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Contact the Immigration Committees in the Congress We released an article on April 28, 2008 to advocate for the resumption of the Premium Processing Service for I-140 petitions. We asked readers to contact their representative legislators to push USCIS in this regard. You can learn the details of this advocacy here. Recently, we received some inquiries from the readers about how to reach the legislators effectively. In order to answer this question, we need to explain how the U.S. legislative system works with regard to immigration issues. There are immigration subcommittees in both the House and the Senate. These two committees and their members have a substantial impact on immigration issues. They are usually the initiators of immigration bills. They constantly review the current immigration issues and bring up new immigration reform proposals for discussion. If some consensus is reached in a discussion, the subcommittee will draft an immigration bill and bring it to the Senate or House of Representatives for a debate. If both the Senate and House of Representatives pass a bill, it goes to the President for a signature before it becomes an act. Before a bill is brought up by the immigration subcommittees, the legislators will listen to all kinds of input from the public. For example, in the spring of 2007, immigration reform was a hot topic in Congress. We also initiated a campaign to encourage individual immigrants to push for comprehensive immigration reform. Many readers used our advocating system to contact their legislators. Although the comprehensive immigration reform bill did not pass at that time, we believe the participation from the immigrant community helped the legislators to learn more about the immigration issues and gain insight from the public. Normally, these immigration subcommittee members have a thorough understanding of the current immigration issues, and they may want to get involved in fixing them. For example, last year¡¯s visa bulletin fiasco was fixed with the involvement of legislators. On June 13, 2007, the Department of State (DOS) released the Visa Bulletin, which announced that visa numbers were available for almost all categories of employment-based immigration petitions for July 2007. Tens of thousands of immigrants planned to file their I-485s in July. Unexpectedly, on Monday, July 2, the DOS revised the Visa Bulletin for July, announcing that visa numbers for all employment-based categories for 2007 had been used up. Then, USCIS announced it wouldn¡¯t accept any new I-485s until October 2007, and it would reject I-485s received on July 2. This change caused a big wave of anger and frustration in the immigrant community. It triggered big protests and a class lawsuit against USCIS. On July 3, 2007, Representative Zoe Lofgren, chair of the Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security & International Law of the U.S. House, sent a harsh open letter to USCIS and the Department of State demanding that the government take action to fix the debacle. USCIS and the Department of State finally revised the Visa Bulletin and allowed applicants to submit I-485 petitions in all employment-based categories in the summer of 2007. It was widely believed that Representative Lofgren¡¯s involvement played a big role in the final result of this crisis. Attorneys Jerry Zhang and Ben Wisniewski thanked Representative Lofgren for her help in this matter when they visited her offices on September 18, 2007. Here is another example of how legislators can help fix immigration issues. Delays in FBI name checks have become a major barrier preventing applicants from getting their I-485 applications approved. Recently, USCIS announced it would complete 98% of FBI name checks within 30 days of submission by June 2009. We believe this change is partially a result of political pressure from legislators. During a lobbying trip on September 17 and 18, 2007 in Washington, D.C., Attorneys Ben Wisniewski and Jerry Zhang of Zhang & Associates met Representative Lofgren in her office and discussed the name-check issue. Ms. Lofgren informed us that she wrote a letter to FBI the director about this issue and asked the FBI director to form a plan to fix the name-check delay. We believe this kind of political pressure helped fix the issue. USCIS has no legislative power to establish an act; however, as a federal agency, it may create policies and regulations that favor the interests of immigrants. For example, in a recent effort to address the shortage of H-1B visas, USCIS decided it will extend the OPT duration from 12 months to 17 months. It will also allow qualified F-1 students in OPT status to apply for a 17-month extension of their current OPT duration. These new regulations will significantly benefit the alien students. However, these positive changes don¡¯t happen automatically; we believe USCIS comes to these decisions partly by listening to the immigrant community. Therefore, it¡¯s important for immigrants to make their voices heard by government agencies. Of course, some immigration issues, like the H-1B quota shortage, are controversial and require the action of Congress to fix them. Passing a bill to fix an immigration issue is a complicated and long procedure. However, lawmakers, especially the members of Congress on the immigration subcommittees, may place political pressure on federal agencies, like USCIS and the Department of Homeland Security. Then, USCIS may have to change its rules in the interest of immigrants. For example, the H-1B quota for fiscal year 2009 ran out during the five business days from April 1 to April 7. Many qualified aliens could not get H-1B visas under the quota, and thus cannot work in the U.S. USCIS cannot increase the quota. However, it may make some policy changes that favor the applicants. For example, the aforementioned OPT policy changes are a partial remedy for the H-1B shortage. In addition, USCIS now allows qualified aliens whose OPT will expire before October 1, 2008 to change to H-1B status in the U.S. These policies have created substantial convenience for many aliens. Overall, the immigration committees and their members play a key role in fixing the immigration issues. The heads of USCIS and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can also help create policies that favor immigrants. Therefore, we encourage our readers to contact these committee members and officers directly. Below, we list the contact information of the director of USCIS and secretary of the DHS, and the members of the two immigration committees. In addition, we have drafted an advocacy letter for the legislators. You may use this letter as a template to write your letter to your representative or senator. This letter is available here . Secretary of U.S. Department of Homeland Security: Secretary Michael Chertoff Acting Director of USCIS: Mr. Jonathan Scharfen Immigration, Refugees and Border Security Subcommittee in US Senate Edward M. Kennedy (MA, Chair) Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (DE) Dianne Feinstein (CA) Charles E. Schumer (NY) Richard J. Durbin (IL) John Cornyn (TX) Charles E. Grassley (IA) Jon Kyl (AZ) Jeff Sessions (AL) Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law in US House Zoe Lofgren (CA, Chair) Luis V. Gutierrez (IL) Howard L. Berman (CA) Sheila Jackson-Lee (TX) Maxine Waters (CA) Bill Delahunt (MA) Linda T. Sanchez (CA) Artur Davis (AL) Keith Ellison (MN) Anthony Weiner (NY) Steve King (IA) Elton Gallegly (CA) Bob Goodlatte (VA) Dan Lungren (CA) J. Randy Forbes (VA) Louie Gohmert (TX) ---------- At Zhang & Associates, P.C., not only are we dedicated to our clients, but we also advocate for legal immigrants' rights and benefits. We bring the issues related to legal immigrants to the public and lobby lawmakers to address them. We believe in the American democratic process and are working hard to bring about a better immigration system. Zhang & Associates, PC. For more immigration news, please click here |
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