Just from the title alone you shouldn’t be surprised that it already got the attention of law makers.

According to Foxnews, several Republican senators asked immigration officials about the memo. Their major concern, of course, is the so-called “non-legislative version of amnesty.” But it is the other parts of the Memo that caught our attention:

“For workers in the U.S. whose occupations require frequent travel, or who are seeking permanent residence, USCIS could also build on a regulation issue by the former INS that, among other things, relieved H and L non-immigrants with pending adjustment applications from having to secure advance parole before departing the U.S. Expanding this “dual intent” concept to cover other long-term non-immigrants, including F, O, TN, P and E visa holders would enable these workers to maintain valid nonimmigrant status and travel overseas without advance parole while their adjustment applications are pending. They would also be allowed to maintain their nonimmigrant status if USCIS denies their adjustment applications. The agency could also consider extending employment authorization to the dependent spouses of certain skilled workers. For example, USCIS could allow employment authorization for H-4 dependent spouses of H-1B principals where the principals are also applicants for lawful permanent residence and have extended their nonimmigrant status under the provisions of AC21. Finally, the agency should afford workers admitted to the U.S. in nonimmigrant status a reasonable period of time to conclude their affairs and depart after expiration of their authorized period of employment, performance, training, or vocational activity. The current 10-day “grace period” is insufficient. USCIS could amend its regulations to permit longer periods ranging from 45 to 90 days depending on employment category and overall time spent working in the U.S.”

As you can see there are a few things USCIS may be able to do without the enactment of new laws, and still greatly improve the legal immigration process. This is exactly what ImmigrationRoad has been promoting all along: nobody knows what is going to happen to CIR, let’s start fixing the broken system with policy changes first, which can be done NOW.  One idea was demonstrated in our Light Green Card proposal more than a year ago.

Even though it is a leaked, unofficial, draft Memo, we are still excited about it. It proves that some high-ranking USCIS officials are indeed considering their options! Now we just hope that they can push DHS and the White House to make something happen.

USCIS apparently has been trying to downplay the importance of this memo. In an announcement, USCIS offered their “official” clarification:

“We will not comment on notional, pre-decisional memos. As a matter of good government, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will discuss just about every issue that comes within the purview of the immigration system. … Internal memoranda help us do the thinking that leads to important changes; some of them are adopted and others are rejected…..To be clear, DHS will not grant deferred action or humanitarian parole to the nation’s entire illegal immigrant population.”

It remains to be seen what happens from here, but to the immigrant community, hopefully the memo means more help is on the way.

This is a list USCIS compiled after conducting a survey three months ago asking your input on the areas that USCIS should review their policies and make changes first. It was an important study, and we called for actions in our community forum. Hopefully you had a chance to voice your opinion at that time.

After “nearly 5,600 stakeholders responded to the survey, representing current immigrant and non-immigrant visa holders, employers, immigration attorneys and advocates, among others, in addition to responses from approximately 2,400 members of the USCIS workforce,” the Top-10 list is quite extensive and other than a couple items, I think it hit the nail on the head:

1. National Customer Service Center
2. Nonimmigrant H-1B (specialty occupations)
3. Naturalization and Citizenship
4. Employment-Based Adjustment of Status
5. Family-Based Adjustment of Status
6. Employment-Based Immigrants Preference Categories 1, 2 (priority workers, professionals and holders of advanced degrees) and 3 (skilled workers and professionals)
7. Refugee and Asylum Adjustment of Status
8. Form I-601 (Application for Waiver of Ground of Inadmissibility)
9. General Humanitarian Programs
10. Employment Authorization and Travel Documents

I would say that EAD and AP could have been a little higher on the list, and B-2 visitor visa should have been included given the massive number of people its policy affects. Nonetheless, this is good list to start.
What comes next is as dissappointing as usual. According to the official announcement,

The USCIS Policy Review is a comprehensive, multi-year effort with four stages.

The word “multi-year effort” reminds me, and many others I’m sure, the typical government way of doing business. There will be meetings after meetings, reviews after reviews, and reports after reports. And in the end, we don’t even know what they are working on any more.

Come on! Have your “working groups” sit down and talk about one issue at a time. Give each member one week to read/review the policies and bring up their own suggestions. Give them another week to convene, one more week to test their ideas, and yet another week to tweak them. So a total of one month per issue, not enough? No one is expecting them to fix everything, just hit the big ones. There may be 100 items that can be improved over USCIS customer service; just fix the top 3, which should address 80% of complaints if not more.

Maybe I’ve made it sound too easy. But if you know there are issues, how do you justify a “multi-year effort” to address them? Should your paying customers continue to suffer while you spend “years” reviewing them?

Don’t get me wrong. I like the list, and I like the fact that USCIS is willing to work on it after soliciting input from immigrants. But sometimes, “do something” is more important than trying to do everything, which often ends up being nothing.

