Madhuri
06-05 11:02 AM
My I-140 case status (NSE) used to say 150-180 days, now no more time line words in the status. Just they say they will notify you when decision is made, I thought that was because I 140 premium is coming soon, they changed the wording.
Did anyone notice the change in the wording on I-485 adjustment of status? It used to say that it takes between 850 and 900 days to process this type of request. Now it just says that the will notify you when a decision has been made. This change was just made in the last week or two. Curious.
Did anyone notice the change in the wording on I-485 adjustment of status? It used to say that it takes between 850 and 900 days to process this type of request. Now it just says that the will notify you when a decision has been made. This change was just made in the last week or two. Curious.
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ivorycard
10-17 09:27 PM
I had a conference call with the leading law firm.
He confirmed that, as long as the first two numbers falls under the same category/domain, the job changes is good for AC21. The sub-categorical numbers do not matter.
He confirmed that, as long as the first two numbers falls under the same category/domain, the job changes is good for AC21. The sub-categorical numbers do not matter.
snathan
05-19 06:57 PM
I am also travelling with the family in June for a couple of months !
the murthy link and this thread over all is helpful !
Our company's lawyer mentioned that if the 485 gets approved while abroad then when I come back I just tell the officer at the entry point that I was out and do not have the card in hand. So I enter using AP.
I also asked him (and in another thread here ) if I can have the card mailed to India by a friend and he said yes, I can do that if I am comfortable with it.
On a different note , one other person mentioned to me that one has to be in the US when the 485 application is approved or else they can reject the application, but that does not sound true and nor I have heard anything like that from the lawyer or in any of the forums !!
Then whats the purpose of AP....?
the murthy link and this thread over all is helpful !
Our company's lawyer mentioned that if the 485 gets approved while abroad then when I come back I just tell the officer at the entry point that I was out and do not have the card in hand. So I enter using AP.
I also asked him (and in another thread here ) if I can have the card mailed to India by a friend and he said yes, I can do that if I am comfortable with it.
On a different note , one other person mentioned to me that one has to be in the US when the 485 application is approved or else they can reject the application, but that does not sound true and nor I have heard anything like that from the lawyer or in any of the forums !!
Then whats the purpose of AP....?
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srinivas_o
05-28 04:31 PM
Pending long means do you approximately how much time is considered as long???
I mean pending for 2 years or 5 years or ????
Heard this from our company lawyer .... uscis will issue RFE for all I-485 applications that are pending for a while to make sure the applicant still has the job offer. He got this from a very reliable source. I dont know how true it is...just sharing what I have heard.
I mean pending for 2 years or 5 years or ????
Heard this from our company lawyer .... uscis will issue RFE for all I-485 applications that are pending for a while to make sure the applicant still has the job offer. He got this from a very reliable source. I dont know how true it is...just sharing what I have heard.
more...
thamizhan
07-18 10:39 AM
Check this out....
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Gandhigiri_works_US_to_give_more_Green_Cards/articleshow/2215001.cms
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Gandhigiri_works_US_to_give_more_Green_Cards/articleshow/2215001.cms
rvr_jcop
02-17 04:53 PM
Hi My emplyer is saying that he will apply for extention 3 months before expiry . So I guess he will apply in July . So in that case I need the Paystubs of May and June . Am I right ?
Yes, according to English Calendar :)
Yes, according to English Calendar :)
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optimystic
04-22 03:49 PM
I-485 could be from family based, EB1 and ROW categories. I dont all these became Unavailable on July 2nd. Also you are right, USCIS didnt reject applications even though they came in between July 2nd and 17th.
That particular date of July 11 at NSC is for EB I-485 !
That particular date of July 11 at NSC is for EB I-485 !
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priya82
02-18 08:57 PM
Thanks for your advice snathan...
more...
NewDocinUS
02-05 05:49 PM
Please email me your details, I may be able to get you an observership spot. I do not promise, but I will try
Can you please let me know if you received my email.
Thanks
Can you please let me know if you received my email.
Thanks
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smiledentist
06-14 01:45 PM
485 can be filed for future employment. So technically, your old company with one of the partners can file for 485, presuming no other technical flaws with ability to pay and other such stuff. Contact an attorney, but according to me, a strong possibility of filing with old company and then using AC21.
I think ability to pay is at 140 stage,and that has gotten cleared.I was wondering if I could file 485 from the old company and invoke ac 21 after 181 days.
I think ability to pay is at 140 stage,and that has gotten cleared.I was wondering if I could file 485 from the old company and invoke ac 21 after 181 days.
more...
priderock
06-30 02:56 PM
Hey can we sue these law firms who have spread the rumors, I could not sleep all night yesterday. Think about those who have not submitted the paperwork to their lawyer yet ....
I saw immigration law (Matthew Oh) & Murthy publizing these rumors. Even Shusterman could have done the same he is one of the top immg attorneys but I feel just to make us already suffering souls file before the holiday these firms has run some water down our drain ....
I feel like repeated my self , but why do you guys blame the messenger ? I would like to know the bad news in advance if possible and be prepared rather than caught by surprise. May be it is just me.
Again those firms/web sites did not call you and inform you, if you don't want to listen things that are depressing (probably truths) , don't read, Send in your application and wait for your lawyer to give you an update.
I understand that every one is on their nerves, but lets keep our calm and appreciate their info. We are all educated and can get all kinds of information (good , bad , depressing) and process it.
May be at the end of the day, nothing bad might happen. May be we get 15 days grace period(For their mixup) for sending our applications. May be they would accept through out July. This is all speculation until official word comes out. Lets all hope for the best.
