Subject: Requesting help to resolve FBI name check problem
Dear Senator Levin,
On behalf of the legal immigrants working and living in this country, we wish to bring to your attention the immigration problem we are facing and humbly request your help to resolve it.
We are those immigrants who are struggling to make America home, as the forefathers of this country did three hundred years ago. We came here legally as skilled workers. While building our lives here, we are contributing to this country in sciences and technologies. We need permanent residence status that is not only something that gives us right to live here, it also helps us with peace of mind to work efficiently and effectively and contribute more to this country.
But what are on the road to our permanent residency? After years of waiting for the approval of immigration petitions (I-140), we then waited for immigration quota for our adjust of status applications (I-485) to be processed; after years of waiting for the I-485 approval, we are simply informed by the USCIS of that we are stuck in the so-called “FBI name check”, and “this check may take years to be completed”. As legal immigrants working and living in this country, we desire a secure America not less than any American citizens do. Can depriving legal immigrants’ freedom of work, travel, and democratic rights and personal benefits for indefinite years really improve the national security of this country? A clear answer to this question is: This can only enhance difficulty in our work and hardship in our lives, and damage the interest of all American people.
We have exhausted all administrative means to get the problem solved, these include calling and writing to USCIS, FBI, USCIS ombudsman, Senators, Congressmen, and even the First Lady in the White House. At the same time, wave after wave of lawsuits are flooding federal courts across this country. We don’t understand why an immigration system in a great country works in this way today.
However, a sad fact is, when more and more concerns in the Senate and Congress are about immigration reform on “How to handle 11 million illegal immigrants in this country?”, what gets ignored is a “legal immigration reform” to remove the indefinitely-long “FBI name check” blockade on the road to our permanent residency and the permanent prosperity of this country. Moreover, as legal immigrants who are paying all kinds of taxes and adding great values to the competitiveness of America, we need a fair treatment by the whole immigration system. This is not only a benefit to us, but also a significant national interest of the United States of America. We need a reasonably-long path to permanent residency and citizenship.
Best regards to you.
Sincerely,