Update 7/27/10: USCIS Survey Report

http://goo.gl/nVat

What is that!? In case you’re wondering, it is actually the same address (URL) as this one:

http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.
5af9bb95919f35e66f614176543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=8c75d06dcebf9210VgnVCM
100000082ca60aRCRD&vgnextchannel=
68439c7755cb9010VgnVCM10000045f3d6a1RCRD

Yes, we are using shortened URLs, but almost exclusively on USCIS pages which are extremely long, as demonstrated in the example above. USCIS’ content management system apparently add these dynamically generated “keys” in their URL, but it is meaningless to users. We started using URL shortening on Twitter first, which is necessary due to the 140-character limit, but thought it wouldn’t hurt to try it on our news page because it contains lots of links to USCIS updates.

There are many URL shorteners such as TinyURL, bit.ly, tr.im, and so on. I picked Google’s shortening service arbitrarily, or because I have been a fan of Google’s tools for years and their Chrome browser offers a convenient tool to trim long URLs with one click.

So there you go. Don’t grow suspicious when you see a weird goo.gl link on our site; it is taking you to a legitimate source – as always – we are just tired of super long USCIS web addresses.

All newsletters contain information about the latest visa bulletin; yet all of them are simply describing VB tables in sentences. This doesn’t add much value to the easy-to-understand tables, in my opinion? In addition, by the time most newsletters arrive in my inbox, the Visa Bulletin was already out for a couple weeks. Unless attorneys are able and willing to offer some in-depth analysis, such as describing visa spill-over in more details, discussion of the visa bulletin is probably no longer news-worthy.

Another component of most newsletters that is also showing diminishing value is the re-broadcast of USCIS news. Again, since most newsletters are weekly or even monthly publications, they often are talking about old news instead. With Twitter, blogging, RSS and other venues, news is more accessible than ever, and in real time too. I’d be much more interested if a newsletter can bring information from an “unidentified source familiar with the situation” – also known as rumors – than press releases. Sure, there is liability and blah blah blah, but that is what a disclaimer is for, isn’t it?

One part I still read in those immigration newsletters is “Success Stories.” They all contain promotional languages, obviously, but at least I expect to find something new. More importantly, it adds a personal touch, as you are learning about a person or family, not just something called the law.

I took the picture on a beautiful July 4th afternoon. You can see blue sky and palm trees in the background, traffic lights that happened to be green at the time, and a gas station located conveniently nearby. What a fitting image for Immigration Road!

Now, can anyone guess where this road is?

To use the Entrant Status Check (ESC) Web site, you need to have your Submission Confirmation ready. The confirmation page was displayed when you successfully submitted your Diversity Visa (DV) lottery entry. More specifically, it contained your Entrant Confirmation Number, Last/Family Name (or blank if none), and Year of Birth. You must have this information in order to log into the website and check the status of your entry.

Your confirmation number should be 16 characters long, and start with 2011. For example: 20112O0DZWY3DOV9. Be sure to differentiate the letter O and number 0 (zero) when you enter it.

If the information you entered matches DOS record, you will be presented with an Authentication Code. Enter this code in the text field and click Submit. If you cannot recognize all characters, you may click the speaker symbol and hear an audio clip of the code, or refresh it to try a new one. Your status will be displayed after the authorization step.

If your entry was NOT selected, you should see a message like the one below:

“Based on the information provided, the Entry HAS NOT BEEN SELECTED for further processing for the 2011 Electronic Diversity Visa program …”

If your entry was selected for further processing, the status will be:

“Based on the information and confirmation number provided, you should have received a letter by mail from the United States Department of State’s Kentucky Consular Center (KCC) notifying you that your Diversity Visa entry was selected in the DV-2011 lottery.

If you have not yet received your selectee letter, please do not contact KCC until after August 1, 2010…”

If you still have not received the notification letter in the mail by August 1, 2010, and the website indicated that your entry was selected, you should contact KCC at kccdv@state.gov.

The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services is aware of the fact that some private parties are selling free USCIS forms and Infopass appointments for profit. In a recent blog post, USCIS reminded immigrants of such activities, but fell short of calling them fraudulent.

These services are offered free of charge by USCIS, but they do cost money. To design all the forms and to maintain local offices where infopass appointments take place aren’t necessarily cheap.

Immigrants are effectively paying for these services through application fees.

But some are tricked into paying more, by falling prey to websites and individuals who somehow manage to sell them.

Although selling USCIS forms is not nearly on the same level as green lottery scams yet, it is still troublesome.

