As I said, I expected to be "attacked" when I submitted my posts which only proves my point since the attacks are only coming from a "select group"; remember, the more you criticize my opions, the more you prove I'm right!

That being said, since I am not a member of this "select group", Administrator please remove me from the list of IMMIGRATION VOICE members. Thank you and good bye.

That is America my friends - people tend to move towards the direction of the wind.

A typical example - my wife was stressing out to get into a residency and was seeking help from contacts - everyone told "it is not easy for immigrants" it is a challenge, it is difficult." When she got into residency, the same people say that America is a land of opportunities, and your wife is intelligent ......

Thats how this Sheela Murthy is. Cannot initiate anything, but will want to take credit for participating in success.

A lot of Attorneys currently have no clue what is going on in the background.

Immigration Voice is starting a feature for recurring contributions per month. You can sign up for $20 or $50 or $100 contributions per month and a secure paypal transaction will deduct this amount each month and contribute to Immigration Voice.

The question is, why should you contribute and what are the stakes? We have seen no reform from congress the entire year of 2006, so what is the point now? These are the questions, right? Is it even legal? What is the oversight of funds?

I will try to answer all these questions below and if you have more, please feel free to ask over the phone or on this thread.



1. Is it legal to contribute or participate?

Yes. Absolutely. We have seen that reason as a number one fundraising killer. Everything done
by immigration voice is absolutely legal. See more here: http://immigrationvoice.org/index.ph...43&Itemi d=48 (http://immigrationvoice.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=43&Itemid=48)

2. Is the money well spent?

Most of our expenses account for lobbying fees. This is a non-profit and
no one here is out to make money. Everyone here running this is a retrogression/backlog victim. See the bios of
members and founders here: http://immigrationvoice.org/index.ph...57&Itemi d=49 (http://immigrationvoice.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=57&Itemid=49)

If you still have questions, call us at 850-391-4966. We would rather have you call us and question us rather than not call and not contribute. We are not here to run a scam. This organization is registered in New Jersey, and the non-profit tax status is pending with IRS.

3. Is it worth it?

Well, do you want a greencard in this life-time? Yes? Then its worth every penny of your contribution. Otherwise you are wasting your time here on this website.

4. Why cant big businesses, corporations contribute here or lobby on their own?

Well, do you want to wait for someone to help you out? What if that does not happen and legal immigration reform is dropped again? Do you want to risk it? If you do then you are wasting your time reading this.

We are trying to get corporate sponsorship for this effort but cannot completely rely on them.



5. Why lobbying?

We cannot cannot cannot in a million years do this without lobbying.

We have retained the help of professional top firm in Washington for our advocacy efforts in Washington, DC. The firm has a strong reputation and value-added experience to help us achieve our goals of solving the backlog and retrogression problems.

Working with professional advocacy group(lobbying firm) is only one way we are advancing Immigration Voice’s goals. While we are advocating for reform on these important issues in Washington, D.C., we need your help now more than ever – and you can help us in your city.

6. Why me?

Well, if you are here checking this website everyday, you are just about as worried about your greencard as the next guy who contributed. If you think that "Others" will contribute and reach goals, that is very unlikely to happen. If it does, and you see this org succeed without your contribution, then congrats to you. But then, for every member or visitor of this website who read forums everyday, wishes good luck, prays for success of Immigration Voice and DOES NOT CONTRIBUTE $$ thinking that "One non-contributor will be barely missed" we have a potential contribution not coming. And that is a majority as of now. Out of 8000 plus registered members and hundreds of more visitors, less than 2000 have contributed.


7. What's to lose?

Well, make a $50 contribution/month and that's one month's cable. Make it a $100 and that is 3 dinners outside with your partner. Make that $200 and that is one long weekend out the window. Is that all too much to lose compared to potential failure of immigration voice in raising funds?

Think about all consequences and make up your mind.

That being said let me sincerely thank people who have
already contributed and also mention that a handful of contributors have made over
$1,000 contributions or more so far in cash on top of volunteering time and effort.

Let's begin contributing...Click here (http://immigrationvoice.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=26&Itemid=25)to sign up now.

Advantages of Monthly recurring contributions for the Organization:

With recurring contributions, Immigration Voice can plan and make a budget for the advocacy efforts in advance before the actual resources are needed.

Payments are secured thru paypal. You can stop the recurring payments at any time in future by simply logging in into your paypal account and stopping it. Once you signup, all the details of your recurring payment would be sent to you in email by paypal so that you can save it for your records.

