USC Green Card Petitioner's Committee--Organization and Agenda Moving Forward

[angeldaemon13 42]

Idea.....http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/immigration/roundtables

[fatblackcat 8]

Ok...revised letter:

“If an amnesty is passed without provisions to reduce USC I-130 wait times those of us currently waiting from late last year (2013) and new USC I-130 filers could be facing wait times of more

than 1 year just for an I-130. This cannot be allowed to happen.”

-visajourney member

US Citizen and Family Unity From Abroad

Many United States Citizens are currently living in the United States, separated from their families. Whether they had been abroad for travel, work or relationship.

These citizens is someone's husband or wife, separated from their spouse and young child/children. Some returned to the United States to establish domicile, some returned to provide for their family abroad, some are living abroad, and filed a petition for Alien Relative. They are waiting for their I-130 petitions to be approved.

The current waiting time as indicated on USCIS website is currently 8.9 months....

JUST FOR THE PETITION

While they wait, their spouse and/or child/children are under intense scrutiny to enter the U.S., even for a brief visit. In the end, it is up to Border Control to allow you in. Doing so, one must provide ties to said country of origin. If it is brought up at the Point of Entry that one is in the process of immigrating, you must still prove the intent is not to live in the United States.

Persons already in the States can become engaged to a US citizen and are allowed file to Adjust Status and they can stay in the country. The relationship is not bona fide nor established. Yet, families have the burden to demonstrate the intent is not to move while completing the process.

In a nutshell, once the petition is filed, our foreign spouses are often advised by legal counsel against visiting the US while the petition is being processed. Even after we start the process to immigrate our family member legally, we are still subject to intense scrutiny and possible rejection to visit family members in the United States.

A K-3 spouse visa was originally introduced to allow the foreign spouse of the U.S. citizen to enter the United States on a temporary visa while awaiting processing of the I-130 immediate relative petition to backlogs that would cause you to wait years. Children of the foreign spouse were allowed to enter on K-4 dependent visas. This was to help reduce family separation time.

At the current time, only the I-130 immediate relative petition is being processed by the USCIS. If a spouse/Petitioner has filed for the K3, it is basically obsolete. Once K3 is processed, it is then married up with the i-130 with reduction of wait time but rather, increased wait time because of today's backlog.

Family members should qualify to immigrate to the US under a reasonable time frame.

They should not have to compete with other immigrants

who are coming to the US for employment; DREAMers or DACA's.

Current USCIS backlog:

USCIS were flooded with "Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (“DACA”)" petitions. This program was signed into law and on August 15, 2012 they started processing this paperwork which basically pushed I-130's to the sidelines.

Then March 2013, Provisional Unlawful Waivers were introduced. “certain immigrant visa applicants who are spouses, children and parents of U.S. citizens (immediate relatives) can apply for provisional unlawful presence waivers before they leave the United States. The provisional unlawful presence waiver process allows individuals, who only need a waiver of inadmissibility for unlawful presence, to apply for a waiver in the United States and before they depart for their immigrant visa interviews at a U.S. embassy or consulate abroad. “

This is only available to undocumented immigrants who can prove that their immediate family members would suffer "extreme hardship" in their absence, among other criteria. USCIS did not have an estimate for the number of people it expected to apply, but could impact as many as one million of the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. http://fusion.net/justice/story/white-houses-change-immigration-process-families-15378

The change will cut down on the amount of time that some undocumented immigrants are separated from their immediate family members during the journey to legal status. So instead of spending months or even years abroad, a person may face as little as a few weeks outside of the U.S.

What about US Citizens and their Immediate Family?

For US Citizens and Spouses, there is no waiting list. Yet, the petition takes an absurd amount of time. For example, Nebraska Service Center, up to 8.5 months. If you are lucky, you have not received an infamous Request For Evidence (RFE) which could delay you longer. The petition is to check validity of your Bona fide relationship in which you have to prove this again at the interview stage. The petition also does a background check which is redundant because in the instructions, the beneficiary (spouse) must provide bio data from their passport.....from the country of origin in which they do a check before they issue your passport and later in the process must provide a police clearance at the the exit interview at your Embassy.

???

If you have your receipt number, you can go to the USCIS website and see processing times. USCIS average processing times vs Service Center your case may be sitting at and no matter what day you check it, still says last update as of October 31, 2013. Your case is in the midst of all other immigration cases.