USCIS can do more to raise awareness among unsuspecting immigrants, not only to save them money, but also to minimize their chances of using outdated USCIS forms, which can have severe consequences. Here are five suggestions:

1. On all USCIS forms, clearly indicate they are available for free, as shown in the image above. Free advertising for uscis.gov as well:
2. Convert more applications to electronic filing, which would eliminate or greatly reduce the need for downloading forms. E-file offers numerous benefits, not limited to detering fraud.
3. Make all PDF forms fillable, save-able and user friendly. This should help people who may be knowingly looking for better alternatives to save time. Also update expiring forms with new expiration dates or replace them with new versions in a timely manner.
4. Educate immigrants with information on unethical vs. illegal practices, and encourage them to report fraud.
5. Make all USCIS forms copyright protected. As a federal government agency, USCIS may have to work with a private organization to do this. But if implemented, it will enable them to pursue legal actions if they have to.

Our only advice to immigrants is very simple:

Just don’t download any USCIS forms from anywhere but uscis.gov!

With RFID embedded in the new green card, a CBP officer is now able to read your card while you are still standing in line at the airport. This, hopefully, can get you through a port of entry a bit faster. But the problem is, anyone with a sophisticated reader can read the same information as well, all from a distance without you even knowing it.

Before you push the panic button, however, let me just say that USCIS isn’t playing around with all the hassle of redesigning the green card. They must have worked with LaserCard (the manufacturer) to make sure that any embedded data isn’t easily accessible by an unauthorized source. And people who can break an RFID encryption are probably working on other stuff than reading your green card anyway.

But it remains a privacy concern. Since you are supposed to carry your green card with you at all times, the thought that someone walking by may have just read your green card is simply uncomfortable. So you want to follow all instructions from USCIS with regard to the storage and carrying of your new card. In fact, according to Piers Fawkes at PSFK, his new green card arrived with a warning on the card sleeve:

We recommend use of this envelope to protect your new card and prevent wireless communication with it.

The little card holder is probably some sort of electromagnetically opaque sleeve that shields your green card from external readers. At a minimum, it will make contactless access to your RFID more difficult.

Wikipedia has a good article on RFID, with a large section dedicated to security and privacy risks of the technology. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published a consumer report several years ago that had a section called The ABCs of RFID – another good read if you want to learn more:

In RFID systems, an item is tagged with a tiny silicon chip and an antenna; the chip plus antenna (together called a “tag”) can then be scanned by mobile or stationary readers, using radio waves (the “RF”). The chip can be encoded with a unique identifier, allowing tagged items to be individually identified by a reader (the “ID”).

E. J. Montini from The Arizona Republic wrote a story today about Tyson Nash, a former professional hockey player. He is a Canadian, and has been trying to secure a green card forever. Every time you hear the name of a pro athlete who happens to be from a foreign country, you may be thinking about his plays, his salary, his whatever, but rarely his immigration status. What is the legal status of Yao Ming, Pau Gasol, or the hundreds of Hispanic baseball players still playing in the MLB? O or P visa? Pending I-485? Many of you don’t have a clue – me either.

But apparently some athletes face the same immigration red tape just like we do:

During his time in this country, he has paid over a million and a half dollars in taxes. He has worked steadily and never been in trouble. He received the Coyotes’ Man of the Year Award in 2004 for his involvement in the community. He has paid lawyers over $16,000 to help him go through the immigration process the “right way.”

But in the end, since waiting for a USCIS interview somehow took longer than his professional career, he got the red card instead.

“Essentially, he told me that I filed my application as a hockey player and not a broadcaster so I had to get back in line and refile,” Nash said. “I can’t explain the frustration.”

So when he ran into a green card lottery winner, he couldn’t help but wonder what is right about the “right way.”

For one month, however, ESPN is changing priorities. All 64 world cup matches will be aired live and in high definition on ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC. In addition, most games will also be shown on ESPN360.com. For people who work in an office with a door, this is great news Even if you can’t (or don’t dare to) catch live broadcasts, DVR is your friend. If you still miss an important match, it looks like the sports network will replay selected games throughout the month. It helps that the NBA season will be over, and NFL hasn’t started, but as soccer fans living in the U.S., we still appreciate ESPN’s rather comprehensive coverage of soccer’s biggest tournament.

This is the TV schedule:

The frustration with the federal government’s failure to deal with the issue of illegal immigration resulted in passage of a flawed [Arizona] state law. However intended, the result of passing this law is that our basic principles of equal rights and protection under the law are being called into question, and Arizona’s already struggling economy will suffer even further setbacks at a time when the state can ill-afford them.

The political gesture also caught the attention of President Obama. Speaking to a crowd in the Rose Garden for a Cinco de Mayo reception,

“I know that a lot of you would rather be watching tonight’s game — the Spurs against ‘Los Suns’ from Phoenix,” Obama said. He also added that “I want to begin work this year, and I want Democrats and Republicans to work with me — because we’ve got to stay true to who we are, a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants.”

