Some Facts for legal Immigrants

For those of you who are still undecided about coming to the DC rally, please read below:-

Employment Based (EB) Green Card (GC) Laws

• The yearly GC quota is 140K. This includes GC for spouse and children. On an average, GCs are given to ~60K families.

• Each country is allotted 7% (of 140K) GCs (equally distributed among EB-1, EB-2 and EB-3) plus any unused visa from other countries. For India, average numbers of EB GCs issued in last seven years were 32K (~12K families). For EB-3, the quota is around 3800 green cards per year.

• As per USCIS Ombudsman report
o Between 2001-07, USCIS was not able process all applications and hence ~155K GCs went waste as unused GCs in a year can not be reused in following years. This was most likely due to resource constraints.
o The report estimates the submission of 500K-750K (yes 500K+) AOS applications between June 1 and August 17 2007.
o FBI security checks may be the single biggest obstacle to the timely and efficient delivery of immigration benefits.

• There were ~200K pending EB Adjustment of Status (AOS) or I-1485 applications as of June 1st.

• So far EAD renewal has been taking around 3 months. Due to the volume of applications, EAD renewal may take 3-9 months. Thus, you may have to apply for renewal more frequently.

• FBI security check backlog is likely to get worse, because the August USCIS fee increase has prompted a 50 percent rise in new naturalization applications so far this year.

• EB Immigration reform does not have enough support in Congress (failure of SKILL, STEM ..). As a matter of fact, it does not even get enough support to make it debatable, let alone final voting.

• The laws need to be changed and the process improved to fix the situation.

What does it mean?

• There will be around 1Million AOS/I-485) applications by Aug 17 which will take 1M/140K = 7+ years to clear the backlog. Thus, late priority dates will remain retrogressed for several years.

• Some, who could not file AOS by 08/17, may have to wait for several years (5+ years).

• Longer EAD/AP renewals cycle and 1 year validity may have the following affects.

o You will have to stop working, if your EAD is not renewed in time.
o Several employers (and rightly so) may view EAD as a temporary permit and may be reluctant to hire you.

• You have to be in the same position with same job responsibilities for an indefinite time period, otherwise your GC application will be rejected.

• If you were unmarried at the time of filing and planning to bring spouse to the USA upon marriage, you will need to continue on current status (e.g. H-1B) or wait till your PD become current.

Immigration Voice (IV) Executive and Legislative Efforts

• Lobbying is an efficient tool to influence law and rule making.

• IV was very active in lobbying for CIR 2006, which was passed in senate.

• IV grass-root effort (flower campaign + San Jose Rally) was an important reason for retraction of July Visa Bulletin.

• Due to upcoming presidential elections, next congress session in October’07 may be our only window of opportunity for several years to influence the lawmakers.

Your options: a) Struggle for several years b) Leave USA c) Help yourself by joining IV and coming for the DC rally.