Meanwhile,,,,Mom and Dad are chatting on Skype, missed another wedding Anniversary, dad missed his daughter's first tooth or James' first day of school, waiting to hear something, anything, when they possibly can go to the next stage so they can ALL be together.

US Immigration Reform 2014 should be to overhaul and prioritize legal Immigrants rather than fixing first the illegal immigrants

This is not the first time USCIS experienced a backlog of this magnitude. Due to September 11, 2001, many changes were made due to Homeland Security. It was a very tragic event, not just for the US but around the world. USCIS created the Backlog elimination Plann, updated June 2004. One of it's points in regards to the i-130.

Form I-130.

USCIS has formed an Action Team to streamline

the immigration process for eligible family members of United

States citizens and permanent residents. The long-standing

process first requires adjudication of a Petition for Alien

Relative (Form I-130) to determine if a relationship exists that

comports with the statute. Once that petition is approved, the

applicant either files for adjustment of status to permanent

resident in the United States or files for an immigrant visa

abroad at a United States Embassy or Consulate, where the relationship

issue is again adjudicated. USCIS is exploring ways

in which to eliminate the duplicative effort that the current

process mandates.

It is now 2014. there is yet another backlog. In this day of technology, this process should be more streamlined. It states it was exploring in 2004 how to eliminate the redundant steps in this process and 10 years later, USCIS and the I-130 is no further ahead. At whose expense.

Maybe eliminate the Petition, raise the fee for the actual Visa Application to help eliminate the backlog or reinstate the K3. Assess cases on 3 categories:Low, medium and high risk. Foreign spouses are known immigrants. Easy to track through US spouse whereas fiance's are unknown. We have to clear Police/Background 3 times in the process when we have been married and can prove bona fide relationships!

If you can travel to the United States under a Visa Waiver Program and stay for 6 months for a visit, or come from Canada as a Snowbird for 6-8 months and have no intent to move when you are allowed to have a rental home in the United States and a home in Canada but you can not adjust Status to be as a family because you can no longer apply for K3 visa due to USCIS backlog?

Immigration Reform wants to try to grant Amnesty to the millions of illegals.....this is only going to be a recurring program when the system is not overhauled because it doesn't promote those who are doing it legally and suffer for insane amounts of time while it seems others are rewarded and yet, Dad misses out on another family holiday, mom wanting to tuck her children at night or Susie waiting to go for ice cream with bother her parents.

Conclusion

As United States Citizens and their respective immediate family members, we are asking you to at least look into the backlog/delays for family unity. We are not every other immigrant and we should have a streamlined process different and simpler than policies used across the board, whether it be USCIS or National Visa Center.

We ask you to not overlook and allow our cases to collect dust. We ask our cases be adjudicated in a timely manner. We ask for transparency and consistency. We ask that we not be separated from our loved ones for such along period of time and make the process easier to bear.

A few additions...

One thing that has made things harder for us is the Patriot Act, which impedes us from caring for our loved ones by placing barriers on giving our spouses access to our finances, like opening a joint account in the US. FATCA which is meant to make the rich pay their fair share of taxes has made it hard for us lower and middle income americans to open accounts overseas.

I would add another argument with respect to processing time of I-130. There is no quota for spouses, however the USCIS is illegally creating quotas by throttling the petitions. Lets suppose, if they only process 5,000 a month, they are creating a quota of 60,000 a year.

[thedude6752000 360]

May be we should send a harshly worded letter about USCIS number fudging/lies and 130 delays with well supported data to all US District attorneys (93 of them , hopefully at least 1 would take interest to nag USCIS) ,US Government Accountability Office and Whitehouse Office of Management and Budget... Inquires from these offices cannot be taken lightly by USCIS..

I second this idea.

[angeldaemon13 42]

Doing some research to see how we can make noise.

Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security

The Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security shall have jurisdiction over the following subject matters: immigration and naturalization, border security, admission of refugees, treaties, conventions and international agreements, claims against the United States, Federal charters of incorporation, private immigration and claims bills, nonborder immigration enforcement, other appropriate matters as referred by the Chairman, and relevant oversight.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, Chairman; Rep. Ted Poe, Vice-Chairman Rep. Smith (TX) Rep. Lofgren Rep. King Rep. Jackson Lee Rep. Jordan Rep. Gutierrez Rep. Labrador Rep. Garcia Rep. Holding Rep. Pierluisi

here are some links;

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/subjects/immigration/6206

https://www.numbersusa.com/content/congress/phone-numbers-and-mailing-addresses-memb.html

http://www.fairus.org/action/fair-field-representatives

http://goodlatte.house.gov/

[maksimov 15]

A supplemental strategy: make it known on visajourney.com (and other sites) that once your I-130 petition is past the "normal" processing time of 5 months, an inquiry by your congressman will get a response at USCIS.

