USCIS sent me a response on our FOIA

[pappu]

Originally Posted by vine93

Where is the core who advised us to fax letter to USCIS. Please let us know what the action plan is ?

.

Not so fast buddy. We are not on forums 24/7
The thread was posted last night and how can you expect instant reply.
In future if someone wants to reach us if you have any question, it is better to directly contact us rather than posting on the forum as we do not read every post.

A couple of people who got the letters have already emailed us and let us all review the letter to see if we are getting what we need from this request. Let us all agree if we want to pursue this and contribute towards this. Once we have enough people, we can go forward.

[heywhat]

Provided we get clarification of following information ...

1. Priority date
2. When is application called approved .. when visa # assigned or pre-adjuction ?

Please define priority date.

We received your request for information relating to Adjustment of Status applications in the employment-based category. You have specifically requested the number of pending employment based AOS applications, (excluding approved, denied)

[sledge_hammer]

Count me in for the contribution...

[qasleuth]

Originally Posted by sledge_hammer

Count me in for the contribution...

me too

[leoindiano]

May be for 5000$, we need to ask, Run the analysis quarterly and send the details. Since, the query/program is written already, how big a deal it is to run and publish it.

I am in for contribution.

[needhelp!]

I find it weird that they cannot find the info by country of chargeability. That should have been entered when they receipted the AOS applications, right?

[vbkris77]

What we get

1. We get number of EB2,EB3 Primary and EB2,EB3 Dependent applications.

2. From the wordings, I won't be suprized if they give a summarized number from 2001.

But if someone else requested this info broken into PD buckets by month and Year, then I think we need to use that. The letter I sent had that wording, but I never received any response yet.

Here is what we don't get

1. Break up by country - Helps folks in EB3 as ROW is not current

2. Some might have not applied for AOS for various reason like their I140 is still pending, Some companies mandate that. - This could be a small percentage

3. Break-up by PD month& year

More insight is welcome.. Pre-adjudicated cases are not approved cases. So they can't eliminate them..

Originally Posted by needhelp!

I have received a response on my request last year to USCIS for information on number of AOS applications pending. Here it is:
--------------------------------------
February 24, 2009
NRC2008065126

We received your request for information relating to Adjustment of Status applications in the employment-based category. You have specifically requested the number of pending employment based AOS applications, (excluding approved, denied) filed with USCIS since 2001, for each of the following countries and categories:
- EB-2 China
- EB-2 India
- EB-3 China
- EB-3 India
- EB-3 Mexico
- EB-3 Philippines
- EB-3 Rest of the World

Your request is being handled under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C 552). It has been assigned the following control number: NRC2008065126. Please cite th is number in any further inquiry about this request.

In order to extract the information you have requested, a customized computer program will be required. You will be charged for the time it takes to write the program as well as the time involved in running the query to extract the date. You will not be charged for duplication, review and search time. We estimate the cost to be $5000.00. Due to the time and effort involved, you will be asked to sign an advance fee agreement before we proceed with your request. In addition, a deposit of $2500.00 payable by check or money order, must be paid within 30 days of the date of this notification. Please make your check payable to the United States Treasury, Failure to submit the $2500.00 deposit within the time frame given will result in your request being administratively closed.

In order to assure that we provide the information you seek in the format you have requested, we ask that you clarify the information sought. Employment based status is broken down into the following 14 categories.
_____________

NRC2008065126
Page 2

E21 203(b)(2) PROF/EXCPTNL ABILITY
E22 SPOUSE OF ES1 OR E21
E23 CHILD OF ES1 OR E21
E26 203(b)(2) PROF/EXCPTNL ABILITY
E27 SPOUSE OF ES6
E28 CHILD OF ES6
E30 203(b)(3) CHILD OF E36, E37
E31 203(b)(3)(A)(i) SKILLED WORKER
E32 203(b)(3)(A)(ii) PROFESSIONAL
E34 203(b)(3)(A) SPOUSE OF E31, E32
E35 203(b)(3)(A) CHILD OF E31, E32
E36 203(b)(3)(A)(i) SKILLED WORKER
E37 203(b)(3)(A)(ii) PROFESSIONAL
E39 203(b)(3)(A) SPOUSE OF E36, E37

Are you asking tha the information we provide be broken down into the categories listed above, or may we group all EB-2 categories and ass EB-3 categories together?

Please define priority date.