Payments are processed by withdrawal of funds from your chosen credit/debit card or paypal account once each month.

Please sign up and strengthen our hands. Click here (http://immigrationvoice.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=26&Itemid=25)to sign up now.

The goal is to have a total of 2000 contributors for recurring contributions in the next 1 month. Trust me, this is not difficult given the numbers we have even today. 8400 members, $ 200,000 raised so far. We can do much much much better than that.

However, do the math. Some people have contributed more than 500. That
means that with 200,000 coming from 1800 members, some have contributed
nothing. Well, I understand the fears and apprehensions people have with new
organizations asking for money and I am going to address all those
questions and answer them one by one. So that the only reasons left after
that for not contributing would be excuses. (unless you have another question...in which case, call us at our number 850-391-4966)

Thanks.

Hi:
I just joined the chapter.
Would love to be able to volnteer my services to this cause. How can I help? Also it may be a good idea to start a local support group for those of us in line waiting for this immigration hell to be over...may be a get together of some sort....

Wishin' for a better future ahead for all us immigration victims
PD for self: August 03
Labor Cert: pending

PD for husband: Dec 03
Labor Cert & I-140: appoved.

Date: Thursday, February 01, 2007
Start Time: 10:30 PM Eastern Std Time
End Time: 11:25 PM Eastern Std Time
Participants: 6
Type of Conference Web-Scheduled Standard
Dial-in Number: 1-605-725-1900 (South Dakota)
Organizer Access Code: *938581 (you must include the leading star key)
Participant Access Code 66239

Thanks
Varsha

I think atleast the forums section should be made restricted to contributing members. I see many newcomers (both paying and freebies) come to this site and hoping to get a quick guidence on their immigration issue. They come here becasue they know a) they will get some answer quickly b) that answer will make sense and experinced users here who have gone through similar situation will share their insights.

Those are major outcomes or results for not paying any dime.

I can understand someone's concern about asking everyone to pay certain amount. But most of us here are earning decent wages and can contribute atleast 3$ a month (or 25$ a year) for such a service.

If those members want to contribute more as many of us do then they are most welcome to do so.

In $$$ terms of the 12K + members we can retain 40% (about 5K) and each of them contributes atleast 25$ a year (one time payment) = $75,000.00

Remember this $75K is only based on basic membership fees. Any dropouts or reduced rate of conversion will be compensated by those '20$ a month' paying members (roughly by 1 as to 10).

In short, I support this idea of having majority of forums under restricted umbrella.

- PMAMP

I agree with sunny1000, We definetly should consider it
We retain the name Immigration Voice but we add a slogan to it

for xample in a news report it would appear some thing like this -

"" IMMIGRATION VOICE- An organisation of Legal Immigrants, was directly responsible for driving the congress to increase the greencard numbers to 300,000, exclude the family members from the quota and reduce the FBI check times to no more than one month, after such huge success and having achieved their ultimate goal IMMIGRATION VOICE - An organisation of Legal Immigrants has decided to fight for world peace.""

Good point...

Just my 25 cents...;)

Hope it gets there by the end of this year atleast.

Yes you have in your posts supported what IV stands against. You have appreciated policies of US government not letting Indians and Chinese here.So I am not sure what you stand for. IV has opposing country caps on agenda from last three years and suddenly you are telling folks that there are too many Indians and Chinese here and you support caps and less Indians and Chinese here. Yes you are minority and you can say your voice but cannot be racist and cannot offend the majority.

I am sorry if I offended anyone. I don't recall how.
and by the way, my friend, you really really need a life :-) That's the last thing you'll hear from me on this subject.
peace out

Done. Just did it

someone gave me red dot with this message -

**motherfucker**

I answer to that person is -- thank you for telling me your real level.

IV needs funds for lobbying. So rajuram - please start a campaign to collect funds for lobbying. You can be the first contributor. You can help in all ways, by lobbying, media, funding and driving threads to collect funds.

Shall we start a funding drive? rajuram - can you lead it?

I am not sure if I am missing something, but going through the document, it looks like the bill is for legals and illegals alike. It does not mention that you have to be illegal to qualify for permanent residence, just that you should have been in the US for 5 years. This allows for casual/innocent absence, not sure what that means though.

The only loophole I see in the statment is that it says that DHS may change status to legal resident, meaning that it could be restricted by the DHS in any way they like.

