Failure of the USCIS Executive Leadership - Separation of US citizens from their foreign spouses for almost 1.5 years

[Sad.wasi 32]

To: The Honorable Bob Goodlatte – Chairman House Judiciary Committee

Date: November 19, 2013

Mr. Chairman:

Due to the failure of executive leadership at United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the average national processing time for I-130 petitions for immediate relatives of US Citizens has increased to 13 months. I have found that contrary to its stated core values of Integrity, Respect, and Ingenuity, USCIS is ignoring delegated legal responsibilities, mistreating US citizen families, and purposely accruing case backlogs. I am writing you with the hope that the House Judiciary Committee will realize the need to take swift action to remedy the failures of leadership at USCIS.

The form I-130, Petition for Alien Relative, is the first step immediate relatives of US Citizens must complete in order to obtain legal resident visas. Approved beneficiaries still must be vetted by the National Visa Center as well as embassies and consulates around the world before a visa is issued. Bureaucratic delays have directly affected adjudication of petitions for which there is no statutory limitation. 201(b)(2)(A)(i) [8 U.S.C. 1151] Working for family unification should be the first priority of all USCIS decisions.

Despite pilot programs and workload transfers tried in the past, USCIS has never been able to provide I-130 petitioners a transparent process or definite processing times for immediate relative petitions. Documents obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request show that since September 17, 2012 USCIS has taken adjudicators off the processing of I-130 petitions at USCIS service centers (California, Texas, Vermont) and designated all petitions to be routed through the National Benefits Center1. This decision was made knowing that the National Benefits Center was not properly staffed to adjudicate I-130 petitions and was made without a definite timeframe to resume work. Multiple requests for assistance made to Congressmen and Senators by petitioners have shown that USCIS still has no definite timeframe for adjudication of pending I-130 petitions.

According to the most recent USCIS I-130 Petition Performance report, the National Benefits Center completed the processing of only 2,755 petitions in the first two quarters of the 2013 Fiscal Year (October 2012-March 2013). In the same reporting period, the National Benefits Center received 254,890 petitions and has now accrued a backlog of 523,874 pending cases2. I believe the few petitions that the National Benefits managed to process to be limited to expedited cases. Despite announcements of USCIS efforts to dedicate staff to process I-130 petitions in Overland Park, KS, USCIS has failed to train or re-assign staff needed to process this caseload in a timely manner3. After a year of indecision, the I-130 workload is only now being transferred from the National Benefits Center to regional service centers4.

If USCIS Processing tables are correct, there are pending I-130 petitions with priority dates as old as October 1, 2012 which have yet to be processed5. As far back as 2006, the USCIS Ombudsman advised against the accrual of backlogs as “...there are substantial costs involved in storing and retrieving applications as well as the resources expended for follow-ups, customer inquiries, address changes, etc." 6. These financial costs, however, will never compare to the human cost of lost time with loved ones separated by USCIS' continuing inefficiency.

I request that the House Judiciary Committee investigates the needless backlog of pending I-130 Immediate Relative Petitions and direct USCIS to re-evaluate its current adjudication priorities.

Sincerely,

_________________

First Name Last Name

CC:

Alejandro Mayorkas - Director USCIS

Lori Scialabba - Deputy Director USCIS

Maria M. Odom - Ombudsman USCIS

Brandi Blackburn, Assistant Center Director for NBC Division 8 in Overland Park, KS

Nancy W. Guilliams – Director Office of Administration-USCIS

Randy Beers - Secretary DHS

Washington Post

AILA

Fox News (Sean Hannity)

1http://www.scribd.com/doc/145514197/2013-HQFO-00304-Combined-Redacted-Part1

2http://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/Reports%20and%20Studies/Immigration%20Forms%20Data/Employment-based/I130_performancedata_fy2013_qtr2.pdf

3http://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Outreach/Notes%20from%20Previous%20Engagements/2013/May%202013/NBC-AILA-QA-2013-05-01.pdf

4http://www.uscis.gov/news/alerts/workload-transfer-national-benefits-center-service-centers

5https://egov.uscis.gov/cris/processingTimesDisplay.do

6http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/CISOmbudsman_AnnualReport_2006.pdf

Here are the POCs:

1.The Honorable Bob Goodlatte - Chairman House Judiciary Committee

Fax#1: 202-225-7680

Fax #2: 202-225-9681

Phone: 202-225-3951

Email: http://goodlatte.house.gov/contacts/new

Postal: 2138 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515

2. Director USCIS: Alejandro Mayorkas

Fax: 202-272-8118

Email: alejandro.mayorkas@dhs.gov and alejandro.mayorkas@hq.dhs.gov and uscisfrcomments@dhs.gov

