that we have written is very good. VERY GOOD. I like it. It is very detailed and informative, for those that wish to LEARN about the issue. Let me pause here, so no one misinterprets me. I LIKE IT A LOT. It is well written and sums up our plight, as completely and succinctly as is possible for an issue as complicated as ours.

BUT I think we ALSO need a short version. 2-3 very short paragraphs. Something small, marketable. No mention of confusing CR-1/i-130/K3 form numbers. It’s got to be simple, natural language, digestible and understandable by a 10 year old. Anything longer, and it’s “tl;dr” for too many people... people we need signatures from and cannot afford to alienate. People uninformed about immigration should FEEL informed and motivated to help us out with a signature after they read it. The truth is WE know that you can’t learn much about this issue in 3 short paragraphs. But that’s not the point. The goal is not to thoroughly educate everyone, because frankly, most people don’t care enough to spend the time and learn it. The point is to get them motivated enough to lend their signature, so that we can build up a mountain of signatures that cannot be ignored, and get our voice heard! I imagine the formula for the youtube video would be similar to this letter. The letter could in fact be a modified form of the youtube script, or the other way around.

Well, that’s more than enough rambling for one night.

There.... I said.... something! .... I feel better, I feel like I at least tried to contribute!

I have tried to lend my perspective on the issues we face. I don't guarantee I'm 100% correct, in fact, I'm probably not! It's the internet, everyone has the ability to write something, no matter how wrong it is! BUT HOPEFULLY amongst my ramblings, at least something will prove useful in our fight.

[Kaylara 814]

Sorry, didn’t have time to finish writing this post until now. I think the length of my first post and this one will tell you why I don’t use twitter... writing in shorthand is, unfortunately, not one of my skills. But here are some of my thoughts about social media, getting people to CARE about our message, and the road ahead we’ll have to navigate in order to affect a change in the process. Apologies for the verbose nature of it.

We truly live in a unique time in history, one which many people have not yet fully adjusted to. In today’s digital world, where nearly everyone has both an opinion about something in the world, and the digital means with which to express that opinion, getting that message heard above the deluge of noise is an increasingly difficult task.

We use terms like “going viral” to describe one of those rare messages that are successful at breaking through the noise. Just about every person with a message, also has dreams of it “going viral” and their problem heard. But it is not such a simple task. There are messages that have, simply by luck, struck just the right chord with people and, almost accidentally, gone viral. This is what most people with a message aspire and hope to have happen to them, HOWEVER the reality is that this is not like trying to win the raffle at your local supermarket. This is more akin to the odds of winning the state lotto.

There is another way that things go viral, and that is one that is purely intentional. A brilliant, carefully crafted marketing campaign, spreading just the right message, exquisitely tuned to strike just the right chord with people who see it, supported by meaningful and accessible engagement activities which people can participate in afterwards. None of this happens by accident, or with only a little organizing. This happens with very careful and coordinated planning, and even then, the internet is littered with well organized and well funded campaigns to take something viral that, despite appearing to be well designed, never made it off the ground and never got noticed.

-------------------------------------------------------------

That is the sandbox we’re playing in if we want to talk national petitions. We need more people to sign and get involved than JUST the people waiting for their CR/IR visas to be processed. Which puts us in the same realm as business and marketing --> define the market, figure out what product we have to sell to the market, and then market it in a way they’ll buy it.

Target market: If we’re talking whitehouse.gov petitions, then we’re talking about getting people involved who are not directly involved or had prior involvement with immigration visas. The fundamental principle of activism is first and foremost, make people CARE. People already involved in the visa process obviously care. But someone who has never applied for a visa before has no idea of the hell that we have to go through just to be with those we love. And note that just telling people about it doesn't automatically mean they'll care. knowledge of the facts doesn't mean caring about them. It has to be a message that strikes a chord in people in a unique way.

Making someone care… that’s the tricky part… I’m not sure how we go about doing that. Immigration is a hot button issue in America today…. LOTS of people care a lot about it… but generally only the part they see as affecting them. Lots of other people hear the word “immigration” or “visa” and have a strong negative association with “illegals crossing the border”. A successful message has to make the issue relevant and relatable to people, WITHOUT getting lumped in with the illegal immigration issue which a lot of people are tired of hearing about, or simply want to “throw them all out and be done with it.” (I’m not starting a political discussion here, just observing the climate in which we have to spread our message). Pushing the family separation issue like we have been seems like a good direction.