Good one :p

I am surprised that this thread is still active. Usually by this time somebody from the core group puts a statement and that usually closes the discussion. I am sure this will happen soon since atleast a few posters have been requesting asistance from Pappu regarding this issue. I am just waiting for that post to come...dont know when. Hey pappu why are you taking so long......why dont you post and tell all our friends who are currently so emotional about the reality of pursuing the legal option...

lets do something about it....!!
We need a lot of support from different members irrespective what category they are from.

if this bill is signed into law...most desi consultant companies with one h4 aunty doing the accounting work + recruiting + administrative work will have to shut down
:D

Most of our members lose focus after the first week of anguish immediately following a visa bulletin.

After that, we willingly engage in:
1. LUD-watching (as a sport)
2. Social networking on IV (reading forum threads, responding, stating how anguished we feel, talking about our contributions to the U.S. and how unfair the system is... )
3. Punching the clock, waiting for the next visa bulletin thread
4. Posting and speculating on the next visa bulletin thread, while waiting for the actual bulletin to show up
5. Continue to blame USCIS, DoS, the Congress, the President, and the American people for not realizing our importance.
6. Back to #1 (rinse, repeat... ), and hope for different results.

What we will not do (skip this if you are participating actively):
1. Participate in IV activities/action items
2. Willingly contribute time and/or money towards achieving our goals

As President Obama says (Boston Globe | Obama: Time of crisis can be 'great opportunity' (http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2009/03/08/obama_time_of_crisis_can_be_great_opportunity/?rss_id=Boston.com+--+Latest+news)), an economic crisis presents the biggest opportunity for drastic change.
"We've experienced great trials before," Obama said. "And with every test, each generation has found the capacity to not only endure, but to prosper -- to discover great opportunity in the midst of great crisis. That is what we can and must do today. And I am absolutely confident that is what we will do."If the President sees this time of crisis as a great opportunity, I see no reason why we should see the crisis as the greatest handicap for not working towards change.

Let's realize that we will never reach our goals in this lifetime without working for that change.

jazz

the problem is that we come up with such ideas only when visa bulletins come ..after few days everyone forgets.
there is not much direction from core either and that makes you wonder if there will be any campaigns at all in the future for recapture

the problem is that we come up with such ideas only when visa bulletins come ..after few days everyone forgets.
there is not much direction from core either and that makes you wonder if there will be any campaigns at all in the future for recapture

From ,
1. In Fy08, there were 189 EB2 India approvals.
2. Assume annual quota for Eb2 India is X (Correct me if i'm wrong but i think this equates to 2800?)
3. So 189 approvals = 2800 actual approvals. A ratio of 6.75%.

Upto Dec31, 03, there are still about 330 or so pending Eb2 India cases. Using the 6.75% representation, it would mean that there are about 4900 Eb2 India cases pending.

NOT EVERYONE REGISTERS AT THESE POS SITES. lol
C'mon be realistic.

Well - though white racists may oppose - anything related to economy and development does go through.

I personally think that if this proposal goes through - EU will be the next melting pot.

Racism is there everywhere, we find it in US also, even in India, you find caste system and inter state racism. With rising opportunities, such things may not really be visible especially in places where there are free zones.

Does anyone has more info on this?

Few more links:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6992670

http://www.workpermit.com/news/2007_01_23/japan/immigrant_worker_shortage.htm

http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/07/188

Good to see a fellow chapter member get a green card.

All the best and hope you will continue your support for PA-IV as always


I had checked the status earlier this morning (as every other day) and as every other day there was no LUD. When I got home this evening saw the following email (got one for my wife's application too)

I still remember very vividly the day I handed my papers to our HR in Sept 2002. It took our HR nine months to complete recruiting and send it to DoL. I am sure I will remember today and the day we get the physical cards better :)

Receipt Number: SRC07192xxxxx

Application Type: I485 , APPLICATION TO REGISTER PERMANENT RESIDENCE OR TO ADJUST STATUS

Current Status: Notice mailed welcoming the new permanent resident.

On May 8, 2008, we mailed you a notice that we had registered this customer's new permanent resident status. Please follow any instructions on the notice. Your new permanent resident card should be mailed within 60 days following this registration or after you complete any ADIT processing referred to in the welcome notice, whichever is later.

I have no idea. The first time I called them was in May (couple of weeks after I did my fingerprints). And was told NC is clear and yet not picked up by any IO for review as they are processing 08/2006 RD cases and my RD is 03/2007. So I have to wait for my turn.

That's all I know.