Indian Americans in USA

Interesting article about Indian American immigrants in USA.

August Visa Bulletin

Wow! Both India & China EB2 moved to June ‘06. But don’t get too excited, just keep your fingers crossed that your application gets adjudicated before the available visa numbers evaporate. Remember July of last year? Nobody knows how many EB2 applications were filed during that time that had priority dates before June ‘06. Here is the visa bulletin.

Green Card on EB2

Anyone applying for a green card on EB2? Please join the line and oh if you are an Indian national, please note that the wait time will just be 8 years. Take a look at the visa bulletin for January’ 2008. Here is another excerpt from the same bulletin: “It is likely that the annual limit for this category will be reached within the next few months, at which time the category would become “unavailable” for the remainder of fiscal year 2008.” Unbelievable!

In case you are interested in participating in an organized effort to protest these ridiculous delays go here.

Re-Revision of July VB

My kudos to every member of the IV community, AILA & all the others involved in the effort, to get a resolution for the July VB fiasco. The official news release this afternoon by the USCIS should have relieved the stress of a lot of immigrants who had to scramble last month to get their paperwork ready. This was a big achievement for the immigration community and a testament to the power of lobbying in Washington.

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Absurdness of July VB

Since the news of retrogressing the July visa numbers started popping out Friday on murthy, immigration-law & various other immigration websites, I was infuriated. But thinking through all the events it makes me wonder whose fault it is. Here is the sequence of events ….

1. All employment based categories for India, China become current in July visa bulletin.
   (Reasoning: DOS/USCIS acted pro-actively to avoid a scenario where visa’s are left unused at the end of the fiscal year)
2. USCIS starts adjudicating all pending 485 cases expecting an influx of 485 applications in July.
   (Good notion! The agency had no idea how many pending applications they had. Now that’s interesting!)
3. Meanwhile every eligible person/family tries to schedule a medical appointment & get all the paperwork ready.
   (Bottom line: An average of $2000 for all the medicals & attorney fees)
4. Errrr! Bumer! When time arrives to file the applications, news start spreading that visa numbers might have been exhausted due to adjudication of pending 485’s which means a retrogression is possible.
   (Translation to plain English: pain in the ass for all the people trying to apply in July.)

If the retrogression does happen, let’s look at whose fault it is ?
People waiting to apply?
Certainly not! Because they had hopes of getting a EAD & breaking free of the invisible shackles of modern day slavery.
USCIS?
Definetely! On one hand their idea of avoiding the mishaps of the past is truly commendable, it will be the precise reason for the predicament i.e. expected to happen.

Considering the facts, it almost seems that USCIS had no idea how many 485’s were pending. If they had known that (Which I think shouldn’t have taken a long time to figure out), they could have easily predicted the numbers for July without making them all current. This clearly reflects the inability of government agencies (mostly unaccountable) to have a process oriented model. Now, consider the fact that the whole budget of USCIS comes from the fee’s it collects. In a time where taxpayer’s money is being spent ridiculously without any accountability, even when consumer watch dog’s and other groups are crying foul, who cares how these fees are being used. There is certainly nobody complaining about it!