USC Green Card Petitioners' Committee

[deleteme 34]

This thread is for U.S. Citizens and their foreign spouses, living abroad, who have petitioned, or will petition the U.S. government, to grant legal residency, an IR-1 or CR-1, otherwise known as the 'green card' for our foreign spouses, so that we may be re-united in the U.S.

Our beliefs are:

1. We expect our government to honor their legal obligation to 201 (b) of the Immigration and National Act, as amended. The law establishes their duty to expeditiously adjudicate the petitions of U.S. Citizens for their foreign spouses, their children and their parents, to obtain legal residency, above all other immigration priorities.

2. When our government fails to honor the letter or spirit of this legal obligation, we will employ any lawful method to highlight their breach of the law, and pressure them to remedy the breach.

Our reason for forming this committee now, is that recently, our government has established new policies, and made management decisions that have been adverse to us. In particular, we object to the way by which they changed processing of standalone I-130s in 2013, which has extended our waiting times into the unforeseeable future. As late as January-February 2013, the median length of time for I-130 approvals was 90 days. As of today, the USCIS's projected length of time for processing an I-130 petition is 16.6 months, not counting U.S. Dept of state processing of our spouses' visas.

We also object to their concealment of their change in their organization of I-130 processing.

In this thread, we will organize ourselves. We can discuss strategy, divide and assign research or promotional tasks and engage in other efforts.

Edited October 13, 2013 by alaskafan

[deleteme 34]

Our first project is to announce to the Director of the Overland Park facility that we exist, to state the facts and our objections, and to notify as many influential persons and organizations that we can.

The following link takes you to the letter to the director, and explains the strategy and what you can do to help.

http://uscgreencardpetitionerscommittee.blogspot.com/

[A&K_2013 16]

Hey great job on what you've done. I was also thinking you should post this to USCIS' facebook page

[The Beekeeper 1]

Our first project is to announce to the Director of the Overland Park facility that we exist, to state the facts and our objections, and to notify as many influential persons and organizations that we can.

The following link takes you to the letter to the director, and explains the strategy and what you can do to help.

http://uscgreencardpetitionerscommittee.blogspot.com/

i read the following link, and i must say it's a good work

but imagine if you were the Director of the Overland Park facility, what would you do?

i think this request would be taken into consideration, but still it's just a letter, work will proceed as normal.

as a Director: Would you approve all the pending petitions at the stroke of a pen skipping procedures?

they will say we can wait, no need of expediting the process since we are not in a life threatening situation

that's just my opinion, others can disagree

Edited October 13, 2013 by The Beekeeper

[quitepainful 56]

You know, i was thinking the same thing, as a director of department, i too would be following marching orders from higher up... its like you get a letter from a customer for saying you are doing something wrong at work, but you did what your boss told you to do... so how do we proceed? how do we get Brandi to relay our message or help advocate for us...

was also thinking, what if she is not married or doesnt have the same beliefs as we do for the holly matrimony and the sanctity of marriage (no idea if that made sense, but go with it)... then what ?

we need to make sure we also think of this from the other side and plan accordingly...

[deleteme 34]

i read the following link, and i must say it's a good work

but imagine if you were the Director of the Overland Park facility, what would you do?

i think this request would be taken into consideration, but still it's just a letter, work will proceed as normal.

as a Director: Would you approve all the pending petitions at the stroke of a pen skipping procedures?

they will say we can wait, no need of expediting the process since we are not in a life threatening situation

that's just my opinion, others can disagree

1. We're not asking for approvals at the stroke of a pen. I believe that they know what they can do to improve the situation. We've just not been a high a priority to them - for example, they did not have to decide to discontinue the current I-130 processing process before the Overland Park facility was ready to start adjudicating. That shows negligence, a careless disregard for the people they are inconveniencing.

2. In her shoes, what would you do? I think if a few Senators were making inquiries about the conduct of USCIS, and a few news stations were calling you on the phone about 'the letter', you might take notice, and act with more attention to the situation.

Hey great job on what you've done. I was also thinking you should post this to USCIS' facebook page

Great idea. Maybe eventually we should paste the link to their facebook page several times a week.

[lucybelle 453]

I'm glad you're doing this. Will the letter change everything overnight? Of course not. But it's a start.

