Grim future awaits legal immigrants - Pull up your socks

[pappu]

Please contact IV if you wish to volunteer

[arunmohan]

Pappu:

It is really a great post.

I went to AZ Senators (John Kyl and John Mccain) office 2 months back, I am planning to go again to their offices after July 4th week.


Our group is a scatter group. We need to get united. Otherwise nothing will be happened.

I would request to everyone from this group to try to meet their senators and congress members.


I am somehow agree with Simple 1 statement. We should to go for short term goals.

1. Removing all EAD conditions (including future renewals) for example: after 12 months of I485 pending.

2. 5 year EAD/AP at the 2nd renewal.

Once things start improving, we can ask for following

- Exempt (current and future) homeowners from visa cap which also remedies the root cause of current economic woes by addressing the foreclosures and excess supply of homes on the market
- Exempt family members of EB immigrants from the visa cap
- Allow the recapture of 215,000 unused Employment Based (EB) visas numbers from previous years lost due to bureaucratic delays
-Eliminate per country quotas
- Increase over-all annual visa numbers to 450,000
- Exempt Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) graduates of accredited U.S. colleges and universities from the visa cap

[ItIsNotFunny]

Pappu,

Great and well compiled post. Fact is that this is a community effort and not 1 or 2 persons effort. Unless we all work together, we can not expect any changes. Irony is, most of the victims have already entered into pschycological "Comfort Box" with their current situation. They just don't want to do anything and rely on some "Magic" to make situation better. It is not going to happen, we have to make it happen.

Why we are not united?

1. Only thing I agree with Sanju is - we have fraction of our mind behaves like "Educated Illiterate". Members are not able to understand that till we keep bickering among EB2 vs. EB3 etc, we are not going to achieve anything. I have seen a lot of grouping when EB3 people only want to discuss their problems and heavy retrogression and EB2 people are literally ignoring those threads. This is not going to work. We need to understand that any problem is our problem and we need to work together to fix it.

2. Clear agenda for fund-raising. In past, I have seen couple of times that when we have clear agenda to achieve something, fund raising is much more easier. By saying that we need money for lobbying is little vague. What Pappu mentioned in his first post on this thread, we have some agenda. If we start with some low hanging fruit and mention that we are only going to work on agenda "X" (for example, visa recapture) for next 3 months and will spend 80% of our funding for it, I bet we will have much better fund raising then talking very generic.

3. When we say, this is not 1 or 2 people's job, we need everyone involved. Its a typical management concept that if people feel that they are really involved in some activity and being informed whats going on, it gives much better output and productivity. In past, IV was little shy of sharing any kind of information. We have improved a lot recently and started sharing some information with members. This will definitely get some positive outcome - may need little time.

My 2 cents.

[boldm28]

I hear what everbody is saying and want to do something about it ,
here is just a thought it may or may not work but we can try .. instead of asking members to contribute money , what happens if they get free money for say opening a bank account
can they then donate part of that money to IV , just eg

if you open an account with ing and deposit 250
$ then the person who opened account gets 25$ and once the account is set he can withdraw the 249$ and keep 1 $ there .. same goes for opening a ing checking account
you get 50$ .. just one of many ideas i have in this economic times....
every $ counts so once you get 75$ i am sure you can donate atleast 25$

[WeldonSprings]

Eliminate per country quotas
• Increase over-all annual visa numbers to 450,000
• Allow the recapture of 215,000 unused Employment Based (EB) visas numbers from previous years lost due to bureaucratic delays• Exempt Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) graduates of accredited U.S. colleges and universities from the visa cap
• Exempt family members of EB immigrants from the visa cap
• Exempt (current and future) homeowners from visa cap which also remedies the root cause of current economic woes by addressing the foreclosures and excess supply of homes on the market.

I think we need to just focus on the red colored item. The reason I am saying this, is that every generation has their struggles on immigration, just like ours, so we should just focus on ours.

For example, in 2005 246,000 in EB category got Green cards, because of recapture of prior year unused visas and that happened due to the REAL ID act.

So, let's focus on either getting the-
1. Rcapture Bill passed by Sen. Menendez. This will feature again because E-Verify and other religious visas expires in Sept. 30. Conservatives will again try to squeeze another six month extension.