You have asked for information concerning the country of chargeability. This information is not assigned until the application is approved or denied. Since you have requested information on pending applications only, this information is not available.

If you have any questions concerning your pending FOIA/PA request, please address them to this office, Attention: FOIA/PA Officer, or call us at 816-350-5570, or fax any FOIA/PA related correspondence to 816-350-5785.

Sincerely,

T. Diane Cejka
Director

___________________________

I will post a scan tomorrow

From what I understand, they aren't able to get the numbers by country of chargeablility.

Its funny they are asking me to define priority date !

[niklshah]

I am in for contribution...... some information is better than nothing what we have rite now...

[gaz]

http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/C...e_04-27-06.pdf

"On April 27, 2004, the Ombudsman sent an information request to USCIS for a breakdown of data for pending employment-based applications for adjustment of status to be broken down by preference classification, priority date and country of chargeability. This request attempted to reflect similar data contained within the Immigration Annual Statistical Handbook, Chart 5, for completed cases. The Ombudsman’s interest in pending employment-based workload is in part a reflection of the broader issue relating to USCIS’ ability to support the Department of State in accurately forecasting immigrant visa requirements and the visa issuance process."

"This update will enable USCIS to identify 100% of the pending employment-based visa cases. It is anticipated that this exercise will be completed by April 28, 2006. Once this exercise is complete, USCIS will be able to extract data relating to the priority date, country of chargeability and preference classification. USCIS has already entered into discussions with the Department of State to provide this detailed information not only for pending workload but for visa regressed cases as well to allow DOS to accurately manage future visa allocations in regressed workloads."


[updated]
http://www.aila.org/content/fileview...&linkid=162315




so are we getting anything different from what the ombudsman has already requested (and received?)

[FinalGC]

Guys:

Money is not the issue here....if needed I could contribute too....

However, if we take all these letters to the press..and have them run the show for us....also by keeping the confidentiality of the individual....Guys one letter from the guy who was fired from Microsoft made news all across cnn, yahoo and everywhere.....Let the press of US do the job for us....they will make USCIS accountanble. I lilke the idea about taking to the President or Sec of State....actually, if we take to the local Senator...that will be good enough....all these guys are always looking for spice reports like this to make things happen...Hopefully this will bring more transparency from USCIS and they will be forced to report status to the Govt, by which we will also see what we need to see.....

[needhelp!]

vbkris,

We have asked for "sorting by priority date" (updated first post with original letter to USCIS), so we should get the breakdown if we can define "priority date" for them.

Originally Posted by vbkris77

What we get

1. We get number of EB2,EB3 Primary and EB2,EB3 Dependent applications.

2. From the wordings, I won't be suprized if they give a summarized number from 2001.

But if someone else requested this info broken into PD buckets by month and Year, then I think we need to use that. The letter I sent had that wording, but I never received any response yet.

Here is what we don't get

1. Break up by country - Helps folks in EB3 as ROW is not current

2. Some might have not applied for AOS for various reason like their I140 is still pending, Some companies mandate that. - This could be a small percentage

3. Break-up by PD month& year

More insight is welcome.. Pre-adjudicated cases are not approved cases. So they can't eliminate them..

[vbkris77]

I don't know if we stand a chance to define anything here. But if it is requested, I guess, they should give it. But help with Sorting, Are we asking them the actual list or just aggregate numbers?

[hopefulgc]

excellent idea!

Originally Posted by pa_arora

i think if we are paying for something we should have the ownership it too.

lets format a reply saying that 5K is too much for the job...if they can give us their Data Model diagram, we can give them the code in a week without any cost.

[rajeshalex]

1. Let us decide how we need the data. ie what query USCIS has to run

2 make publicity of this .. ie uscis is an agency which should have the data but it is asking us to pay 5K for the data. (president, hillary clinton, aila and whoever else,...)

3 Only getting this data one time wont help us. Like USCIS processing dates , they have to run our query every month on a particular date and publsh it. Otherwise after 6 months or one year we have to pay this money again.

4 Can we appeal to the money asked by USCIS. Anyone who knows more about FOIA

5 Can we request USCIS to give us the table details and tell them we can write the query/program free of cost.


Any other suggestions..

rajesh

[vbkris77]

Its a funny idea that we can help them write a pgm. But be real, It is a gov data and will have sensitive info. It takes money to make money. So lets spend it.. 5K is not a big deal. It is perfectly legal to ask for money when we need info from FOIA.