Massive IV campaign for Administrative fixes

[pappu]

Massive IV campaign for Administrative fixes


Dear Members,

Immigration Voice is starting a massive campaign to get administrative relief for our community. We have had several fruitful meeting with the administration in 2007, some of these meetings were scheduled in September, November and then in December. In these meetings, we were able to convince the administration about the implication and hardship due to current broken system. Since Congress has not been able to address our issues in 2006-07, we were successful in creating a case for administrative fixes that would give much needed interim relief to EB community. These meetings helped us start a conversation on possible administrative fixes like 3 year EAD-AP, clearly defining “same or similar” if AC-21 is invoked, and we are hearing favorable feedback.

Due to lack of action on legislative front our community’s patience is running out and we want some relief urgently to get out of probationary status. We are thus starting this nationwide campaign that will help our advocacy efforts and get administration to act quickly. There are several components to this campaign.

1) Support from lawmaker offices: We urge all our members to meet their lawmaker offices and get them to write to The President in support of administrative fixes and urging for an immediate administrative relief. The template of the letter is attached. Letters from lawmaker offices to administration get far more attention as compared to anybody else writing the same letter. The template of the letter is posted below. Please request lawmakers to give you a copy of the letter or lawmakers could copy IV on their letter to The President. Here is a template to write to your local congressman and senator: http://immigrationvoice.org/forum/showpost.php?p=212511&postcount=6 (Massive IV campaign for Administrative fixes)

2) Support from employers: We urge all members to approach their employer and have them send a letter to The President expressing support for our administrative fixes and appealing for an immediate relief. The template of the letter is attached below. Please request your employer to give you copy of the letter so that you could provide IV with the copy of the letter.

3) Plea from our community: We urge all our members to write personalized letters to The President directly and convey their plight. If you would like to write your own personalized letter, please do so with your own story. Make sure to stick to the administrative fixes we have listed in the letter template and how these fixes could help you and your family. Please put your name and address in your letter. Anonymous letters will not be delivered and will be discarded. We request that you create 2 copies of your letter. One copy should be posted to The President and the second copy should be sent to Immigration Voice mailbox address at –

Immigration Voice
P O Box 1372
Arcadia, CA 91077-1372

You can write your own letter or use one of the LETTER TEMPLATES below. Be sure it includes the key points.
http://immigrationvoice.org/forum/sh...86&postcount=5 (Massive IV campaign for Administrative fixes)
http://immigrationvoice.org/forum/sh...83&postcount=2 (Massive IV campaign for Administrative fixes)
http://immigrationvoice.org/forum/sh...84&postcount=3 (Massive IV campaign for Administrative fixes)
http://immigrationvoice.org/forum/sh...85&postcount=4 (Massive IV campaign for Administrative fixes)
http://immigrationvoice.org/forum/sh...12&postcount=7 (Massive IV campaign for Administrative fixes)


The deadline for receiving all the letters is 1st March 2008. Our plan is to collect thousands of letters that we will also receive in IV mailbox and deliver them, along with the letters from employers and lawmakers across the country, during our meeting with the administration. We believe that this will make a necessary impact to strengthen our case and gather the necessary political will required for administrative fixes. We will also try to get media coverage for this campaign and draw national attention.

Please inform all your friends stuck in greencard retrogression and have them participate in this effort. Please post information about this campaign and link to this thread to as many sites, blogs you can so that we can get extraordinary scale of participation. The success of this effort will depend on the collective sincerity of the entire EB community to get letters from lawmakers, employers and members of the community. Immigration voice is counting on each and every member and it is in up to each member to make this campaign a success and help us to improve our and our families’ lives.
Reminder: Pls mail 2 letters

1) (copy 1)please send a separate letter to the President.
2) (copy 2)Send a copy of that letter to IV. After the letters are sent to the President, IV will have a meeting with senior administration officials. In that meeting we will carry the copies of the letters and deliver to them.

============================================

Pls feel free to change the text of the letter and personalize it if you wish. If you wish to include your story and attach a photo copy of your degrees, patents, awards, please do so. Just make sure to include the information on provisions we are trying to push.

If you are handwriting the letter, your writing should be legible. If nobody can read your writing, then it will defeat the purpose. Write the letter in such a way that the key points are easy to read. If you would like to use rules, bold text, highlighters etc... go ahead and do it.

We all need to be as creative as possible to make this campaign a success.

