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GCard_Dream
04-06 01:38 PM
Thanks god_bless_you for you response. So it appears that I either have to have a valid H1 or EAD on hand in order to work.
If you are extending the H1B, however, there is a grace period of 200 some day where you can work without a valid H1B while the H1B extension is pending. Isn't there a grace period if you are changing from H1B to EAD? From what you are saying, there isn't.
If you are extending the H1B, however, there is a grace period of 200 some day where you can work without a valid H1B while the H1B extension is pending. Isn't there a grace period if you are changing from H1B to EAD? From what you are saying, there isn't.
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ilovestirfries
09-28 09:47 AM
You asked a question
1)
Any incidence of spouse's EAD case getting stuck while the primary's application going through?
So it means the people who visited don't have an answer for this or they are not aware of any such incident. Eventually someone will respond to your query
2) You send this query yesterday only 7 pm EST. So be patient
All the best !
Vnsriv...
Thanks..I was just kind of curious to see, is anyone on the same boat as mine? Coz, most of my friends/network whom I had asked, got their status changed along with their spouses'. If its the same with the community, then I have to do something. But yah, It didn't occur to me that, if there is no answer, means, probably there aren't that many ppl in the same situation as mine...Thanks again...
1)
Any incidence of spouse's EAD case getting stuck while the primary's application going through?
So it means the people who visited don't have an answer for this or they are not aware of any such incident. Eventually someone will respond to your query
2) You send this query yesterday only 7 pm EST. So be patient
All the best !
Vnsriv...
Thanks..I was just kind of curious to see, is anyone on the same boat as mine? Coz, most of my friends/network whom I had asked, got their status changed along with their spouses'. If its the same with the community, then I have to do something. But yah, It didn't occur to me that, if there is no answer, means, probably there aren't that many ppl in the same situation as mine...Thanks again...
hydubadi
03-31 12:19 PM
Thanks for the reply.
How to dispute against this fake criminal record in background check.
How to dispute against this fake criminal record in background check.
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nashorn
12-18 03:13 PM
You can set up register on the website of USCIS. After you get an account, put in your case receipt #, and you can monitor the progress of the case.
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karthiknv143
08-02 01:26 PM
Friends,
This is over and ordered to lie on table...... Moderator please close this thread...
This is over and ordered to lie on table...... Moderator please close this thread...
jonty_11
07-11 06:21 PM
Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), chair of the House Immigration Subcommittee, sent Secretary Chertoff a list of questions and a request for documents from USCIS to get to the bottom of the whole Visa Bulletin fiasco. The letter is very interesting not just because it puts a heck of a lot of pressure on DHS right now, but also because Lofgren's folks imply from the questions that USCIS was short circuiting established security clearance procedures to "pre-request" visa numbers from DOS. If it turns out full security clearances were not carried out, USCIS will either need to say that they had the legal justification (which would be a public relations disaster for the agency) or that they intended to complete the checks after the fact (which would be a direct violation of their own regulations). The only way to avoid answering the questions and to make this go away would be to eat crow and start working the case July cases.
http://blogs.ilw.com/gregsiskind/
Download letter_to_chertoff_re_visa_bulletin_issues_july_9_ 2007.pdf
What I dont understnad is that if they skipped security clearances on AOS applications to use up numbers..how does it imply taht they would have to eat crow and accept July application...Logic doesnt explain this,
They have alrady made teh blunder of skipping sec clearances...What they can now request is to go back and correct that mistake and ask that any and all applications in July be rejected so that they can do sec clearance on the ones they already used up/approved..
Does that make sense.?
http://blogs.ilw.com/gregsiskind/
Download letter_to_chertoff_re_visa_bulletin_issues_july_9_ 2007.pdf
What I dont understnad is that if they skipped security clearances on AOS applications to use up numbers..how does it imply taht they would have to eat crow and accept July application...Logic doesnt explain this,
They have alrady made teh blunder of skipping sec clearances...What they can now request is to go back and correct that mistake and ask that any and all applications in July be rejected so that they can do sec clearance on the ones they already used up/approved..
Does that make sense.?
more...
kubmilegaGC
09-11 03:03 PM
bump...
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ubetman
08-05 10:31 AM
Thanks Tampacoolie...I don't know how I have to persuade my lawyer/representative...guess have to deal with him carefully and politely...they think that we are the lawyers and we know everything..ofcourse may be ...sometimes esp at this point, we have to notify...if we miss this opportunity, no way to appeal also..and u never know when PDs will be current again....
Anyhow thanks guyz for ur suggestions...
Anyhow thanks guyz for ur suggestions...
more...
regacct
11-23 01:27 PM
Why the Anti-immigrant Dog Did Not Bark in Illinois (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/why-the-anti-immigrant-do_b_787368.html)
In the Sherlock Holmes short story "Silver Blaze" the famous detective focuses his analytic prowess on the "curious incident" of the dog that did not bark in the nighttime.
