New York Times wants to hear your immigration story

[tiinap]

Julia Preston is NYT immigration correspondent and put out this call for personal immigration stories:

April 11, 2008, 5:32 pm
Share Your Immigration Story
By Julia Preston

During two years as the national immigration correspondent for The New York Times, I have received many e-mail messages from readers recounting their struggles with the United States immigration system. These readers were often American citizens and legal immigrants who said they were determined to follow the law. Yet they described heavy burdens the federal bureaucracy imposed on them as they tried to play by the rules.
They wrote of being separated from loved ones because of unpredictable backlogs and delays, or immigration officers’ hasty decisions, or inadvertent missteps by family members in the labyrinth of federal paperwork. In some cases, immigrants who spent years completing advanced studies here and had job offers lined up instead left the country because of quotas on employment visas.
The readers described shuttling between United States Citizenship and Immigration Services and the State Department, two agencies that divide immigration tasks in confusing and sometimes conflicting ways. Both bureaucracies, they said, seemed overwhelmed, hobbled by inadequate resources and by a limited supply of legal visas compared to the numbers of immigrants seeking them.
“I think more Americans need to understand how the current system is making things difficult for people who are trying to do things the legal way,” wrote Kelly Phillips, a Coast Guard seaman from California whose husband is Mexican. “I feel that more individuals would do things legally if the manner for doing so was more reasonable.”
Below are stories I compiled from e-mail and interviews of six people, including Ms. Phillips, who are representative of many more Times readers. If you have a story to share about the legal immigration system, please do so by submitting a comment (briefly — a paragraph or two, please)."

http://news.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/11/share-your-immigration-story/

All of us should consider responding.

[amsgc]

Bump! Go ahead and post your stories on the link posted above.

[kalyan]

The Federal Govt knows all these problems including the 3 top people running for president.

The Vice President, Secretarty of state and every law maker knows. People lobbied for it. But yet we are zero'es here not getting the this years rebate checks for families having ITIN.

we can't do anything. wait, watch.

[chanduv23]

Poonam, a very active Tri State member has been featured in this article. Congrats Poonam and thanks for a wonderful job in sharing your story. Lets hope this serves as an inspiration to other members to do something to help themselves.

POONAM SHARMA, 32, Legal immigrant from India, New York
Poonam Sharma came to the United States from India as a legal immigrant with her parents 17 years ago, when she was 15. At the current pace of the immigration system, she will be at least 42 before she receives a permanent resident’s visa.
Ms. Sharma said she had always been careful to maintain her legal status and pay her taxes. On student visas, she completed her education with a master’s degree in psychology from the City University of New York. (As an immigrant, she paid higher rates than in-state students.) Six years ago she obtained a temporary H-1B visa for highly educated immigrants.
She applies her psychology skills at a job with a nonprofit organization in New York assisting students with disabilities.
“I am teacher, counselor, friend to the students,” she said. Part of her work is to help disabled high school students prepare to find and hold jobs once they graduate. “I am an immigrant trying to ensure that American children are employable in the future,” Ms. Sharma said in an interview.
Certain that the United States has become her home, she applied last year for an employment-based green card. The waiting list is about 10 years’ long. While she waits, she cannot change employers or accept a promotion.
“It’s 10 years in limbo,” she said. “I can’t think of my life, of buying a house, of my growth at my company.”
She wrote in an e-mail message: “I went through hell to keep myself legal. But no one cares.”