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Everyone that took part in the IV lobby day in September 2007 should get in touch with the lawmaker offices now and request them for letters. If you have met your local lawmaker offices through state chapters or on your own, it is time to visit them again for this request.

[pappu]

LETTER TEMPLATE #2

<<Date>>

The Honorable George W. Bush
President of the United States
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500


Dear Mr. President:

I write today to urge you to fix America's broken legal employment-based immigration system. Currently, more than 500,000 skilled individuals who contribute to the American economy through their hard work in high technology, scientific research, medicine and other fields find themselves trapped in a process that is hopelessly backlogged.

If nothing is done, hundreds of thousands of immigrants will wait years or even decades in a process that was never intended to take so long. While comprehensive change will require legislative action, your administration can implement administrative remedies to improve America's competitiveness, eliminate bureaucratic inefficiencies, and improve the quality of life for these legal, highly-skilled immigrants.

Sir, I came to the United States of America <<NUMBER>> years back. I graduated from <<UNIVERSITY>> with a Masters in <<FIELD>> and I have a Bachelor’s in <<FIELD>> from <<UNIVERSITY>>. After completing my Masters, I started working for <<COMPANY>> in <<YEAR>>. I am currently working as a <<POSITION>> with <<COMPANY>>. While in many respects I live the American dream of participating in a thriving economy, the dream is still incomplete because under the work visa provisions my wife of <<NUMBER>> years cannot work inspite of having a <<QUALIFICATION>>. Many people I know are contemplating moving to other economies of the world to take advantage of a fairer immigration policy. In other circles I am also aware of developing nations trying to lure back their citizens to boost their Research and Development potential.

Attracting and retaining the best and brightest minds from around the world is in America's best interest. In February 2006, your Domestic Policy Council issued a report on the American Competitiveness Initiative that recognized the importance of employment-based immigration. The report stated: "The President also recognizes that enabling the world's most talented and hardest-working individuals to put their skills to work for America will increase our entrepreneurship and our international competitiveness, and will net many high-paying jobs for all Americans. The United States benefits from our ability to attract and retain needed immigrant and non-immigrant students and workers, and it is important that America remains competitive in attracting talented foreign nationals."

You can advance your stated objective by making common-sense administrative reforms to fix a system that is clearly broken. Implementing much-needed reforms will also free government resources to focus on pressing national security matters. For example, current rules require the Department of Homeland Security to renew the Employment Authorization Documents (EADs) of hundreds of thousands of legal immigrants each year as those immigrants wait for green cards and permanent residency in the U.S. Rather than renew these EADs annually, the government could renew these documents every three years, freeing countless hours that could be better spent serving the Department's mission.

The greatest impact of the broken green card process is borne by the legal immigrants and their families. There are more than half million highly-skilled legal immigrants already working productively in the United States who find themselves trapped in a system that is taking years longer than intended. During this wait for a green card, these immigrants remain trapped in a legal maze, unable to change jobs - even within the same employer - without starting the arduous immigration process over again, and subject to waits that grow longer and longer.

We implore you to exercise your authority to implement administratively these much-needed reforms.

1. Recapture administratively the unused visas for permanent residency to fulfill the congressional mandate of 140,000 green cards per year.
2. Revise the administrative definition of "same or similar" to allow slight additional job flexibility for legal immigrants awaiting adjudication of adjustment of status (I-485) petitions.
3. Allow filing of Adjustment of Status (Form I-485) when a visa number is not available.
4. Implement the existing interim rule to allow issuance of multi-year Employment Authorization Documents (EAD) and Advance Parole.
5. Allow visa revalidation in the United States.
6. Reinstate premium processing of Immigrant Petitions.

I earnestly urge you to implement these administrative remedies without delay, otherwise many immigrant families who came to USA legally to become a part of the “American Dream”, will continue to stay in a limbo. Your help is urgently needed. Your action will also fulfill your stated goal of attracting and retaining highly-skilled legal immigrants from around the world, eliminating bureaucratic inefficiency, and improving the lives of future Americans already living and working legally in the United States.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Respectfully,





<<Full Name>>
<<Address>>
<<Phone Number>>

[pappu]

LETTER TEMPLATE #3

<<DATE>>

The Honorable George W. Bush
President of the United States
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

My name is <<FIRST NAME>> <<LAST NAME>> and I have been living as a tax-paying and law-abiding individual in the United States since <<YEAR>>. I work for <<COMPANY>> in <<CITY>> <<STATE>> as <<JOB TITLE>>. Although my employer intends for me to continue working permanently, the green card process so severely backlogged that I will wait another <<EXPECTED WAIT YEARS>> before becoming a permanent resident of the United States.