In the recent mid-term elections there was a similar "curious incident" in Illinois that is important nationally. No major candidate in Illinois from either the Republican or Democratic Party demagogued the immigration issue. Neither the ultra-conservative Republican candidate for Governor, Bill Brady, nor the supposedly "moderate" candidate for Senate, Mark Kirk, ran ads, did mailers, or used talking points about the supposed scourge of illegal immigrants taking jobs or sponging up our tax money. Nor did any major candidate for Congress.
It is definitely true that a number of the Republican candidates that were elected to Congressional seats hold anti-immigrant positions. But they did not choose to use those positions as wedge issues in the recent election. Why not?
A possible explanation is that Republicans in Illinois are a kinder, more reasonable group than Republicans elsewhere. That, I'm afraid, does not pass the laugh test.
You could argue that it's because Illinois has a large immigrant population in general and a large Latino population in particular. But so do Colorado, Nevada, Arizona and California where Republican Party candidates tried to use "illegal immigration" and "amnesty" as wedge issues to galvanize their base.
It is true that Illinois has a more immigrant-friendly tradition than some of the states in the Southwest. Much of the Caucasian population in Illinois comes from recent immigrant stock themselves - from Ireland, Poland, Lithuania, Italy, Germany, Croatia and Serbia.
But there is also a more old-fashioned reason. Demagogues and bullies tend to prey upon those whom they consider too weak to strike back. It turned out that in Nevada, California, and Colorado they made the wrong call, since their demagoguery galvanized turnout among Latino voters that defeated right-wing candidates for the Senate.
In fact, the Latino vote saved the Senate for the Democrats.
But in Illinois the right didn't even try their demagogic tactics. That's largely because the immigrant communities in Illinois have worked hard over five election cycles to build a muscular political organizing vehicle that gets out the immigrant vote -- and can bite back fiercely at anti-immigrant demagogues.
In 2008, Jim Oberweis ran for Congress against Democrat Bill Foster on a heavily anti-immigrant platform and was flattened by the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. That experience sent a lesson through Illinois' right-wing political class. Nothing like watching one of their own get scalded to teach others not to touch the stove.
The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) no leads The New Americans' Democracy Project . This year, 13 electoral organizers worked for months in both the City of Chicago and the Suburbs. They targeted 133,128 infrequent immigrant voters for a multi-contact phone and door operation, and before the election was done the volunteers they recruited did a total of 549,000 live phone calls to their universe of Latino, Asian and Muslim voters.
This work has been growing in scale and bite since 2002 when it began with no funding and in only nine precincts. At this point the immigrant vote can no longer be ignored by either party. Here are several key lessons from the Illinois immigrant organizing experience:
1) Consistency Counts: ICIRR has had between 10 and 20 full-time immigrant election campaign organizers every election since 2004. They begin their work in July and work through November, building a "recent immigrant" field operation. In every single cycle they add new skills to their electoral organizing.
2) Numbers Count: The immigrant voter program has registered over 90,000 new immigrant voters. They door-knock between 35,000 and 60,000 doors every election cycle.
3) Diversity is Strength: The Democracy Project works with leaders and organizations in Latino community, but also the Asian, Arab, and Polish immigrant communities.
4) Mine the "Base" and work the "Swings": The electoral work is done in the immigrant "base" Chicago port of entry neighborhoods to generate numbers, but also in swing suburban political districts where multi-ethnic immigrant organizing multiplies the voting power of Latinos. The activation of new immigrant voters in suburban "swing" communities forces Republican attention to immigrant issues.
5) Reward Friends, Punish Enemies: ICIRR keeps track of who engages in immigrant bashing -- and stikes back. When Republican anti-immigrant candidate Jim Oberweis polarized voters against "illegal immigrants", ICIRR released to the media a film of undocumented immigrants cleaning his business while being paid only $3.23 an hour. When old-school Democratic Mayor of Waukegan, IL attacked "illegals" with local law enforcement of immigration laws, he went down to defeat in the next election because Latinos in Waukegan mobilized to support his opponent.
6) Naturalize, Naturalize, Naturalize: ICIRR has one of the most aggressive citizenship programs in the nation. All told, an additional 170,000 immigrants were naturalized in Illinois over the last five years. The coalition itself directly assisted over 48,000 of those legal immigrants to become citizens, and thus voters.
ICIRR is not a partisan organization. In fact, their most recent fundraiser was headlined by the popular former Republican Governor Jim Edgar. But because of the track record of Republicans across the country, its organizing definitely benefits Democrats. In fact, Democratic Governor Pat Quinn - who won by fewer than 20,000 votes -- would not likely have been re-elected had it not been for their work.
On the policy side, ICIRR works for immigrant-friendly policies, and by any definition they have succeeded in winning some of the most immigrant-friendly policies in the nation at the state level in Illinois.