I filed from abroad and according to the AILA meeting earlier this year, my petition should have been approved in under 60 days. When I bring this up with USCIS they all just tell me I'm wrong. I contacted my congressman who gave me the generic "you need to wait 6 more months" (bringing it to 12 months) email. I want everyone to get approved and I don't mind waiting longer than 60 days, but why even say this if it's just a blatant lie?

Although we obviously don't have every single person who applied on this forum, but since about May of this year there have been very, very few approvals. Most February filers are waiting, and almost all March and on filers are waiting.

[Kaylara 814]

Would you like regular non-influential non-politician people to be able to sign their support for us? Because I can get butt loads of those people to back us up.

[LoveMyTico 999]

Would you like regular non-influential non-politician people to be able to sign their support for us? Because I can get butt loads of those people to back us up.

What about starting a petition on Change.org? copy and paste the blog letter. Then send it to everyone here.. and on VJ facebook.

just a thought

[En-oh-eh-to now 147]

At last, I-130 petitioning Vj'ers have had enough! We're sick and tired of waiting for the "flood of approvals" week after week. All we've seen so far is a trickle. Thinking that it is just around the corner, we wait while weeks turn into months! We're certainly not going to just wait around while some petitioners approach one year (even a handful are beyond one year)!

I would like to start a petition on https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/‎ when the time is right (and once the government funding allows the page to function). Though reaching the required threshold will not be easy, the symbolic value of filing an official petition to the highest office in the United States of America could be worthwhile.

If anyone else wants to grab this responsibility, be my guest. If not, I'll borrow content from the letter addressed to Ms. Blackburn. Of course in this case, we'll address the Commander-in-Chief himself.

[Kaylara 814]

At last, I-130 petitioning Vj'ers have had enough! We're sick and tired of waiting for the "flood of approvals" week after week. All we've seen so far is a trickle. Thinking that it is just around the corner, we wait while weeks turn into months! We're certainly not going to just wait around while some petitioners approach one year (even a handful are beyond one year)!

I would like to start a petition on https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/‎ when the time is right (and once the government funding allows the page to function). Though reaching the required threshold will not be easy, the symbolic value of filing an official petition to the highest office in the United States of America could be worthwhile.

If anyone else wants to grab this responsibility, be my guest. If not, I'll borrow content from the letter addressed to Ms. Blackburn. Of course in this case, we'll address the Commander-in-Chief himself.

I was just talking about this with my grandmother. I think that if we can get help from the people here on visajourney, we can get the required number of petitions to have the White House look at it. If you want, En-oh-eh-to, I think that we should work concurrently. If we have permission to use this letter, or come up with something similar to submit, I think we can meet the threshold. I have a lot of people on-board with helping me with this, and there's a large chance that those people will get others to sign.

[Kaylara 814]

That didn't post the way I wanted it to... My response was:

I was just talking about this with my grandmother. I think that if we can get help from the people here on visajourney, we can get the required number of petitions to have the White House look at it. If you want, En-oh-eh-to, I think that we should work concurrently. If we have permission to use this letter, or come up with something similar to submit, I think we can meet the threshold. I have a lot of people on-board with helping me with this, and there's a large chance that those people will get others to sign.

[En-oh-eh-to now 147]

I was just talking about this with my grandmother. I think that if we can get help from the people here on visajourney, we can get the required number of petitions to have the White House look at it. If you want, En-oh-eh-to, I think that we should work concurrently. If we have permission to use this letter, or come up with something similar to submit, I think we can meet the threshold. I have a lot of people on-board with helping me with this, and there's a large chance that those people will get others to sign.

Well, we would need to appeal to all Vj members, even those who have not filed I-130 petitions, if we are to have any chance at meeting the threshold of 100,000 signatures in 30 days. Of course, this would need to go viral to get that kind of attention. For comparison, another petition pushed on this site reached 600+ signatures, but for sure, this will be a more organized movement.

[I & B 273]

Good job. Keep up the good work!

[Kaylara 814]

Good job. Keep up the good work!

Perhaps we should contact people ahead of time and set a date to start the petition for the white house on a particular day to try to ensure that we'd have enough signatures? I think that if we can get the word out to the right places, we'd be able to do it. Social Networking could definitely work in our favor.