Waiting in this probationary limbo is really starting to affect the quality of my life. It is an unnecessary burden to keep renewing temporary visas year after year and face an element of risk every time I return from international travel; but the worst of all is that wait times are becoming longer and longer, sometimes 6-12 years, and I will be forced to start the entire process over again if I choose to accept a promotion anytime in between. The broken legal immigration system is badly in need of fixes.

Mr. President, your Domestic Policy Council has recognized the importance of employment-based immigration in the February 2006 report on the American Competitiveness Initiative which states:

"The President also recognizes that enabling the world's most talented and hardest-working individuals to put their skills to work for America will increase our entrepreneurship and our international competitiveness, and will net many high-paying jobs for all Americans. The United States benefits from our ability to attract and retain needed immigrant and non-immigrant students and workers, and it is important that America remains competitive in attracting talented foreign nationals."

I appeal to you, Mr. President, to facilitate the retention of the best and brightest from around the world by executing the following administrative fixes as an immediate interim measure:

• Recapture administratively the unused visas for permanent residency to fulfill the congressional mandate of 140,000 green cards per year.

• Revise the administrative definition of "same or similar" to allow slight additional job flexibility for legal immigrants awaiting adjudication of adjustment of status (I-485) petitions.

• Allow filing of Adjustment of Status (Form I-485) when a visa number is not available.

• Implement the existing interim rule to allow issuance of multi-year Employment Authorization Documents (EAD) and Advance Parole.

• Allow visa revalidation in the United States.

• Reinstate premium processing of Immigrant Petitions.

I am only one among over 500000 highly skilled immigrants represented by Immigration Voice, and we are all counting on you to give us this much needed breathing room while we wait in line to live our American dream.

Thank you very much for considering my requests.

Yours Sincerely,

<<NAME>>
<<ADDRESS>>
<<PHONE NUMBER>>

[pappu]

LETTER TEMPLATE #4


Dear Mr. President:

I came to America in pursuit of opportunities, educational and economic. I have stayed here <<<NUMBER OF YEARS>>> years, received a graduate degree in <<<FIELD OF EDUCATION>>>, contributed positively to the <<<INDUSTRY OF WORK>>> industry, bought a home and become a part of the society I live in. I have found that the US economy yearns for my skills as a <<<JOB TITLE>>> and would like me to stay and contribute as a permanent resident. Yet the US immigration system has failed to reconcile with this need. I stand in line to become a permanent resident in the US and face a decade long wait before my turn will appear. The specter of such a wait poses a question I have to answer soon. Do I chase my dreams as an innovator in another economy, unburdened by the indignity of a decade long wait? Or do I shackle my aspirations for the future promise of a life in America?

Mr.President, I believe you can remove the burden of difficult choices these questions impose by helping me believe that America welcomes and values my skills, talent and aspirations. You can help rekindle the hope that that I can wait for my turn without compromising on my right to a fair and dignified immigration process. Mr.President, you can restore my faith in the immigration system and in America by implementing administrative reforms to:


* Recapture administratively the unused visas for permanent residency to fulfill the congressional mandate of 140,000 green cards per year.
* Revise the administrative definition of "same or similar" to allow slight additional job flexibility for legal immigrants awaiting adjudication of adjustment of status (I-485) petitions.
* Allow filing of Adjustment of Status (Form I-485) when a visa number is not available.
* Implement the existing interim rule to allow issuance of multi-year Employment Authorization Documents (EAD) and Advance Parole.
* Allow visa revalidation in the United States.
* Reinstate premium processing of Immigrant Petitions.


The above reforms are simple and yet can have far-reaching effects on my life along with those of a half million others. These are urgently needed to fulfill your stated goal of attracting and retaining highly-skilled legal immigrants from around the world, eliminating bureaucratic inefficiency, and improving the lives of future Americans already living and working legally in the United States.


I thank you for you attention to this matter.