The state of Illinois leans Blue, but it has wide swatches of Red. In the recent elections the Democrats barely lost the Senate race and took some terrible losses in the Congressional delegation. But in addition to electing a Democratic Governor, both the State House and Senate remained in Democratic hands. The immigrant vote was critical to these Democratic victories, but it is also a force that Republicans ignore or abuse at their peril. In this election, at least, Illinois Republicans generally had the good sense not to bait the immigrant community.
In the current environment of racialized fear and polarization against immigrants across the U.S., the hard work of immigrant advocates in Illinois provides two key lessons:
* Demagogues go after the weak, not the strong. You don't stop anti-immigrant demagoguery through accommodation, you stop it with strength.
* Nuts and Bolts Organizing works.
In the Sherlock Holmes short story "Silver Blaze" the famous detective focuses his analytic prowess on the "curious incident" of the dog that did not bark in the nighttime.
In the recent mid-term elections there was a similar "curious incident" in Illinois that is important nationally. No major candidate in Illinois from either the Republican or Democratic Party demagogued the immigration issue. Neither the ultra-conservative Republican candidate for Governor, Bill Brady, nor the supposedly "moderate" candidate for Senate, Mark Kirk, ran ads, did mailers, or used talking points about the supposed scourge of illegal immigrants taking jobs or sponging up our tax money. Nor did any major candidate for Congress.
It is definitely true that a number of the Republican candidates that were elected to Congressional seats hold anti-immigrant positions. But they did not choose to use those positions as wedge issues in the recent election. Why not?
A possible explanation is that Republicans in Illinois are a kinder, more reasonable group than Republicans elsewhere. That, I'm afraid, does not pass the laugh test.
You could argue that it's because Illinois has a large immigrant population in general and a large Latino population in particular. But so do Colorado, Nevada, Arizona and California where Republican Party candidates tried to use "illegal immigration" and "amnesty" as wedge issues to galvanize their base.
It is true that Illinois has a more immigrant-friendly tradition than some of the states in the Southwest. Much of the Caucasian population in Illinois comes from recent immigrant stock themselves - from Ireland, Poland, Lithuania, Italy, Germany, Croatia and Serbia.
But there is also a more old-fashioned reason. Demagogues and bullies tend to prey upon those whom they consider too weak to strike back. It turned out that in Nevada, California, and Colorado they made the wrong call, since their demagoguery galvanized turnout among Latino voters that defeated right-wing candidates for the Senate.
In fact, the Latino vote saved the Senate for the Democrats.
But in Illinois the right didn't even try their demagogic tactics. That's largely because the immigrant communities in Illinois have worked hard over five election cycles to build a muscular political organizing vehicle that gets out the immigrant vote -- and can bite back fiercely at anti-immigrant demagogues.
In 2008, Jim Oberweis ran for Congress against Democrat Bill Foster on a heavily anti-immigrant platform and was flattened by the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. That experience sent a lesson through Illinois' right-wing political class. Nothing like watching one of their own get scalded to teach others not to touch the stove.
The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) no leads The New Americans' Democracy Project . This year, 13 electoral organizers worked for months in both the City of Chicago and the Suburbs. They targeted 133,128 infrequent immigrant voters for a multi-contact phone and door operation, and before the election was done the volunteers they recruited did a total of 549,000 live phone calls to their universe of Latino, Asian and Muslim voters.
This work has been growing in scale and bite since 2002 when it began with no funding and in only nine precincts. At this point the immigrant vote can no longer be ignored by either party. Here are several key lessons from the Illinois immigrant organizing experience:
1) Consistency Counts: ICIRR has had between 10 and 20 full-time immigrant election campaign organizers every election since 2004. They begin their work in July and work through November, building a "recent immigrant" field operation. In every single cycle they add new skills to their electoral organizing.
2) Numbers Count: The immigrant voter program has registered over 90,000 new immigrant voters. They door-knock between 35,000 and 60,000 doors every election cycle.
3) Diversity is Strength: The Democracy Project works with leaders and organizations in Latino community, but also the Asian, Arab, and Polish immigrant communities.
4) Mine the "Base" and work the "Swings": The electoral work is done in the immigrant "base" Chicago port of entry neighborhoods to generate numbers, but also in swing suburban political districts where multi-ethnic immigrant organizing multiplies the voting power of Latinos. The activation of new immigrant voters in suburban "swing" communities forces Republican attention to immigrant issues.
5) Reward Friends, Punish Enemies: ICIRR keeps track of who engages in immigrant bashing -- and stikes back. When Republican anti-immigrant candidate Jim Oberweis polarized voters against "illegal immigrants", ICIRR released to the media a film of undocumented immigrants cleaning his business while being paid only $3.23 an hour. When old-school Democratic Mayor of Waukegan, IL attacked "illegals" with local law enforcement of immigration laws, he went down to defeat in the next election because Latinos in Waukegan mobilized to support his opponent.
6) Naturalize, Naturalize, Naturalize: ICIRR has one of the most aggressive citizenship programs in the nation. All told, an additional 170,000 immigrants were naturalized in Illinois over the last five years. The coalition itself directly assisted over 48,000 of those legal immigrants to become citizens, and thus voters.
