Is IV discussing EB/Housing crisis issues with lawmakers

[HawaldarNaik]

I think its high time now that we do something more concrete rather than send flowers/Pijjjaaa/ Vada Pau/ Pau Bhajeee/Medhu vada etc etc....

Form small teams who will start interacting with men who matter...make a roadmap among themselves and start discussions or convince the men who matter that its high time we get things moving

I am willing to be part of a team/core group that will escalate it to the concerned people rather than taking of flowers/bhelpooreee etc etc....

[jsb]

Originally Posted by wizpal

I don't know how to open a thread to run a poll to track the number of people ready to send flowers to white house/president to highlight our case to buy houses if there is a a provision to approve GCs on a fast-track basis. With a substantial fast track fee (>4000 dollars) and 20% down payment toward house payment, we have a strong case. If we get hundreds of people ready to send to flowers, may be IV can make it an action item.

In overall picture of the country for housing and financial fix, number of EB's waiting for GC is miniscule. Giving every EB waiting a GC is not going to instantly change the mindset of the rest of the US people. People are not buying homes, because those who would have bought homes in 2008, 09, 10...bought in 2005 and 2006, as they didn't want to be left out, moving demand forward. Now we have a lot more homes and demand for years to come. Home prices will stay soft for at least 5 years.

[krishnam70]

Originally Posted by gcnotfiledyet

http://www.ailf.org/lac/lac_lit_visab.shtml
http://www.murthy.com/ailf_lawsuit.html#Update6

They obtained authorization to file the lawsuit. They had it prepared to file and received good response from possible plaintiffs. It was possibility of good strong case by AILA that deterred USCIS to reverse the decision without a formal lawsuit. This is exactly what we need to further our cause. USCIS could care less about other petty tricks. They will only understand language of laws/court. For that we need congress to pass laws favoring us.

Our decision to send flowers was initiated around 2-3 July and the first of flowers were booked to be sent the same day.

follow this thread
http://immigrationvoice.org/forum/sh...ght=krishnam70 (Gandhigiri to DOS)

the talk of AILA filing a law suit was around 3 week of July and murthy about the same time. The flower campaign got quite a lot of attention and it did play its role

What we need now is not another flower campaign but something else. We could take the suggestions of other IV members, may be sending a letter is not a bad idea with some extra postage stamps to help out the USPS since they also reduced some of their services due to funding issues. How about sending few $$ donations to the military fund any public fund to be used to spending.

We need to consolidate all these threads in to a single one and start working on it and quickly.

'While the jews argued about whether the romans were right or wrong they got sacked'. so lets have some focus and get something underway

- kris

[svr_76]

Yes I think we should also try to see if non-immigrant people who have already bought a home they should higher priority date than people buying now. Also given the case of ailing auto industry add buying American car in the list too.

[pappu]

Originally Posted by albertpinto

There is no doubt that IV has done a lot in the past and IV has great potential.
but why does everything come down to funding and lobbying ..can't we do anything without money ??
as I mentioned above IV has done a lot in the past but it is very very quiet now !!
say lobbying costs a million dollars ...it will take 100 years to raise that much money
how much money does it cost to come up with a new campaign or to announce a new campaign ???
I know my post will attract red dots etc ..but I am close to the point where it is either do something or wait for it to happen

You can run a campaign to contact media about this concept and get articles and interviews published. This would not cost money and would only require volunteer effort. You can start from your local paper and then try to increase it to other papers nationally.

Please lead such an effort and get other like minded members with you. That may help get publicity for the idea. You can also write some op-eds and get them published on this issue.

Pappu no need to ask People to do something. We all, includiing me want others to do the work and we just want to make annonymous remarks blaming IV. We must admit that we really like doing this. The original poster Endlesswait came to the site and blamed IV for not doing anything and went away without doing anything. This dude AlbertPinto is just saying many times that IV is not doing anything but is not doing anything himself. You have asked him to do somehing, let us see if he really does something.

Like others, I will also not do anything and will be here to give my 2 cents. This is the easiest task we can all do. Isn't it?

[pappu]

Originally Posted by albertpinto

o.k. Thanks for your reply
so are you trying to say that IV is so disappointed that it will not do anything at all ?

Never said that.
IV is you and me. Please take the initiative and lead the effort if you feel strongly about your idea. You can start by doing a media campaign and generate articles on this subject.

[Administrator2]

Originally Posted by albertpinto

I know you never said that. but your recent comments seem to imply that.
I am guessing that either you are IV core or very close to it.
so can I just ask ... is IV planning any campaigns at all in the near future (i.e. in the next 2-3 months) ?

albertpinto,

At this time we have request for interview from over 7 highly reputable media outlets including NPR Marketplace, NY Times, LA Times, AP. We have asked members to interview if they feel anxious about the current state of the affairs. Can you guess how may responses we have recd till now? Is this not part of the effort/campaign? There are few members who will spend whole day discussing sending pizza or fight over tracker data. But we struggle to find sincere members who are ready to interview with the top media outlets. This indicates to us, either everybody is extremely comfortable with wherever we are and no one is feeling the pain, or just 2-3 of us feel the anxiety due the economic slow-down. If over 30 members can discuss for a period of 3-4 days about sending pizza, and the objective is to attract attention for our provisions, then is it not possible to achieve the same with the available media opportunities. Getting media opportunities is a difficult job. And its extremely frustrating to see lukewarm response to the action items and request for help from the members. Please understand that there are many aspects of our advocacy effort. We may be focusing on a specific aspect at a particular time, and its possible that you want us to work on something else. It doesn't mean that we are not working on a specific campaign right now. So I am baffled by your question of doing a campaign in next 2-3 months.

