Number crunching letter to senators

[Collie 122]

Fellow VJers, I know that everyone is frustrated with USCIS and I decided to do a little number crunching today to include in my letter to my senators and congress. If you want to use the body of the letter for your own use, please feel free to do so, but I think that it is worth taking a look at the bullet points. It makes me even more appalled and frustrated with USCIS. I apologize if the formatting in the letter is weird. It is copied and pasted from a Word document.

We haven't heard any recent approvals from this forum and it just isn't acceptable.

Dear Senator Cruz,

I reached out to you by letter on August 4^th 2013 to request assistance with a pending immigration case (I-130 petition for an immediate relative), that I have filed on behalf of my parents. The I-130 petitions for xxx and xxx were filed with a priority date of March 28th 2013.

The receipt numbers are xxx and xxx.

On November 14^th 2013, I received a notice of action from USCIS stating that both cases had been transferred from the National Benefits Center to the Nebraska Service Center in order to “facilitate more timely processing”, (Please see enclosed). The letter also stated that if I did not receive a decision within 60 days, I should contact customer service. The 60 days deadline will come to fruition on 1/13/2014 and I still have not heard of any advancement on the pending petitions.

When I called USCIS customer service on 1/3/14, I was advised that my petition was still within normal processing times and that petitions were being processed with a priority date of February 13^th, 2013. This is a disturbing figure as according to the USCIS government website, petitions approximately 30 days prior in September 2013, were being processed with a priority date of February 12^th, 2013. This is equal to an advancement of one day within the space of a month and is simply unacceptable.

Additionally, the volume of petitions that are in limbo nationally and at service centers around the USA is increasing by the day, but despite USCIS statements where they claim to be putting all efforts into facilitating more timely processing, the actual figures published by USCIS do not reflect this.

I have illustrated these figures below in bullet-point form to support my concerns. Please note that the most recent data published is from October 2013.

• The National goal to process an I-130 petition from start to finish is 5 months, yet the national average claims to be 8.7 months. If USCIS are only processing from February 2013 at a time of January 2014, this average is false. A more representative average would be approximately 11.5 months just to get the petition approved and moved to the National Visa Center.
• The current number of pending I-130 petitions sitting in the system that have not received adjudication is 379,068. Between September 2013 and October 2013, the number of pending cases increased by 6%.
• Between February 2013 to October 2013, the case-load increased by 60%.
• In contrast the volume of petitions that were adjudicated nationally was 7%.
• Nebraska service center showed an adjudication rate as of October 2013 of 1.6% which was equal to a mere 10.8 applications being completed daily. Compared to the 20,358 pending at the Nebraska Service Center, this is simply unacceptable.
• Texas service center had an even more appalling completion rate of 0.27% of all petitions pending. An average of 0.68 petitions was processed daily. This means that they did not even complete ANY applications on some days during the month of October 2013.

Even more disturbing is the fact that USCIS is holding $159 MILLION dollars in processing fees from petitioners. Considering the facts that I have stated above, I am appalled that these people at USCIS are being paid and holding US citizen’s money to ransom when they are not even doing the job that they are being paid for.

I am a member of an online immigration forum where it has been observed that USCIS are now attempting to adjudicate petitions out of priority date order in an effort to portray shorter processing times. This manipulation of data does not reflect the reality in that the real processing time is at least 11.5 months.

I urge you, on behalf of myself and my fellow United State citizens who have petitioned for their immigrant relative to investigate why petitions are not being adjudicated by USCIS in a timely manner, in accordance with honoring their legal obligation as outlined in section 201(b) of the Immigration and National Act. This act was put in place to put all I-130 petitions as a priority above others in an effort to reunite foreign relatives living abroad with their United States Citizen family member.

I am aware that you are a family-oriented person and I am certain that you can appreciate the emotional turmoil and stress that separation from family can cause.

I appreciate your time and assistance in any information that can be provided with this case.

Sincerely,

xxx

Phone: xxx

Email: xxx

[canadian_wife 1,822]

Sorry, but how are they holding your money ransom?

And isn't that the point of a goal...something to strive for? If it was not a goal then wouldn't it be the average?

Your letter seems accusatory and full of statistics that you do not indicate where you derive them from? Did you do the math yourself? What is your source? It is great to put the math in but unless you substantiate it, it is all numbers with little relevancy.

I know this is a frustrating situation and I believe you write letters as your constitutional right. however, if you want your voice heard, I suggest you reformat your arguments.

good luck

[christeen 966]

I would add a footnote to indicate where you derived your statistics as they cannt be quoted unless they are able to be verified. I would alo send to media outlets and reporters...

[Collie 122]

My source as stated is from the uscis website. I have bar charts, statistics and graphs to include but due to formatting can't put them here.

[Koekoe 13]

thanks collie

i will gonna copy and sent to my congress man.

my question is i have no congress man email

all i have is his assistant email.

should i sent it to her???

thanks again

[Collie 122]

if you go to www.senate.gov you will be able to find your senators email/fax etc. Even if it just goes to someone in the office who will do the grunt work, its better than not sending a letter at all