ICIRR is not a partisan organization. In fact, their most recent fundraiser was headlined by the popular former Republican Governor Jim Edgar. But because of the track record of Republicans across the country, its organizing definitely benefits Democrats. In fact, Democratic Governor Pat Quinn - who won by fewer than 20,000 votes -- would not likely have been re-elected had it not been for their work.
On the policy side, ICIRR works for immigrant-friendly policies, and by any definition they have succeeded in winning some of the most immigrant-friendly policies in the nation at the state level in Illinois.
The state of Illinois leans Blue, but it has wide swatches of Red. In the recent elections the Democrats barely lost the Senate race and took some terrible losses in the Congressional delegation. But in addition to electing a Democratic Governor, both the State House and Senate remained in Democratic hands. The immigrant vote was critical to these Democratic victories, but it is also a force that Republicans ignore or abuse at their peril. In this election, at least, Illinois Republicans generally had the good sense not to bait the immigrant community.
In the current environment of racialized fear and polarization against immigrants across the U.S., the hard work of immigrant advocates in Illinois provides two key lessons:
* Demagogues go after the weak, not the strong. You don't stop anti-immigrant demagoguery through accommodation, you stop it with strength.
* Nuts and Bolts Organizing works.
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gg_ny
08-31 08:12 PM
Dear friends
I'm very excited to say that I got my green card approved. Thank you for all of your support.
babu
We received our confirmatory emails and web status updates in the last two days. My PD is Dec 2004 and 485 RD is Aug 05, NIW EB2 India. My name was stuck at FBI from Nov 05 until maybe mid-Aug 07.
This proves that the 60K visa numbers are not over yet. Next year's ombudsman report will say how many of these would go waste but CIS is still processing AOS applns and hopefully will do until Sept 30. I think they are considering every category is C and going by RD and/or preadjudication status after namecheck, FP clearances.
IV is a core part of my current immigrant status. Having personally met a few core members when the struggle and the group were younger and tumbling while learning to take early steps, it is heartening to see where the organization stands now and going to walk the line on 18th :-). I see this as a perfect example of grassroot level organization and activity, the spirit of which lives in this country but has gone missing or dormant in countries from which IV members have come.
I have friends who are suffering their way thru the GC process. When I think about them, I could only mutter,"thank God, there is IV".
I'm very excited to say that I got my green card approved. Thank you for all of your support.
babu
We received our confirmatory emails and web status updates in the last two days. My PD is Dec 2004 and 485 RD is Aug 05, NIW EB2 India. My name was stuck at FBI from Nov 05 until maybe mid-Aug 07.
This proves that the 60K visa numbers are not over yet. Next year's ombudsman report will say how many of these would go waste but CIS is still processing AOS applns and hopefully will do until Sept 30. I think they are considering every category is C and going by RD and/or preadjudication status after namecheck, FP clearances.
IV is a core part of my current immigrant status. Having personally met a few core members when the struggle and the group were younger and tumbling while learning to take early steps, it is heartening to see where the organization stands now and going to walk the line on 18th :-). I see this as a perfect example of grassroot level organization and activity, the spirit of which lives in this country but has gone missing or dormant in countries from which IV members have come.
I have friends who are suffering their way thru the GC process. When I think about them, I could only mutter,"thank God, there is IV".
more...
burnt
04-07 03:44 PM
Does it in any way affect my Naturalization Application?
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sertasheep
06-14 09:13 PM
You can file for your EAD and AP concurrently while you file for your I-485.
EAD and AP are optional and don't necessarily need to be filed along with 485, and can be filed anytime as long as your I-485 has been filed , or is being filed.
EAD and AP are optional and don't necessarily need to be filed along with 485, and can be filed anytime as long as your I-485 has been filed , or is being filed.
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ajay
04-13 11:13 AM
Opening up an IRA account is not a big deal. There has been lot of deals going on with different brokers. I think brokers would be Vanguard/Troweprice/Etrade,etc. Now, try to set up an appointment with a consultant of the aforementioned brokers and they will be more than happy to assist you with your own choice of funds for your IRA.
Best time to switch and choose your funds.
Good luck.
Best time to switch and choose your funds.
Good luck.
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smbaps
08-10 04:54 PM
how did you apply on june.The dates were not current as per May visa bulletin.This is strange man......
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Adam
08-26 11:42 AM
I spent about 15 minutes the other night trying to make C3-PO smilie to go with :rd: I found it tough if you wanna give it a shot.