It is possible that next month we may see new bill from Sen. Grassley and we may have to re-adjust our effort to respond to such a bill. Political events are not predictable, but we have to respond to every developing situation. We are always very sincere in the community effort, so I request to please support the effort, even if you do not agree with it 100%. And please participate in the action items, because they are always part of planned activity and is not an abrupt absurd idea.

Campaigns are not based on a specific provisions, even when everyone of us sees it in that light. Provisions are the end product of every campaign. But to achieve our provisions, there is a long drawn process, which includes multiple stages. I am not able to list all the stages in a single post. But I will encourage you to see this document -

http://immigrationvoice.org/media/Ho...tLawmakers.doc

[lahiribaba]

Originally Posted by longwait4gc

I agree with you that this is not big enough to stop the entire crisis. But look at the cities where there are lot of immigrants. I can give you one example where it could make huge impact.
Seattle (King County) home of Microsoft has a housing inventory of 8600 single family homes around 1200 condos. It takes 10 months to clear up the inventory.
Microsoft applied around 2K new H1B last year. So my guess is it might have applied around 8k in last 4 years. Lets assume 60% of those didn't GC's. So around 5k people waiting in the line. Lets say out of which 4K didn't buy a house and are willing to buy a house. So 4K new buyers in a market which has 10K units. If every one buys house in next few months then the months of supply will become 6.
There lot of other companies located in this area which also apply for H1Bs.

So the point is immigrants can save or make big enough impact some housing markets.
Revival of housing market revives the economy. May be we should identify those markets and talk to those senators.

Well the Government might be moderately interested but I doubt Microsoft's executives will be .. they will simply push more jobs to Hydrebad instead of Seattle.

Originally Posted by albertpinto

no comments ?
people we are coming close to the situation where it is "do or get fried ".

I disagree that the situation is very bad.

It is bad only for those that are laid off on H1B. All others have EAD and are happy. They will realize the bad situation only when they cannot take a promotion or salary raise or cannot change job due to same and similar. Or if I485 gets an RFE or denial.

If the situation was bad, more people would be serious about your idea including you. Even you are not willing to do anything yourself other than asking others to do it. So this is the fate of immigrant community. We all do not want to do anything ourselves unless we ourseves are in a bad situation.

[EndlessWait]

reality is, a contraction of US growth of this magnitude was never anticipated...there is strong fear of deflation!

its a do or die situation for immigrants. regardless of the visa status EAD , H1, L1, B1...or Z1.. the only hope of us to get a temp fix which helps the housing/eb crisis..

[sanju]

Originally Posted by albertpinto

In short, what I am trying to say is members are doing what they can in these tough times. Definitely they can and will do more if we have some directions or flexible campaigns.
we have what we have in terms of participations, donations etc ..why not have an easier campaign (flower/letter) which will get maximum participation and also show that something is happening.
as for media campaign ..sooner or later more confident speakers will come forward (who knows ..maybe many present members are not confident speakers or media shy)

Originally Posted by albertpinto

The problem that we (including myself) have is work life is more hectic and tense now, since layoffs are happening in front of our eyes. and hence if we have campaigns like going to DC or to go for media interviews ..it is very difficult.

Wow how did I miss this one. So you only want campaigns that are easy, flexible, not difficult, something we can do without moving our a$$, something that doesn't involve speaking with anyone including reporters, lawmakers/decision makers etc etc. Well thats too many specifications for how and which type of campaigns you want to participate. Do you expect Senators and Congressman to log on to this forum to find out the problems albertpinto is facing because he is a good guy, right?

I agree things are going to get real VERY VERY bad soon. Things that most us find difficult right now will sound like cake walk as compared to what we are about to experience. So hang tight, we are in for a ride that no one has experienced before. I think things will be so tough that in the future we will remember these times as good times. So design your specifications for the "easy" campaigns and feel good about writing on some blog expecting some Senator will read your post and notice your competence to FedEx you your green card. For now lets count those fantasy land easy campaign of yours.




.

Originally Posted by albertpinto

here is one way we can bring attention to this issue without spending a dime and without travelling hundreds of miles to DC
there is a blog on Reuters about housing ..just post your messages ..the more the merrier. here is my post.

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debat...ousing-crisis/

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Thanks

Oh really?

So you think writing some annonymous comments on some website will be a good campaign to draw attention?

So you will not contact any reporter for your idea. You will not want to travel to DC or meet any lawmaker with your idea. You will only write annomymous comments and blame IV.

I wish campaigns were so easy. I feel the reason why you are not serious is because you already have EAD.

Originally Posted by EndlessWait

reality is, a contraction of US growth of this magnitude was never anticipated...there is strong fear of deflation!

its a do or die situation for immigrants. regardless of the visa status EAD , H1, L1, B1...or Z1.. the only hope of us to get a temp fix which helps the housing/eb crisis..

So your solution is to open a thread with new annonymous ID and blame all Telgus for your problems

http://immigrationvoice.org/forum/sh...t=24064&page=5 (Telugu flooding the cause of visa retrogession for EB-I)

I saw that you posted with your ID and then deleted it to avoid being caught. Now tell me who is fake?

Why dont you do something instead of blaming IV and Telgus

Originally Posted by albertpinto

all we need to do is tell congress / USCIS / president / home builders - that No GC means no immigrant will buy their bloated inventory of homes

Have you told anyone of these (congress / USCIS / president / home builders) yet?

If not then no point accusing IV as if everyone is your servant. Because you are the kind of person who want others to work hard for you while you will do nothing and only complain. You were asked by IV to lead and at least contact reporters, but you do not want to do that and keep complaining.

Why don't you lead and inspire everyone by your example first?