2. Pass ID act- Introduce an amendment for Immigration.

[theshiningsun]

thx pappu. i promise that i will contact my senator immediately after 4th of july.

pls make this thread sticky so that it remains on top.

thx,

[gc_on_demand]

Our demands are not too much than illegals. They are asking for green card for which they broke law if we ask just one thing then we may end up lessar. Let say if we ask only recapture then they may give recapture with 10 year installment .. where you will go from there ? ? IF CIR Passes this year or next then no more immi relief for 2 decades .. mark on ur wall.

[shyamkishore]

Hi Fellow IVians,

I have been following IV for quite some time now and I have contributed also. I will be contributing more and would like to get involved in other activities also.

Please let me know how do I proceed. I live in Herndon, VA. I tried sending mail to the local chapter but the mail did not go thro.

As somebody said earlier I am in, whatever it takes.

Thanks and Regards,
Shyam

[valuablehurdle]

Great Post, Pappu !!
I am definitely in.

I am in PA. Is there a way to contact the PA chapter? I want to know the action plan. My contact information .. phone # etc is there when I registered to Immigrationvoice wesite. Any help !!

Probably this is our LAST chance and we should give it a final thrust...

[ronhira]

Cannot stop from saying this now.

Everyone here is a strategist. Every proposed organizational strategy aligns with the personal situation, not for everybody who is waiting in queue. I see that folks with early priority date of 2002-03 just want re-capture, for adjudication of their own case. Given the size of the EB backlog, just recapture won't even take Visa bulletin dates go past 2003.

Instead of playing monday morning quaterbacks, is it ok to request everyone to trust the folks who came up with the list of these provisions, who seem to better understand the fix for EB backlogs than the rest of us. Otherwise we will see 20000 suggestions which will most likely end up in heated arguments, destroying the momentum.

Originally Posted by simple1

Hi Pappu,

Great post and Goals.

However, we need to have short term goals that will help us in these bad economic times.

Short term Goals
===========
1. Removing all EAD conditions (including future renewals) for example: after 12 months of I485 pending.

I personally know people waiting with bright product ideas and worried about going fulltime on their ideas due to same or similar condition. Some are holding on to H1 without using EAD. This short term goal will help all.

and possibly
2. Allowing I140 approved holders to apply for EAD/AP immediately.
3. 5 year EAD/AP at the 2nd renewal.

Funding for IV
===========
In addition to general donation account. I think we need to have separate/special/specific donation accounts and "donate buttons" for specific cause. Some people may be willing to donate more for a specific cause/goal. This will also help IV to identify the goal that is mostly in need.

[sundarpn]

Don't mean to go on a tangent...

But is there a plan for a rally in IV agenda? I saw a poll for it a few weeks ago.

I agree that each state chapter meeting with their senators will be a good move. I'll contact my local NC IV representative.

[theshiningsun]

What's you point dude. Get Scared ?
To all fairness USCIS is working per the rules established decades ago. Its the unprecedented number of legal immigrants that entered the county is causing the backlogs and not the USCIS or lawmakers.
Just get in line and wait for GC, its futile to try anything.

if that is the case then why r u on the IV forum buddy?

[freedom_fighter]

With all the piece meals thing, this one should serve everyone.

This can be modified to e.g. Immeidate GC

1. People on H1, working for 5 years , paying taxes
Or
2. People waiting for there GC for 5 years(Right from when they start PERM).

There has to be a standard limit for all the cases, regardless of quota.

[pappu]

The list is as per a well thought out strategy keeping CIR in mind. Please be patient and focus on the effort to raise the profile of our issues rather than pick up on individual demands. You will see a lot more guidance as we follow the progress on CIR.

[Marphad]

No offense meant to anyone particular but I agree with ItIsNotFunny that we should focus and spend all our energy to one single agenda for next couple of months. As a group lets decide what is easiest and most important for us and just go for it.

I will create a new thread with poll to get people's opinion to find easy to achieve and important agenda if I get positive reply on this post.

Originally Posted by freedom_fighter

With all the piece meals thing, this one should serve everyone.

This can be modified to e.g. Immeidate GC

1. People on H1, working for 5 years , paying taxes
Or
2. People waiting for there GC for 5 years(Right from when they start PERM).

There has to be a standard limit for all the cases, regardless of quota.