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sobers
06-29 01:42 PM
Obviously using approved labor (or substitute labor) is a shady practice and many desi consulting companies are employing this scam. If they don't share this info with you, you can either:
1) Continue working with this company in the hope they are doing everything by the book and this will all work out
OR
2) Go work for a bonfide employer
1) Continue working with this company in the hope they are doing everything by the book and this will all work out
OR
2) Go work for a bonfide employer
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niceguy
02-22 06:22 PM
For me they accepted interfiling and it introduced another problem. I had 140/485 filed with sub LC and before they looked at this concurrent file, another I140 with my original LC approved. Both are in EB2. We asked uscis to use my second approved I140 in place of pending I140 (lc sub). After 6 months, they looked at my concurrent file, sent rfe and denied my first I140 as they didn't agree my BITS-pilani MS is equal to US masters.
Then they looked at our request on interfiling that was sent 6 months before, then sent an intent to revoke on my approved I140 too with the same reason. Our attorney replied this time equating my AMIETE to US bachelors since they any way denied with Masters. We are still waiting after 2 months+.
The moral is, they accept the interfiling, but it takes time for them to put it in your file - some one said 2-3 months. You don't receive any ack on successful interfiling though.
Hope this helps.
Then they looked at our request on interfiling that was sent 6 months before, then sent an intent to revoke on my approved I140 too with the same reason. Our attorney replied this time equating my AMIETE to US bachelors since they any way denied with Masters. We are still waiting after 2 months+.
The moral is, they accept the interfiling, but it takes time for them to put it in your file - some one said 2-3 months. You don't receive any ack on successful interfiling though.
Hope this helps.
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ksrk
06-15 07:17 PM
So the dates are moving ahead but what does this really imply ? With priority dates retrogessed to around 2000 and no visa numbers availble for EB3. Who is getting the GC. Is it only the Eb2 with PD around 2000 or any one else.
Does anyone has more info to better understand what these dates imply ?
While there is some debate reg. what these dates refer to, the USCIS, on this page, clearly states that these are receipt dates (RD) on your receipt notice (for I-485 or whichever document you are checking processing times for).
[The processing dates shown below represent the receipt dates of petitions and applications currently being processed by the USCIS Service Center.]
Based on your EB-category and country of chargeability, if your PD is current AND your RD is earlier than the one indicated in this "Processing Times" page, then you should already have your GC - if you don't you MUST contact NSC.
Since both you and I belong EB-2 and our PD's are past Jan 01, 2000 (per the June visa bulletin), there is no visa number to give either of us, even if our RD for I-485 is before Aug. 17, 2007.
The (current) problem isn't USCIS's processing pace - it is lack of sufficient visa numbers.
Does anyone has more info to better understand what these dates imply ?
While there is some debate reg. what these dates refer to, the USCIS, on this page, clearly states that these are receipt dates (RD) on your receipt notice (for I-485 or whichever document you are checking processing times for).
[The processing dates shown below represent the receipt dates of petitions and applications currently being processed by the USCIS Service Center.]
Based on your EB-category and country of chargeability, if your PD is current AND your RD is earlier than the one indicated in this "Processing Times" page, then you should already have your GC - if you don't you MUST contact NSC.
Since both you and I belong EB-2 and our PD's are past Jan 01, 2000 (per the June visa bulletin), there is no visa number to give either of us, even if our RD for I-485 is before Aug. 17, 2007.
The (current) problem isn't USCIS's processing pace - it is lack of sufficient visa numbers.
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purgan
11-11 10:32 AM
Randell,
Congratulations on getting the attention of the Times, and your tireless efforts in spreading word of the broken legal immigration system.
===
New York Times
Immigration, a Love Story
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/12/fashion/12green.html
WHEN Kenneth Harrell Jr., an Assemblies of God minister in South Carolina, invited Gricelda Molina to join his Spanish ministry in 2000, it didn’t take him long to realize he had found the woman he had been waiting for. On the telephone and during romantic strolls they talked about their goals, their commitment to God and how many children each would like to have. Six months flew by, and he asked her to marry him.
“She’s a beautiful woman with a beautiful spirit, very gentle, very sincere,” Mr. Harrell said. But Ms. Molina, a factory worker, was also an undocumented immigrant from Honduras, who had crossed into the United States twice, having once been deported. Mr. Harrell, the pastor of Airport Assembly of God church in West Columbia, said he was not too concerned. “Whatever came, we would walk through this path together,” he said.
Mr. Harrell and Ms. Molina, both 35, married in 2001, in a large wedding attended by family from both sides and blessed by pastors in English and Spanish. But the Harrells no longer live together, not because of divorce, but because Mrs. Harrell, now the mother of two sons and four months pregnant with their third child, has been deported. She had applied for legal residency, or a green card, with her new husband as her sponsor, Mr. Harrell said, but she was sent back to Honduras 20 months ago because of her illegal entries and told she would have to wait 10 years to try again.
“Illegals are pouring over the border,” said Mr. Harrell, who has visited his family five times. “We meet them, we fall in love with them, we marry them. And then the government tears your family apart, and they take no responsibility for letting them in, in the first place.”
Falling in love and marching toward marriage is not always easy, but a particular brand of heartache and hardship can await when one of the partners is in this country illegally. The uncertainty of such a union has only been heightened by the national debate over illegal immigration. Whether the new Democratic leadership in Congress will help people like the Harrells remains to be seen.