San Antonio might have done the same if they had enough time to make “Los Spurs” jerseys, according to coach Gregg Popovich.

NBA commisioner David Stern supported the move. And the NBA Players Association not only backed the Suns, but released an even stronger statement criticizing the nation’s toughest immigration law:

“The recent passage of the new immigration law in Arizona is disappointing and disturbing,” said Billy Hunter, executive director of the NBAPA. “The National Basketball Players Association strongly supports the repeal or immediate modification of this legislation. Any attempt to encourage, tolerate or legalize racial profiling is offensive and incompatible with basic notions of fairness and equal protection. A law that unfairly targets one group is ultimately a threat to all.

The Lakers, of course, have been doing their part even before Arizona’s immigration law, by calling themselves “Los Angeles” Lakers.

Well, I think that is too far.

Sure, the data is incomplete. But it is something we never had before. Prior to September of 2009, if you had a pending I-485, all you knew was that you were standing in line waiting for the next visa bulletin. Now, with the inventory, you can find out approximately how many people are actually ahead of you. Even if USCIS doesn’t count all the pending cases, you now have a general idea of how long the line is, and more importantly, what position you are in.

USCIS clearly indicated that I-485 applications transferred to field offices are not included in the inventory. And it appears that they plan to add this missing piece in later releases. There has been much debate about the exact percentage, and I guess nobody knows until USCIS publishes the data, but we do know that the majority of employment-based AOS applications are being processed by service centers, not district or field offices.

Another source of missing cases in the inventory, as claimed by many, is that USCIS simply isn’t capable of counting! I’m not as pessimistic, however. After all, it is a database. Let’s look at the case status checking system first. How many people with a pending I-485 cannot find their case in the system? Not many, right? It is a non-scientific indication that the database at least contains the vast majority of I-485’s out there. With data being present, counting and sorting is a few queries away. And there are multiple ways to cross reference your results to make sure nothing is obviously off track.

Many people also question the accuracy of the data. I can’t guarantee the inventory is error-free; in fact I can pretty much guarantee there are errors. But it serves its purpose well, and is good enough to shed some light on a matter that traditionally has been a black box.

We want to push USCIS to further improve their reporting of the inventory data – no doubt about that. But we shouldn’t ignore what we already have, especially since there is nothing better right now. Let’s not tell a starving person to throw away the burger in hand, and just wait for a steak dinner.

When you receive your card you must carry it with you at all times if you are 18 or older. It is the law.

So there you go. The perfect answer.

However, I’m not sure how many people actually do that. Everyone knows, or should know, to bring their green card with them when travelling abroad, some may do so with domestic trips too, but carrying a green card in a wallet or purse everyday seems like an overkill.

The No. 1 reason for not carrying a green card appears to be the fear of losing it. Although a lost card can be easily replaced, the mere idea of waiting for it to arrive in the mail, again, could bring back nightmares. If you are one of those who waited 10 years for their I-485 to be approved, you know what I’m talking about. The legislators who made up that rule obviously didn’t have to go through the run-around, so they didn’t care.

Another reason, I suppose, is that people don’t see a need for it. How many times were you ever required to show your green card? Other than international travels, there are very few occasions. Even if you do need to use your green card, such as when applying for a home loan, you most likely will be notified ahead of time. Immigration raid in work places may be all over the media, but in reality, it is still a low probability event unless you work in an industry that draws the attention of ICE agents on a regular basis.

Having said that, however, I’m in no way suggesting that you break the law by not carrying your green card If you do decide – at your own risk – that you’d rather leave it in a safe place instead of your wallet, you should make several copies and save them in different places. Also make sure at least one other person knows the whereabout of your original green card. Some people carry a photocopy of the card with them, which might turn out to be a good idea sometimes.

See graph:

The surprising move is part of a campaign to bring Google’s 1GB ultra speedy broadband Internet into the Agency. Alejandro Mayorkas, USCIS Director, explained during the formal proclamation:

In order to provide high-speed immigration services, we must have high-speed internet services.

His agency, often criticized for being slow and inefficient, has unveiled a slew of changes in recent months in order to improve its public image. Backlog reduction is apparently an important part of the plan, but according to GAO, the effort has been hindered by spotty internet connections available to adjudication officers.

Sometimes I sent a request for evidence, but it took five months to leave our system!

An immigration officer, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to discuss internal issues with the media, told AF reporters.

USCIS must fight to win a seat in Google’s broadband experiement, which will introduce internet connections 100 times faster than current standard. The pilot project is open to only a few participants, however. By changing its name to Google!, especially with the addition of an exclamation mark, USCIS hopes to increase its chances.

Update April 1, 2010:
USCIS just learned that Google officially changed its name also, to Topeka. Given that immigration is a federal matter, USCIS has decided to put the name change plan on hold, i.e. in pending status, indefinitely.