Shout Out Loud Or It Will Get Much WORSE

[Palladin 18]

OK, folk who have their K-1/CR1/IR1 cases pending:

The bad news is the long wait is going to get worse, MUCH WORSE. Don't presume that the now more than 5 month wait for NOA2 is acceptable. Based on the statistics of the trend it will soon reach one year wait and then keep growing. UNLESS SOMETHINGCHANGES at USCIS. And unless you shout out loud and complain loud, nothing will change. We are a small group amoung all immigration applications, so that means we have to shout even louder.

This is what I am going to send to Congress. Do your own part, folks.

Dear US Representative:

I am writing to you to complain about the government bureaucracy at the USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) whose policy sets the wrong priority and hurts US citizens like me and many others in similar situation. I do NOT need help my individual case this time. But there is a situation where the USCIS sets the wrong priority and gives preferential priority to illegal immigrants, over US citizens. This is just so wrong especially when US citizens are hurt because of the inferior service they receive. I know you are a strong advocator of fair immigration policy reform, so I hope you listen to what’s going on.

When a US citizen falls in love with an alien and wants to form a family. They can either get married overseas then petition for an immigrant visa to bring the alien spouse in, or they can choose to file an I-129F petition for a non-immigrant K-1 fiancée visa to bring their fiancée in to get married in the US, then apply for a resident card for the alien spouse. The K-1 visa is not an immigration visa: it has more restriction than a regular B-2 visitor visa: you are only allowed one single entry into the US, for a duration of no more than 90 days, for the sole purpose of getting married with the original US citizen who petitioned you. If no marriage occurs, then the alien must leave within 30 days.

The K-1 visa petition process used to be very quick and easy. The Congress wants to make sure it is NOT the government’s business to interfere with the fundamental human rights how a US citizen pursues his/her personal happiness. A US citizen has a right to marry any one he/she prefers, and bring the loves one, if an alien, to live in the USA. Number of aliens moving to the USA through marriage with a US citizen is a small percentage of all US immigration each year, but a very important part of our immigration policy to preserve the basic civil liberty of US citizens.

However, in recent times, the K-1 petition process has become unbearably long because the USCIS sets the wrong priority and divert resources away from K-1 processing, to process cases that effectively grant amnesty to illegal immigrants in the US. Just a year ago, K-1 petition takes about one month and mostly less than two months to process. Recently approved K-1 petitions have been waiting for more than five months! If current backlog buildup continues, it looks like a K-1 petitioner just filed today could wait for one year for approval. After approval it still takes about 3 months or more for the file to be transferred to a US overseas consulate before the alien fiancée could obtain the K-1 visa, all just for a mere non-immigrant visa good for 90 days. It’s just un-acceptably long for any people newly falling in love and can’t wait to get together to start a new family.

Not only that the K-1 wait time is unbearably long, the newly formed relationships are often times under serious test, because there is always the dreaded prospective that after the long wait, the US overseas consulates frequently find excuses to ultimately deny visa to the alien applicant, crashing the dreams of the couples to ever live together, breaking hearts. One person commented that US consulate in Guangzhou, China loves to give K-1 visa denials like giving out candies! Once a visa is denied and a case is returned to USCIS, because of a loophole, the alien fiancée, haven done nothing wrong, could be permanently banned from ever entering the USA ever! Because of these, our government has effectively gotten into the business of interfering with the basic civil rights of US citizens to freely pursue their happiness and choose their life partner, forcing them to abandon their loved ones. This is so disturbing to the point that recently a class action lawsuit was launched against USCIS. See the following link:

http://www.prweb.com/releases/K1-Fiance-Visa/US-Embassy-Consulate/prweb4157054.htm

But the USCIS treats illegal aliens already living in the USA much better than how it treats our citizens!!! After the Haitian Earthquake, USCIS grants so called TPS (Temporary Protected Status) to Haitians currently living in the USA illegally. See the New York Times article below:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/16/world/americas/16immig.html

We are a compassionate country and I am for humanitarian causes. But Haitians illegally living in the USA never suffered from the earthquake. Why should they rip benefits from the suffering of their country fellows? If deporting illegal aliens back to Haiti is inappropriate, then simply temporary suspend such deportation would be sufficient. Why grant the illegal aliens TPS legal status and work permit so they can take away jobs from struggling Americans? Historically all TPS effectively lead to amnesty. Has US Congress granted such an amnesty? What it hurts most is that such amnesty applications get the preferential treatments over the K-1 petitions filed by citizens. For example in September, 2010 there was such a rush of I-821 (TPS) applications the backlog was 116,045 cases pending, but USCIS processed 87,312 such TPS cases that month, so the average wait time for these illegal alien applicants is only about 40 days. Mean while boxes containing K-1 cases are set aside un-processed. The citizens have to wait 5 months, 6 months or even longer for their petition to be processed.