It is hard to quantify how many people find themselves in Mr. Harrell’s situation, but with stepped-up enforcement in recent years, deportations have increased, and so have fears of losing a loved one in that way. (There were 168,310 removals in 2005, compared with 108,000 in 2000, immigration officials said.)
And that is only one byproduct of love between two people with such uneven places in society, immigration lawyers say. Many relationships strain under the financial burden of hiring lawyers for what can turn into years of visiting government offices, producing pictures, tax records and other evidence of a legitimate marriage in the quest for legalization. And while instances of immigrants faking love for a green card are in the minority, according to immigration officials, some couples feel pressure to marry before they are ready, hoping that marriage will prevent a loved one’s deportation.
Raul Godinez, an immigration lawyer in Los Angeles, said: “I ask people, ‘How much do you love this person? Because immigration is going to test your marriage.’ If you don’t feel it’s going to be a strong marriage, I wouldn’t do it.”
Many people may still believe that obtaining legal status through marriage is easy, because of periodic reports of marriage scams. In a three-year investigation called Operation Newlywed Game, immigration and customs enforcement agents caught more than 40 suspects in California for allegedly orchestrating sham marriages between hundreds of Chinese or Vietnamese nationals and United States citizens. But such fraud occurs in only a minority of cases, federal officials said.
In reality, immigration lawyers said, marrying a citizen does not automatically entitle the spouse to a green card and is only the first step in a long bureaucratic journey. The lawyers noted that changes in the law in the last five years have made this legalization path increasingly difficult, one worth choosing only if true love is at stake. (Other routes include sponsorship by immediate family members or an employer.)
The Harrells said they had no idea how difficult it could be and were shocked when Mrs. Harrell’s application for permanent residence was turned down, leaving them only 12 days to prepare for her departure. In that time, Mr. Harrell said, they decided that the children, now 4 and 3, would go with her. So Mr. Harrell obtained passports for them, and the church held a farewell service.
“It was very traumatic,” he said. “Our whole world was crashing around us.”
In Yoro, in north central Honduras, where Mrs. Harrell and the children live with her parents, she said the older boy constantly asks for his father, begging, “Let’s go to my papa’s house.” She has coped with her own dejection, too. “I know how much work he has over there,” she said by telephone. “He needs his wife.”
But even in the best of circumstances, when an immigrant enters the country legally, couples may have to rearrange their lives and defer their dreams.
Paola Emery, a jewelry designer, and her husband, Randall Emery, a computer consultant in Philadelphia, said they delayed having children and buying a house for the nearly four years it took the government to complete a background check for Mrs. Emery, who had entered the country from Colombia with a tourist visa and applied for permanent residency after they married in 2002.
Mrs. Emery, 27, said lawyers advised them it was not wise for her to risk trouble by visiting her close-knit family in Colombia and then trying to re-enter this country. She said she was absent through weddings, illnesses and even the kidnapping and rescue of an uncle.
“I felt like I was in jail,” Mrs. Emery said.
Officials with the Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Homeland Security Department say that delays lasting years are rare, but some immigration lawyers say they see clients who wait three to four years for security clearance. Mrs. Emery and her husband, 34, sued Homeland Security over the delays, and she was finally cleared last May. By then Mr. Emery had helped form American Families United, a group of citizens who have sponsored immediate family members for immigration, and which advocates immigration-law change to keep families together. Immigration Services officials say they are not out to impede love or immigration. Nearly 260,000 spouses of citizens received permanent residency through marriage last year, out of 1.1 million people who became permanent residents, according to the Immigration Services office. “The goal is to give people who are eligible the benefit,” said Marie T. Sebrechts, its spokeswoman in Southern California. She said the agency does not comment on individual cases.
When a legal immigrant is sponsored by an American spouse, she said, the green card can be obtained in as little as six months. But with complications like an illegal entry, laws are not that benevolent, Ms. Sebrechts said. In those cases, the immigrant usually must return to the home country and wait 3 to 10 years to apply for residency, though waivers are sometimes granted.
Such obstacles are far from the minds of couples when they meet. And for some, so is the idea to question whether the beloved feels equally in love with them.
Sharyn T. Sooho, a divorce lawyer and a founder of divorcenet.com, a Web site for divorcing couples, said she has represented American spouses who realized too late that the person they married was more interested in a green card than in living happily ever after. “They feel conflicted, used and abused,” she said. “It’s a quick marriage, and suddenly the person who was so sweet is turning into a nightmare.”
But more often, said Carlina Tapia-Ruano, the president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, couples marry before they are ready because “there’s fear that if you don’t do this, somebody is going to get deported.”
Krystal Rivera, 18, a college student in Los Angeles, and her boyfriend fall into this group. Ms. Rivera is set on marrying in April 2008, even as she worries that it may put too much pressure on the relationship.
