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

[Kaylara 814]

Last month I requested to get put on the list for the Ombudsman's quarterly report. I got the following response today:

Hi Kaylara – I will happily add you to our stakeholder list, however we have temporarily put our Ombudsman Quarterly Update Newsletter on hold. However, if you are on our stakeholder list, you will continue to receive important updates regarding the work of our office.

Sincerely,

Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman

U.S. Department of Homeland Security

www.dhs.gov/cisombudsman

o_0 Any theories as to why they would have stopped doing their update newsletter?

[Collie 122]

You are more than welcome to use my letters on the blog

[bdrew612 1,071]

Well well well.... it looks like the Ombudmans Office hosts monthly public teleconferences! Here's the link to the page (February's has not bee posted yet). I think we should all join in on the next one.

http://www.dhs.gov/ombudsmans-public-teleconference-series

[Kaylara 814]

I'm fighting it out in the comments sections here: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/31/opinion/fixing-immigration-in-principle.html?hp&rref=opinion If you can join in, that would be awesome.

Also, if you have any other articles that need commentary, please share it here so we can all join in. I think that these comment sections will help us reach people that otherwise would not have any idea what's going on.

[Kaylara 814]

https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/429308911720484865/photo/1

[DvMan 49]

Ombudsman office replied to my email on January 9. They gave me a case number. I called today and they told me my case had not been assigned yet to someone. I cannot believe how completely jacked up USCIS is at the moment. And its their own fault! God forbid amnestly passes....LEGAL immigration will be back to taking 5+ years!

[angeldaemon13 42]

k

“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.

???

There is no quota for spouses, however USCIS creates 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. USCIS is illegally creating a backlog.

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.

Keep in mind, if Amnesty or a Pathway to Citizenship passes, this would increase the backlog at USCIS even further as well serve as a slap in the face to United States Citizens and their Immediate Families.

[bdrew612 1,071]

Hey! One of our awesome VJ members posted a petition on the White House website. Please sign it!!

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/give-us-citizen-i-130-i-129f-petitions-proper-priority/FxWZpJFF