As the illegal aliens are already living in the USA, their cases don’t need to be processed in an expedited way at all. The US citizens are separated from their overseas loved ones, every day they are separated is a stressful day, therefore the citizen petitioners deserve to have their I-129F (K-1) cases expedited processed. Why does the USCIS set the priority so wrong? There is not a huge I-129F case work load for USCIS. In November, 2010, there were 21,557 pending I-129F (K-1) cases, a small quantity compare with the TPS backlog, but USCIS completed just 2719 cases of I-129F, a much smaller potato compare with 87,312 cases of TPS that USCIS completed in the same month. In the Vermont Service Center (VSC) there were 10,088 pending I-129F cases but only 866 such I-129F cases completed in the month, that compare with 20,295 cases of I-821 (TPS) completed at the same time. If the trend is not corrected, I-129F cases in Vermont center would now take 10088/866 = 12 months to be processed. All the case files are just sitting there collecting dust, when the case files are finally pulled from the box, it usually only takes 20 minutes for a USCIS agent to process and complete the case.

As the USCIS is begging Congress for money to support the processing of the illegal immigrant amnesty cases, I ask you, my U.S. Representative, to collaborate with your colleagues and inquiry into USCIS why they are setting their priority wrong and dedicate so little resources to process I-129F cases filed by US citizens for their loved ones, and divert such a disproportional manpower away to process illegal immigrant cases that never has need of expedite processing in the first place? I paid $340 fee for my I-129F petition case. This fee is more than adequate to pay for the cost of USCIS to process my case. Why should my money be used to pay for the processing of an illegal immigrant case, while my case is put aside in the dust?

Sincerely yours,

US Citizen Petitioner

P.S. USCIS case load statistics: http://dashboard.uscis.gov/index.cfm?formtype=6&office=6&charttype=2

[rodceasar 34]

Very well stated and I applaud you...

[LGC 2]

dont get work up too much, otherwise the 5 months will be a long,long,long,long,long wait for you, as you know how the US works, even they do start to work on that now, it will be 2020 before they get anything done.

[GeoffandAnna 19]

Why should they rip benefits from the suffering of their country fellows?

Nice letter. Although I would change "rip" in the sentence above to "reap."

[stringged 1]

Thanks for sharing. I personally would tone it down a bit and try to be more diplomatic. It's just hard reading it without making weird faces throughout. Especially true since it's going to politicians not to X company's customer service manager.

[dr_2010 0]

That's trueeee!!!!

I support you in this issue.

Waiting just makes life miserable.

But should we sent this letter to the congress before 5 months period is completed.

Something should be donE

[Al422 221]

We all need to do this and do it NOW!.

Two months from now, the USCIS Director (you know, the guy who claims there is no backlog) will appear before the House Appropriations Committee with his hat in his hand, looking for money. At that time, our Congress Members need to know the truth about this horrible monster and the lives he is ruining; otherwise he will tell them whatever lie he wants them to hear and have them eating out of his hand.

Palladin, with your permission I would like to revise the letter a bit, making it more forceful and the grammar a little cleaner. I will get to it tonight, as I am on my lunch break right now with limited time.

BTW for those of you who think you will have your NOA2 in less than two months, hence this does not apply to you, keep on dreaming. The Vermont Disservice Center is getting exponentially worse each week and will be at a year backlog by this summer if we don't stop this hideous creature.

[Blob18 111]

We all need to do this and do it NOW!.

Two months from now, the USCIS Director (you know, the guy who claims there is no backlog) will appear before the House Appropriations Committee with his hat in his hand, looking for money. At that time, our Congress Members need to know the truth about this horrible monster and the lives he is ruining; otherwise he will tell them whatever lie he wants them to hear and have them eating out of his hand.

Palladin, with your permission I would like to revise the letter a bit, making it more forceful and the grammar a little cleaner. I will get to it tonight, as I am on my lunch break right now with limited time.

BTW for those of you who think you will have your NOA2 in less than two months, hence this does not apply to you, keep on dreaming. The Vermont Disservice Center is getting exponentially worse each week and will be at a year backlog by this summer if we don't stop this hideous creature.

He won't get far, trust me on this. I've spoken to a family member who is pretty high up in State Department. He knows several members of the House Appropriations Comittee (Congressmen). Trust me when I say this: When the USCIS 'director' (and i use that term loosely) goes begging for more money this year in March, he will get his @$$ ripped so wide open, you can drive a train through it.

He won't be allowed to 'dodge' questions like he did last time either. Many representatives know about the problems going on and they will be doing what they can about it. If this administration (TPS issues were in place due to Hillary and Napolitano) wants to play politics with peoples lives, then I will play 'politics' as well and let the opposite side who controls the house now, deal with this fiasco that they, the current administration created (Note: K-1/CR/IR1 issues began in 2009, right about the time the current administration was sworn in).