“I never wanted to follow the Hispanic ritual of getting married early,” said Ms. Rivera, a native of Los Angeles whose parents emigrated from Mexico.
She said she fell in love at 13 with a Mexican-born boy who sang in the church choir with her. “He started poking me, and I said ‘Stop it!’ ” she remembered.
Ms. Rivera is still in love with the boy, now 19, who was brought into the country illegally by his mother when he was 12. He goes to college and wants to become a teacher, while she hopes to become a doctor.
But for those plans to work, Ms. Rivera said, she needs to help him legalize his status. She said she has witnessed his frustration as he dealt with employers who didn’t pay what they owed him or struggled to find better jobs than his current one as a line cook. Because of his illegal status, he is unable to get a driver’s license or visit the brothers he left in Mexico. “We want to be normal,” Ms. Rivera said.
The Harrells, too, have decided to take charge. After months of exploring how to reunite the family and spending thousands of dollars on lawyers, Mr. Harrell has decided to leave his small congregation, sell his house and join his wife in Honduras. He will be a missionary for his church for a fraction of the $40,000 a year he makes as a minister.
Congratulations on getting the attention of the Times, and your tireless efforts in spreading word of the broken legal immigration system.
===
New York Times
Immigration, a Love Story
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/12/fashion/12green.html
WHEN Kenneth Harrell Jr., an Assemblies of God minister in South Carolina, invited Gricelda Molina to join his Spanish ministry in 2000, it didn’t take him long to realize he had found the woman he had been waiting for. On the telephone and during romantic strolls they talked about their goals, their commitment to God and how many children each would like to have. Six months flew by, and he asked her to marry him.
“She’s a beautiful woman with a beautiful spirit, very gentle, very sincere,” Mr. Harrell said. But Ms. Molina, a factory worker, was also an undocumented immigrant from Honduras, who had crossed into the United States twice, having once been deported. Mr. Harrell, the pastor of Airport Assembly of God church in West Columbia, said he was not too concerned. “Whatever came, we would walk through this path together,” he said.
Mr. Harrell and Ms. Molina, both 35, married in 2001, in a large wedding attended by family from both sides and blessed by pastors in English and Spanish. But the Harrells no longer live together, not because of divorce, but because Mrs. Harrell, now the mother of two sons and four months pregnant with their third child, has been deported. She had applied for legal residency, or a green card, with her new husband as her sponsor, Mr. Harrell said, but she was sent back to Honduras 20 months ago because of her illegal entries and told she would have to wait 10 years to try again.
“Illegals are pouring over the border,” said Mr. Harrell, who has visited his family five times. “We meet them, we fall in love with them, we marry them. And then the government tears your family apart, and they take no responsibility for letting them in, in the first place.”
Falling in love and marching toward marriage is not always easy, but a particular brand of heartache and hardship can await when one of the partners is in this country illegally. The uncertainty of such a union has only been heightened by the national debate over illegal immigration. Whether the new Democratic leadership in Congress will help people like the Harrells remains to be seen.
It is hard to quantify how many people find themselves in Mr. Harrell’s situation, but with stepped-up enforcement in recent years, deportations have increased, and so have fears of losing a loved one in that way. (There were 168,310 removals in 2005, compared with 108,000 in 2000, immigration officials said.)
And that is only one byproduct of love between two people with such uneven places in society, immigration lawyers say. Many relationships strain under the financial burden of hiring lawyers for what can turn into years of visiting government offices, producing pictures, tax records and other evidence of a legitimate marriage in the quest for legalization. And while instances of immigrants faking love for a green card are in the minority, according to immigration officials, some couples feel pressure to marry before they are ready, hoping that marriage will prevent a loved one’s deportation.
Raul Godinez, an immigration lawyer in Los Angeles, said: “I ask people, ‘How much do you love this person? Because immigration is going to test your marriage.’ If you don’t feel it’s going to be a strong marriage, I wouldn’t do it.”
Many people may still believe that obtaining legal status through marriage is easy, because of periodic reports of marriage scams. In a three-year investigation called Operation Newlywed Game, immigration and customs enforcement agents caught more than 40 suspects in California for allegedly orchestrating sham marriages between hundreds of Chinese or Vietnamese nationals and United States citizens. But such fraud occurs in only a minority of cases, federal officials said.
In reality, immigration lawyers said, marrying a citizen does not automatically entitle the spouse to a green card and is only the first step in a long bureaucratic journey. The lawyers noted that changes in the law in the last five years have made this legalization path increasingly difficult, one worth choosing only if true love is at stake. (Other routes include sponsorship by immediate family members or an employer.)
The Harrells said they had no idea how difficult it could be and were shocked when Mrs. Harrell’s application for permanent residence was turned down, leaving them only 12 days to prepare for her departure. In that time, Mr. Harrell said, they decided that the children, now 4 and 3, would go with her. So Mr. Harrell obtained passports for them, and the church held a farewell service.
“It was very traumatic,” he said. “Our whole world was crashing around us.”