All of the above that has to be balanced by the fact that anyone not already involved in the immigration issue has a very short attention span. “tl;dr” is a common internet saying, which means “too long; didn’t read” ..... This post easily qualifies as such. It is way too long. Talking about CR-1 visas and K-3 visas and i-130 forms is a great way to lose people who are uninformed or uninterested in the issue, which is the majority of people. In the end, there’s just a few short steps to getting signatures. Yeah, it’s oversimplified… but frankly, this post is too long already!

Step 1: Get people to read or listen to the message. If it’s a wall of text, most people get bored after 4 sentences and close it. I skip watching youtube videos that are more than 4 minutes unless it REALLLLLLLY interests me. Don’t have time.

Step 2: make the message such that the people who read it understand it enough in that limited exposure to become motivated and care about it.

Step 3: give them something to do with that motivation (sign the petition).

-------------------------------------------------------------

The letter that we have written is very good. VERY GOOD. I like it. It is very detailed and informative, for those that wish to LEARN about the issue. Let me pause here, so no one misinterprets me. I LIKE IT A LOT. It is well written and sums up our plight, as completely and succinctly as is possible for an issue as complicated as ours.

BUT I think we ALSO need a short version. 2-3 very short paragraphs. Something small, marketable. No mention of confusing CR-1/i-130/K3 form numbers. It’s got to be simple, natural language, digestible and understandable by a 10 year old. Anything longer, and it’s “tl;dr” for too many people... people we need signatures from and cannot afford to alienate. People uninformed about immigration should FEEL informed and motivated to help us out with a signature after they read it. The truth is WE know that you can’t learn much about this issue in 3 short paragraphs. But that’s not the point. The goal is not to thoroughly educate everyone, because frankly, most people don’t care enough to spend the time and learn it. The point is to get them motivated enough to lend their signature, so that we can build up a mountain of signatures that cannot be ignored, and get our voice heard! I imagine the formula for the youtube video would be similar to this letter. The letter could in fact be a modified form of the youtube script, or the other way around.

Well, that’s more than enough rambling for one night.

There.... I said.... something! .... I feel better, I feel like I at least tried to contribute!

I have tried to lend my perspective on the issues we face. I don't guarantee I'm 100% correct, in fact, I'm probably not! It's the internet, everyone has the ability to write something, no matter how wrong it is! BUT HOPEFULLY amongst my ramblings, at least something will prove useful in our fight.

I can sum it up pretty easily.

I am a US citizen and should not have to wait for 2 years to bring my husband to the US just because the USCIS messed up and created a backlog of 400,000 files.

[Kaylara 814]

Maybe someone can work with that as a base.

[spectrrr 14]

I can sum it up pretty easily.

I am a US citizen and should not have to wait for 2 years to bring my husband to the US just because the USCIS messed up and created a backlog of 400,000 files.

400,000 and counting .... If I understand it correctly, the approval rate is still a trickle, so new apps (like mine!) are still just adding on to the pile!!

How on earth do these fools plan on catching up!?

[Blueberry Pancake 311]

400,000 and counting .... If I understand it correctly, the approval rate is still a trickle, so new apps (like mine!) are still just adding on to the pile!!

How on earth do these fools plan on catching up!?

They don't.

They just shifted the workload a bit now so it doesn't look as bad and so it seems like they are oh-so-hard trying to fix the backlog.

Another theory is NBC/Lee's Summit had petitions up to the roof there and it wasn't up to code.

I can sum it up pretty easily.

I am a US citizen and should not have to wait for 2 years to bring my husband to the US just because the USCIS messed up and created a backlog of 400,000 files.

[thedude6752000 360]

I just spoke with Numbers USA, the most prominent anti-illegal immigration group. I told him about the letter and emailed it to them. I discussed having them feature this letter on their website.

https://www.numbersusa.com/content/

Edited November 1, 2013 by thedude6752000

[Kaylara 814]

Ok, can get get a final wording on the petition, etc and get this petition on the White House website? The holidays are coming, and these people are going to get to be with their families, something that is not true for most of us.

[Kaylara 814]

Sent to Michelle Obama.

[Blueberry Pancake 311]

Sent to Michelle Obama.

Kaylara, I'm lost... what was sent to Michelle Obama?

Btw, you rock girl. Everything you do is very appreciated.