If enough congressional offices get flooded with enough constituent requests, someone might notice.

[Hotter Otter 1,211]

Do you guys consider creating a petition on https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/ ? The White House will review it and respond to the petition after it gets 100,000 signatures. Do you think we can pull this off? Do we have enough signatures?

On a side note, sign this petition if you think Justin Bieber should be deported.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/deport-justin-bieber-and-revoke-his-green-card/ST1yqHJL

Petitions are a nice idea but there have been at least two I've seen on here related to the I-130 backlog and they have not had a great number of signatures. Sure we all care about the delays as do our families but the general public who are unaffected don't care enough to sign sadly.

[bdrew612 1,071]

I agree, we need to move beyond the petitions. I don't think bombarding USCIS with case inquiries is particularly a great idea, as that could only cause more delays with actually processing petitions.

Why don't we all reach out to our congressperson with our case, get to know the staffers (I think that was mentioned previously in this thread), and tell them our story. It's also a good opportunity to let our congressperson know that we do not support amnesty (at least, not without adressing this backlog FIRST).

I also second bck's idea.

[angeldaemon13 42]

I got it, I have seen it work....anyone with Twitter? We pick a day, soon and tweet about i-130 reform. We ALL use the same hashtag. #Reformi130. The more people, the more tweets, this hashtag will trend. When a topic trends, media notices. Whose in? i got some going already.

Edited January 29, 2014 by angeldaemon13

[Kaylara 814]

I suggest going with the #I130 tag as there are already a bunch of lawyers using it. I'm on twitter, and the I130 petitioner's committee already have an account as well. We also have an account of FB.

Info is in my signature, please feel free to add me.

[angeldaemon13 42]

kk fixed hashtag to #i130

i got a my first follower....Marco Rubio News....LOL

[bdrew612 1,071]

Funny! I sent Marco Rubio a tweet yesterday lol

[angeldaemon13 42]

If you follow me, you can retweet my tweets as well.

[Collie 122]

I don't have twitter but I will make an account just for this

I sent recent faxes and snail mail letters to my congress and senators in Texas that included the dismal processing numbers and facts for USCIS, including John Cornyn, Kay Granger, Ted Cruz. I just got a reply back from Cornyn last week saying that he will take the concerns into consideration as the 113th Congress is coming up soon.

[Kaylara 814]

Oh, I've been on there tweeting for months, and have managed to get several news outlets following me. I post the graphics from the dashboards as well. I know that others have also been using the hashtag #FamilyUnity. If anyone else has Twitter, let's flood it with tweets about the situation. Also, seriously, FB is a great place to discuss this issue because you can actually explain things. I go into every Meme/discussion on there that I can find about the immigration situation and put my two sense in. I also go into every article I can find about the immigration situation and comment. I don't even need to embellish things, I just tell my story and that I'm one of hundreds of thousands. Get the word out, believe me, even most people who are opposed to immigration think our situation is deplorable.

Aside from that, I'm strongly advocating a legislative fix for this situation. It's clear that we can't let the USCIS self regulate these things. We need to remove their ability to behave in this way. We are in a good situation for identifying the ways in which the USCIS behaves and wording that would be needed to avoid it in the future. This, I think, would be the best option for actually fixing the situation permanently instead of just having them shift it to another immigrant class. I think that we should include the K1's in this, as they are the most likely to be similarly effected, and if they shift the workload to us, they will probably do so by backlogging the K1's. That's not okay with me.

I don't have twitter but I will make an account just for this

I sent recent faxes and snail mail letters to my congress and senators in Texas that included the dismal processing numbers and facts for USCIS, including John Cornyn, Kay Granger, Ted Cruz. I just got a reply back from Cornyn last week saying that he will take the concerns into consideration as the 113th Congress is coming up soon.

Excellent! I think that we all need to contact our state representatives regarding this. Let's see if we can come up with a good letter stating our cases. Let's make it detailed, focused, and articulate.

[Hotter Otter 1,211]

The Twitter plan sounds a good one, I might have to join for all this activity, I've been resisting it for years.

Not going to start posting what I've had for dinner or following people who are famous for making a sex tape though lol