In Yoro, in north central Honduras, where Mrs. Harrell and the children live with her parents, she said the older boy constantly asks for his father, begging, “Let’s go to my papa’s house.” She has coped with her own dejection, too. “I know how much work he has over there,” she said by telephone. “He needs his wife.”
But even in the best of circumstances, when an immigrant enters the country legally, couples may have to rearrange their lives and defer their dreams.
Paola Emery, a jewelry designer, and her husband, Randall Emery, a computer consultant in Philadelphia, said they delayed having children and buying a house for the nearly four years it took the government to complete a background check for Mrs. Emery, who had entered the country from Colombia with a tourist visa and applied for permanent residency after they married in 2002.
Mrs. Emery, 27, said lawyers advised them it was not wise for her to risk trouble by visiting her close-knit family in Colombia and then trying to re-enter this country. She said she was absent through weddings, illnesses and even the kidnapping and rescue of an uncle.
“I felt like I was in jail,” Mrs. Emery said.
Officials with the Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Homeland Security Department say that delays lasting years are rare, but some immigration lawyers say they see clients who wait three to four years for security clearance. Mrs. Emery and her husband, 34, sued Homeland Security over the delays, and she was finally cleared last May. By then Mr. Emery had helped form American Families United, a group of citizens who have sponsored immediate family members for immigration, and which advocates immigration-law change to keep families together. Immigration Services officials say they are not out to impede love or immigration. Nearly 260,000 spouses of citizens received permanent residency through marriage last year, out of 1.1 million people who became permanent residents, according to the Immigration Services office. “The goal is to give people who are eligible the benefit,” said Marie T. Sebrechts, its spokeswoman in Southern California. She said the agency does not comment on individual cases.
When a legal immigrant is sponsored by an American spouse, she said, the green card can be obtained in as little as six months. But with complications like an illegal entry, laws are not that benevolent, Ms. Sebrechts said. In those cases, the immigrant usually must return to the home country and wait 3 to 10 years to apply for residency, though waivers are sometimes granted.
Such obstacles are far from the minds of couples when they meet. And for some, so is the idea to question whether the beloved feels equally in love with them.
Sharyn T. Sooho, a divorce lawyer and a founder of divorcenet.com, a Web site for divorcing couples, said she has represented American spouses who realized too late that the person they married was more interested in a green card than in living happily ever after. “They feel conflicted, used and abused,” she said. “It’s a quick marriage, and suddenly the person who was so sweet is turning into a nightmare.”
But more often, said Carlina Tapia-Ruano, the president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, couples marry before they are ready because “there’s fear that if you don’t do this, somebody is going to get deported.”
Krystal Rivera, 18, a college student in Los Angeles, and her boyfriend fall into this group. Ms. Rivera is set on marrying in April 2008, even as she worries that it may put too much pressure on the relationship.
“I never wanted to follow the Hispanic ritual of getting married early,” said Ms. Rivera, a native of Los Angeles whose parents emigrated from Mexico.
She said she fell in love at 13 with a Mexican-born boy who sang in the church choir with her. “He started poking me, and I said ‘Stop it!’ ” she remembered.
Ms. Rivera is still in love with the boy, now 19, who was brought into the country illegally by his mother when he was 12. He goes to college and wants to become a teacher, while she hopes to become a doctor.
But for those plans to work, Ms. Rivera said, she needs to help him legalize his status. She said she has witnessed his frustration as he dealt with employers who didn’t pay what they owed him or struggled to find better jobs than his current one as a line cook. Because of his illegal status, he is unable to get a driver’s license or visit the brothers he left in Mexico. “We want to be normal,” Ms. Rivera said.
The Harrells, too, have decided to take charge. After months of exploring how to reunite the family and spending thousands of dollars on lawyers, Mr. Harrell has decided to leave his small congregation, sell his house and join his wife in Honduras. He will be a missionary for his church for a fraction of the $40,000 a year he makes as a minister.
gsc999
01-07 03:23 AM
Many "promotions" offered by many corporations have this "condition" of winner being a "legal resident." I guess, maybe, H1B will come under that. GC is premanent resident. But here Toy R Us got caught between the fine print and being politically correct.
bigboy007
10-30 05:47 PM
Should address on Drivers license and Address that we provide for USCIS should it match ?
I am a consultant hence i have given a friends address who own a home so that i dont need to change it often. Now i live in a different state (ofcourse temporarily) and since its USCIS i gave this address for any correspondence to USCIS. Now in future if i apply for any new forms many people have mentioned sending Drivers License but if i sent it it has a different address on it. is copy of drivers license mandatory? how does it work ?
I am a consultant hence i have given a friends address who own a home so that i dont need to change it often. Now i live in a different state (ofcourse temporarily) and since its USCIS i gave this address for any correspondence to USCIS. Now in future if i apply for any new forms many people have mentioned sending Drivers License but if i sent it it has a different address on it. is copy of drivers license mandatory? how does it work ?
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