Respectfully,


<<< FIRST AND LAST NAME >>>
<<< ADDRESS >>>
<<< PHONE NUMBER >>

[pappu]

"Letter Template #1":

Date:

The Honorable George W. Bush
President of the United States
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

I write today to urge you to fix America’s broken legal employment-based immigration system. Currently, more than 500,000 skilled individuals who contribute to the American economy through their hard work in high technology, scientific research, medicine and other fields find themselves trapped in a process that is hopelessly backlogged. If nothing is done, hundreds of thousands of immigrants will wait years or even decades in a process that was never intended to take so long. While comprehensive change will require legislative action, your administration can implement administrative remedies to improve America’s competitiveness, eliminate bureaucratic inefficiencies, and improve the quality of life for these legal, highly-skilled immigrants.

Attracting and retaining the best and brightest minds from around the world is in America’s best interest. In February 2006, your Domestic Policy Council issued a report on the American Competitiveness Initiative that recognized the importance of employment-based immigration. The report stated:

“The President also recognizes that enabling the world's most talented and hardest-working individuals to put their skills to work for America will increase our entrepreneurship and our international competitiveness, and will net many high-paying jobs for all Americans. The United States benefits from our ability to attract and retain needed immigrant and non-immigrant students and workers, and it is important that America remains competitive in attracting talented foreign nationals.”

You can advance your stated objective by making common-sense administrative reforms to fix a system that is clearly broken.

Implementing much-needed reforms will also free government resources to focus on pressing national security matters. For example, current rules require the Department of Homeland Security to renew the Employment Authorization Documents (EADs) of hundreds of thousands of legal immigrants each year as those immigrants wait for green cards and permanent residency in the U.S. Rather than renew these EADs annually, the government could renew these documents every three years, freeing countless hours that could be better spent serving the Department’s mission.

The greatest impact of the broken green card process is borne by the legal immigrants and their families. The more than half million highly-skilled legal immigrants already working productively in the United States find themselves trapped in a system that is taking years longer than intended. During this wait for a green card, these immigrants remain trapped in a legal maze, unable to change jobs – even within the same employer – without starting the arduous immigration process over again, and subject to waits that grow longer and longer.

We implore you to exercise your authority to implement administratively these much-needed reforms.

• Recapture administratively the unused visas for permanent residency to fulfill the congressional mandate of 140,000 green cards per year.

• Revise the administrative definition of “same or similar” to allow slight additional job flexibility for legal immigrants awaiting adjudication of adjustment of status (I-485) petitions.

• Allow filing of Adjustment of Status (Form I-485) when a visa number is not available.

• Implement the existing interim rule to allow issuance of multi-year Employment Authorization Documents (EAD) and Advance Parole.

• Allow visa revalidation in the United States.

• Reinstate premium processing of Immigrant Petitions.

I urge you to implement these administrative remedies without delay. Action is urgently needed to fulfill your stated goal of attracting and retaining highly-skilled legal immigrants from around the world, eliminating bureaucratic inefficiency, and improving the lives of future Americans already living and working legally in the United States.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Respectfully,

<<Name>>
<<Address>>
<<Phone Number>>

[pappu]

Please find your local congressman at http://www.house.gov

The Honorable Senator/Representative XXX
<< address>>

Re: Administrative fixes to alleviate issues faced by highly-skilled immigrants in <<state>>

Respected Senator/Representative <<lastname>>,

I am a constituent and an employment-based highly-skilled immigrant. << fill in your bio in 2-3 sentences max>>. I'm also a member of Immigration Voice, a non-profit grassroots organization working to fix the issues faced by highly-skilled immigrants like myself. Currently a million employment immigrants and their families are stuck in a backlog due to insufficient numbers and USCIS processing delays. It may be 6-12 years before these immigrants will be able to receive their green cards, if the immigration system isn't reformed.

Though Immigration Voice is interested in seeing legislative fixes passed by US Congress, it may take a long time for an agreed immigration reform to pass. Considering this fact, Immigration Voice has proposed the following points to President Bush's administration to fix some of the issues administratively. I urge you to support our cause by writing a letter to President Bush, as follows, to implement these administrative fixes without further delay.

"

Respected President Bush,

I urge you to implement the following administrative fixes immediately to help the highly-skilled immigrants waiting their turn in a severely backlogged system.

1) Recapture 218,000 unused visas wasted over the past few years administratively, in line with Congressional intent of providing 140,000 visas annually to our community.

2) Flexibility in the USCIS interpretation of "same and similar" jobs, to allow promotions and job mobility. Current USCIS rule is restrictive and pushes the applicant to the end of the line, if they accept promotions.

3) Allow filing of 'Adjustment of Status Applications', even when visa numbers are not available. This will not create an increase in visas, but will allow a number of immigrants to avail the benefits of changing jobs while waiting for their visa numbers.

