Immigration Voice Letter Campaign : 2/7/2008

Dear Immigration Voice Members,

2007 was a good year for all of us at Immigration Voice (IV). We at the Immigration Voice leadership team whole-heartedly thank all of you who contributed to our initiatives and helped us get a good outcome after the July Bulletin fiasco. Your help in the San Jose and Washington DC rallies really brought us good attention and helped us gain traction in Washington DC.

However, our work is not over and a lot more needs to be done to resolve our issues.

Looking ahead in 2008:

Legislative changes are going to be difficult this year due to the general election in November. We are going to do out best to accomplish reform legislatively and there is a precedent of good bills passing during a presidential election year. AC21 laws were passed in October 2000, one month before the Presidential election.

What can be done in absence of legislative reform and activity in Congress:

In the absence of legislative reform, there are some things that can be done without legislation and without an act of congress that would provide interim relief to all of us. These changes are the administrative changes that can be done by the current administration thru changes in the federal regulations based on Immigration laws. Immigration Voice made some headway in this sector by meeting with administration officials, including the White House staff and the DHS staff in September, November and then in December of last year. These meetings helped us start a conversation on possible administrative fixes like

(1) 3 years EAD and AP.

(2) Reinstating in-country visa re-stamping.

(3) Reinstating premium processing of 140 filing.

(4) Allowing filing 485 when visa number is not available.

(5) Clearly defining “same or similar” job description in portability cases when AC-21 is invoked.

(6) Recapture the unused visas for permanent residency to fulfill the congressional intent of granting of 140,000 green cards per year.

What you can do to help us accomplish this administrative reform:

We are organizing a massive letter campaign asking every participant to send a letter to President Bush urging him to provide some immediate relief. The deadline for the letter campaign is March 1st. Please do send in your letters ASAP. Such letters create a very favorable opinion of our case in key circles of the administration and help us pave the way for reform.

Templates for the letter to the President and directions regarding this action item can be found by clicking here (Or copy-paste this URL http://immigrationvoice.org/forum/showthread.php?t=16506 )

There is absolutely nothing to fear or worry about:

There are a few people who have concerns that sending a letter to any branch of the government, such as to President Bush or to members of Congress, would jeopardize their immigration process or would invite future trouble of some kind. Such fears are absolutely baseless and there is nothing to worry. To organize and petition the government for reform is one of the most American things you can do. Think about it, if there were such retaliation from the Government for participating, organizing, protesting peacefully or speaking out then all of the leadership of Immigration Voice would have already stopped working on this issue long time ago. So please do not hesitate in sending this letter. It’s for your own benefit and your own interim reliefs while you are waiting for your permanent residency to come through.

Thanks,

Immigration Voice

(www.immigrationvoice.org)