Send this letter to as many congressmen and women as you can, they don't need to be in your state or your political party. The more that know the better. Being proactive in a contructive way, such as sending said letter, is how you get change, not sitting around 'hoping' for a NOA2 in X amount of months past the stated time.

Edited January 21, 2011 by Blob18

[Harpa Timsah 13,258]

What I like about your letter is that you are asking for help for everyone, not just for yourself (in fact not for yourself at all). Kudos.

[Al422 221]

Thank you. That is great news.

Every member of the committee should get this letter, optimally from a constituent, but they should get it.

So why don't we all post here who our Congress Member is so we can make sure we have complete coverage. Mine is Steve Israel.

I will get to revising the letter tonight. Right now it is work time.

[Rwlaird 18]

I have also been advocating that people write to their members of Congress expressing their dissatisfaction with the management of USCIS. My approach was a little different than yours but everyone pushing the same general direction is good. No matter my opinion, I'm afraid that complaining about the TPS/Haiti situation may not go over well since it is a humanitarian issue. But that's just my opinion. It seems better to me to focus on the lack of transparency and communication and just generally poor management. The difference between CA and VT seems like a very legitimate complaint since, assuming the figures others are mentioning are correct, us in the eastern part of the US are suffering more delays because of TPS processing when USCIS should be able to spread that workload around better.

My fee was $455. I haven't seen the justification for lowering the fee and I would actually support raising it with assurances that it would help expedite the process. With such slow processing the last thing they need is a lower fee.

[stringged 1]

I have also been advocating that people write to their members of Congress expressing their dissatisfaction with the management of USCIS. My approach was a little different than yours but everyone pushing the same general direction is good. No matter my opinion, I'm afraid that complaining about the TPS/Haiti situation may not go over well since it is a humanitarian issue. But that's just my opinion. It seems better to me to focus on the lack of transparency and communication and just generally poor management. The difference between CA and VT seems like a very legitimate complaint since, assuming the figures others are mentioning are correct, us in the eastern part of the US are suffering more delays because of TPS processing when USCIS should be able to spread that workload around better.

My fee was $455. I haven't seen the justification for lowering the fee and I would actually support raising it with assurances that it would help expedite the process. With such slow processing the last thing they need is a lower fee.

I also had my reservations about that lowered fee... I wouldn't have minded paying up more for better service and standards. Every other fee went up except this one -were they anticipating huge delays that the best way to handle it was a lower fee? Hmmm.

[James And Oksana 19]

My representative, Mike Pence just received this. Mine is not as strong as others, but it gets the point across and yes...I have statistical analysis background so what is said here is accurate based on data I have reviewed. While I am not sure if it will help me as I am likely to be at the CSC, I will not stay silent while others suffer what I would not want to endure myself. I hope this helps everyone!

RE: USCIS and K1 Visa Processing Times

I am writing today over growing concern for the processingtime of USCIS for fiancée visas. I think there has been some dis-informationgiven to several committees about the processing time and statistics in aneffort for certain people to keep their job. As a person that is now engaged to a foreign national and has anapplication into the USCIS, I am very concerned.

After doing some analysis on the current data and trends(this is one of my jobs as a software developer and former data analyst forinsurance company), what last year was taking 3 months to adjudicate for K1through USCIS is now exceed 5 months and in many cases approaching 7-8months. The current exponential trendsindicate by this summer, there will likely be cases backlogged for fiancéevisas for well over 10 months not as just an exception, but the average personwill likely be waiting that long. Thisis way unacceptable since the K1 visa has many more restrictions on it thanothers visas and actually is not even classified as an immigration visa. US citizens should not be held in limbo withtheir loved ones overseas waiting to know if they can come over and get marriedwhile the congress is lied to and no plan of act is put into place.

All I can say is if an insurance application took 8 monthsto be approved or claims to be adjudicated, congress would be going after themas well as the courts (IE. Health care reform). Why are they not fixing the USCIS, a part of our own government andmaking it work for the people, the US citizens that the government is supposedto work for?

[KiwiBird 132]

Well stated and I can understand the frustration, but I don't believe the 'crusade' will work. There is a lot more involvd than you guys seem to think.

Sorry, but the 'crusade' attitude is just wearing on me. I'd prefer to just be patient. But that's just me.

[Al422 221]

Well stated and I can understand the frustration, but I don't believe the 'crusade' will work. There is a lot more involvd than you guys seem to think.

Sorry, but the 'crusade' attitude is just wearing on me. I'd prefer to just be patient. But that's just me.

Can you tell us what is involved? I promise not to tell you that you are wrong; I just want to know what you know that the rest of us are missing.

It is great that you can remain calm and patient, but as you can see, there are others here who, like me, cannot sit idly while our vital interests are being walked all over by an uncaring and unfeeling bureaucracy.