4) Increase the period of Employment Authorization Document (work authorization) and Advance Parole (travel permit) to 3 years instead of the current practice of 1 year. This will reduce the burden on USCIS and on immigrants. It will also make travel to an immigrant's home country easier during emergencies.

5) Allow visa revalidation in the US as before. Currently, immigrants have to travel to their home country to renew their visas. If it was performed here in the US, it would be helpful in making it easier to travel back and forth during emergencies.

6) Restart premium processing for I-140 applications. Now that USCIS has cleared the receipting backlog, premium processing should be made available. Without it, many immigrants are unable to extend their stay beyond 6 years, if their labor certification was applied for after the completion of their 5th year of stay in the US.

"

Respectfully,


<<Full Name>>
<<Address>>
<<Phone>>
<<E-mail>>
Web-site : http://www.immigrationvoice.org

[pappu]

The campaign has begun. Lets all unite and make it successful. There is very slim chance of any legislative relief until after the Presidential elections. This is our best shot at this time.

Letter Template #7

<<Date>>
The Honorable George W. Bush
President of the United States
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

I write today to urge you to fix America's broken legal employment-based immigration system. Highly skilled professionals in various high-technology fields currently facing a long wait of 6 to 12 years, find themselves trapped in a legal maze, and are unable to advance in their careers. Changing jobs, even with the same employer, means the process must be started over again.

Mr. President, you can make changes that would impart fairness and dignity to this arduously long process and improve the quality of life of these half a million hard-working professionals. Mr. President, I appeal to you to implement administrative reforms to:

• Recapture administratively the unused visas for permanent residency to fulfill the congressional mandate of 140,000 green cards per year.
• Revise the administrative definition of "same or similar" to allow slight additional job flexibility for legal immigrants awaiting adjudication of adjustment of status (I-485) petitions.
• Allow filing of Adjustment of Status (Form I-485) when a visa number is not available.
• Implement the existing interim rule to allow issuance of multi-year Employment Authorization Documents (EAD) and Advance Parole.
• Allow visa revalidation in the United States.
• Reinstate premium processing of Immigrant Petitions.

The above fixes are urgently needed to fulfill your stated goal of attracting and retaining highly-skilled legal immigrants from around the world, eliminating bureaucratic inefficiency, and improving the lives of future Americans already living and working legally in the United States.

I thank you for your attention to this matter.

Respectfully,



Name:

Address:

[rajuram]

/\/\/\

[singhsa3]

I will be meeting my lawmaker office on coming Wednesday or Thursday. Anyone from NJ wants to accompany me?

[maine_gc]

I request all IV members to participate in this action item. Not only yourself please encourage your friends and colleagues to participate in this campaign. Let us make it a big success

[chanduv23]

Contact your lawyers, have them send this message to their clients and also have them post this on their website.

Reach out to your friends, urge them to send letters, ask them to send this to their friends - do not sit back and relax till they do it.

Post on community websites, blogs, post this message on notice boards, distribute fliers and post fliers on grocery stores and other places.

Keep spreading the message - JUST DON'T RELAX.

Contact other organizations, contact media personnel, contact influential personnel, contact community leaders, contact students associations, contact fellow American citizens.. Spread this message to everyone.

THIS HA TO BE THE BIGGEST CAMPAIGN IN THE HISTORY AND THE SUCCESS LIES IN THE HANDS OF OUR MEMBERS.

WITH UTMOST HONESTY AND SINCERITY PLEASE HELP IN THIS CAMPAIGN WITH YOUR FULL MIGHT.

[dollar500]

I was curious if there are any legal repercussions of this kind of letter to the president himself.

[chanduv23]

Originally Posted by internet

No need to worry.
People write letters all the time to the president and first lady, FBI, USCIS, etc etc when they are stuck in namechecks.
The thing is why should be force ourselves to write letters when we are in deep sh** like namechecks ourselves.
Why can't we do it when we can do it as a large group of people and not being selfish for once. I think this is our chance to stop being a lone voice when nobody hears us. In this campaign we can show how important our issue is and how desperately we want it to be fixed.

BTW I am going to post a handwritten letter. I have heard it works better.

Very good idea. Hand written letter - way to go. Everyone can do this.

Maybe we can write with blood(just kidding)

[hopefulgc]

i have nothing better to add..
i am just excited to see some action going ...

GO IV GO!!!

[venky08]

my letters are on the way GO IV GO...