Postal: 20 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington DC 20529

3. Deputy Director USCIS: Lori Scialabba

Fax: 202-272-8118

Email: Lori.Scialabba@dhs.gov and Lori.Scialabba@hq.dhs.gov

4. Maria M. Odom - Ombudsman USCIS

Fax: 202-357-0042

Email: cisombudsman@dhs.gov; maria.m.odom@dhs.gov and maria.m.odom@hq.dhs.gov

5. Brandi Blackburn, Assistant Center Director for NBC Division 8 in Overland Park, KS

Fax: 816-350-5785

Email: a. brandi.blackburn@uscis.dhs.gov; b. brandi.a.blackburn@uscis.dhs.gov (http://www.zoominfo....burn/1845657423)

c. brandi.blackburn@dhs.gov; d. brandi.a.blackburn@dhs.gov

6. Director: Nancy W. Guilliams - Office of Administration-USCIS

Fax: 202-272-1553

7. Secretary DHS: Mr. Randy Beers

Fax: 202-295-0870

Email: rand.beers@hq.dhs.gov

8. Washington Post - Letter to Editor

Email: letters@washpost.com

9. AILA

Email: executive@aila.org and newsroom@aila.org

10. Sean Hannity - Fox News

Email: http://www.hannity.com/contact

[JA_Martinez 81]

So guide me please....I print this letter, sign it and send it to the distribution, correct?? sorry, just want to make sure I'm doing this correctly this time! Thank you so so so so much for doing this

[lucybelle 453]

Send email or fax!

[JA_Martinez 81]

Thanks so much...sending it today!

[Kaylara 814]

Tomorrow maybe?

[JA_Martinez 81]

just a note....i got excited and set this up in an email to ship out to the addresses in the POC list....the first and foremost important one to Goodlatte doesn't work nor does the one to the Fox news guy. I had to go out to search for email contact information for them; was lucky. copied/pasted the full email in their email browser mailbox!

i also copied the State of Florida Judiciary Committee....all five of them!

[lucybelle 453]

Did you get an email for Bob other than the contact form??

[JA_Martinez 81]

no, i found my way to his govt website...it only allowed me to send a msg through that site. i've gotten responses from the Florida group so I have 3 of 5 of their email addresses but nothing from anyone on the POC list yet. I'll surely post that back to you as soon as i get anything!

[JA_Martinez 81]

i have copied/pasted the entire letter in the email links in their websites

[Hypnos 6,576]

I was with you up to Hannity; he's a clown.

[AmyWrites 593]

Fox News? Yeah, they care a lot about immigration over there.

[JA_Martinez 81]

Hey I didn't write the letter! Just copied/pasted it from original in to the emails I sent.

[thedude6752000 360]

Fox News? Yeah, they care a lot about immigration over there.

They care about illegal immigration and stopping President Obama, that is enough for us.

[En-oh-eh-to now 147]

I was with you up to Hannity; he's a clown.

Clown or not, he is nationally-televised. That's the kind we want to take up our cause.

[JA_Martinez 81]

I ellaborated in my letter out.....

There are hundreds of thousands of us out here waiting. Families with small children, aging parents, medical needs and way too many who are now financially struggling to survive on their own without their spouses who were forced to return to the US for employment, service, etc, all who filed their petitions unaware of the real timelines. The numbers are growing exponentially of parents not being able to see their child's first steps, not being able to be there when their children are born; people losing their familie's matriarchs and patriarchs, even folks who have in the past barely made it through the long wait only to lose their spouse to death due to illness while waiting for their turn to get through the process. People are literally dieing in this line. God bless us all.

Our wait grows longer every day. Because of the seriousness of this backlog and crisis situations occuring for the families, the number of "expedites" being processed in front of the line are increasing the wait time for those of us who are not (thank God) in urgent situations. I-129F Fiance visas are also being processed ahead of us in 90 days time from petition to visa issuance. Unlike the other hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants now also being processed in front of us, we are US Citizens who are following the defined legal process to join our families together, yet we are all being forgotten and left behind to wait our turn in the (not so true) "first come first serve" processing queues.

My spouse and I are both in our 60's. This process is wasting valuable time in our lives. We have lost so many of our friends and family, my mother is 86; there is great concern that my spouse will never get to be here to spend time with her. In the time we've been waiting, we have both lost family members and friends. Every day for us is precious, every day we wait in this line is one more day we won't get to have with each other. We've both lost our previous spouses and have spent many years alone; we just want to be able to love and take care of each other for the rest of our years. Unlike many people in "the line", we clearly can't look forward to a Fiftieth Wedding Anniversary.

Let me ask each of you this....if this was you, or your adult children, or your grandchildren, or your mother & father, or even someone close to you, what would you be doing right now? How would you cope with this never ending seperation of your family members? How would it feel in the pit of your stomach knowing someone close to you is trapped here without a foreseeable end? We can't go backwards and we can't move forward; we just wait.

PLEASE help us.