This is the letter that I wrote to our state senator this morning. I paste it here for anybody who also want to give it a try. At least we should let people know that we are suffering!
We might win, we might lose, but let us try our best!
Dear Senator *****:
I am currently a ***** at *****. I am writing for your help on green card issues for many of our new legal immigrants.
As you might know, there is a limit on immigrant visa numbers that can be issued for every country and every category. For example, the limit for China employment based(EB) visa is about 9800 for the current Fiscal Year, which includes all EB categories from EB1 to EB5. For everybody to get approved there must be a visa number available for them.
To make sure that green cards are issued roughly first-come-first-served, Department of state set a 'cut-off date' so only people whose priority date(PD) (the time they started their green card applications) is earlier than this date can get approved. And if your PD is later than the cut-off date, you are not eligible to get approved.
This cut-off date is reasonable, but it has to be set very carefully otherwise it will cause visa numbers being wasted (visa numbers can not be carried over to the next year). Because employment based green card process for most people takes quite long time and requires several steps of applications to both labor department and USCIS. So if the cut-off date is set too early, it can lead to a situation that visa number will be wasted because people with early Priority dates are still stuck in labor department or other early steps so they are not ready to get approved, but people who are ready to get approved cannot get the card just because they have a late PD.
And we are now very concerned that visa numbers for China EB this year will be wasted. As DOS reported early this July: "Overall, China has used 5,600 employment-based numbers with 9,800 available for the year. It is likely that China will not hit the limit overall." This does not look very good because there are only less than three months left for the fiscal year, and there are still about 4,200 visa number not being used. Especially if you know there are tens of thousands people who are waiting for these visa numbers, and many of us are all ready to get the cards (but just limited by the cut-off date). And obviously if China won't hit the limit overall, then the cut-off date should be current, but right now EB2 is Mar 1, 2005 and EB3 is Oct 1, 2001. Considering the situation that there are only less than two month for the rest of the fiscal year, we are really worried that visa numbers will be left unused although many people are eligible for them.
The reason that DOS is still holding the cut-off date seems to be that they are expecting cases that will be cleaned out from Backlog Elimination centers (BEC is a part of Labor department for people who started their labor certificate process a couple of years ago). But this does not make much sense: even BEC cases will get approved for their labor certificate very soon, it still takes them about one year (for smooth cases) to finish I-140/I-485 applications, so they won't be able to use the current year's visa numbers by any means.
So what I am trying to do is to report our concern, and request that DOS set a more recent cut-off date or make it current so that visa number can at least be given to those people who are ready for the cards. It would be really upset to see visa numbers to be wasted when only about 2800 available for China EB2 (including spouses and kids) as tens of thousands people are waiting for them.
My PD is *****, and some of my friends have PDs of roughly the same time, we all got our preliminary steps done so we are certainly eligible for the green card. We need international travels for our jobs from time to time, and our spouses need green cards so they can work and support family. The delay in green card is really painful for both our work and families. Right now we are just waiting for the visa number so we can get the green card, but if there is a long waiting time, then our finger print will get expired so USCIS needs to do it again, and if we change jobs, USCIS need to deal with that too, so a bad timing not only takes more of our time, but also takes more of the government's time.
I tried to call DOS, but not very efficiently. And I believe Senator *** knows much better how to deal with these concerns and knows how to better communicate with DOS or USCIS officers.
Thank you very much, and I look forward to hearing from you!