I saw immigration law (Matthew Oh) & Murthy publizing these rumors. Even Shusterman could have done the same he is one of the top immg attorneys but I feel just to make us already suffering souls file before the holiday these firms has run some water down our drain ....
I feel like repeated my self , but why do you guys blame the messenger ? I would like to know the bad news in advance if possible and be prepared rather than caught by surprise. May be it is just me.
Again those firms/web sites did not call you and inform you, if you don't want to listen things that are depressing (probably truths) , don't read, Send in your application and wait for your lawyer to give you an update.
I understand that every one is on their nerves, but lets keep our calm and appreciate their info. We are all educated and can get all kinds of information (good , bad , depressing) and process it.
May be at the end of the day, nothing bad might happen. May be we get 15 days grace period(For their mixup) for sending our applications. May be they would accept through out July. This is all speculation until official word comes out. Lets all hope for the best.
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gopinathan
04-13 01:55 PM
braindrain - can you please update on your parents visa please ..
I have a similar issue that I need some guidance..
My Wife last name is spelled with 2 e's and my in-laws last names in her passport are spelled with 2 e's. Our Marriage certificate is based on the passport name and has 'ee'.
Her Birth Certificate has only one 'e' and the parents last name in that certificate have single 'e'. Also, my in-laws passports have single 'e'.
how bad is this additional 'e' ?? I wil update her birth certificate to 'ee' so that it matches her passport name (no problems in future for I-485) but can her birth certificate have her parents name as singe 'e' that matches their passports ?? (or is this a stupid idea to have different surnames for child and parents in birth certificate ?)
thanks
Gopi
I have a similar issue that I need some guidance..
My Wife last name is spelled with 2 e's and my in-laws last names in her passport are spelled with 2 e's. Our Marriage certificate is based on the passport name and has 'ee'.
Her Birth Certificate has only one 'e' and the parents last name in that certificate have single 'e'. Also, my in-laws passports have single 'e'.
how bad is this additional 'e' ?? I wil update her birth certificate to 'ee' so that it matches her passport name (no problems in future for I-485) but can her birth certificate have her parents name as singe 'e' that matches their passports ?? (or is this a stupid idea to have different surnames for child and parents in birth certificate ?)
thanks
Gopi
more...
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reddog
06-25 01:09 PM
Me and my group of friends have used this method and the photos look better than the Walgreen/CVS ones. And they are already on US passports/other stuff.
http://www.dpchallenge.com/tutorial.php?TUTORIAL_ID=22 Photoshop/GIMP required.
Another cheap place is Sams Club, if you dont have a digital camera(pun intended) they give 3 photos for 5 bucks.
http://www.dpchallenge.com/tutorial.php?TUTORIAL_ID=22 Photoshop/GIMP required.
Another cheap place is Sams Club, if you dont have a digital camera(pun intended) they give 3 photos for 5 bucks.
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AabTuAgaGC
06-30 04:36 PM
Even though, i have everything ready, I will send my docs next week. No need to get into panic gear. If the dates retrogress, screw GC, if not well and good. Honestly, I am sick and tired of this bloody GC. I have far more things to worry about in life than if f***ing GC business. Screw you USCIS:mad: :mad:
more...
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xlr8r
08-30 04:55 PM
Congratulations, buddy!
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gc_kaavaali
12-09 10:53 AM
Guys,
Right now there are 154 guests accessing this site...please become a member, join state chapter and please please contribute to IV..
Right now there are 154 guests accessing this site...please become a member, join state chapter and please please contribute to IV..
more...
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Hey Ram GC
04-08 10:07 AM
PD before 31st 01 that too EB3
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glus
01-03 10:15 AM
You will need to switch to an F1 (Student Visa). You cannot enroll for a full time MBA course on an H1. The college you enroll in will insist on an F1.
As for the GC application, it is for future employment. Meaning that if you company is willing to hire you back once you get your GC and they don't withdraw the I-140, then the application can continue.
However, I think that if and when yr GC gets approved, you will mostly likely have to abandon full time studies and go back to working full time for yr company right away. I only think this and I'm not sure.
Hello,
Respectfully, but Yinzak is incorrect. While working for a law office, we researched the issue for a client. There is a memo issued by uscis many years ago. There is NOTHING in INA that says that a person on H-1B visa or status can't attend college and the memo states that as long as attendance to college is "incidental" to the H-1B, not a problem. As such, if a person Maintains H-1B employment, and all the H-1B requirements continue to exist, one can attend college part of full time. In fact, some colleges offer in-state tuition for H-1B applicants. Changing to F-1 is impossible because of immigrant intent showed by GC petition pending for this person.
Brooklyn college is one that offers in-state tuition for H-1s and does not require change in status at all.
As for the GC application, it is for future employment. Meaning that if you company is willing to hire you back once you get your GC and they don't withdraw the I-140, then the application can continue.
However, I think that if and when yr GC gets approved, you will mostly likely have to abandon full time studies and go back to working full time for yr company right away. I only think this and I'm not sure.
Hello,
Respectfully, but Yinzak is incorrect. While working for a law office, we researched the issue for a client. There is a memo issued by uscis many years ago. There is NOTHING in INA that says that a person on H-1B visa or status can't attend college and the memo states that as long as attendance to college is "incidental" to the H-1B, not a problem. As such, if a person Maintains H-1B employment, and all the H-1B requirements continue to exist, one can attend college part of full time. In fact, some colleges offer in-state tuition for H-1B applicants. Changing to F-1 is impossible because of immigrant intent showed by GC petition pending for this person.
Brooklyn college is one that offers in-state tuition for H-1s and does not require change in status at all.
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diptam
11-13 03:37 PM
Jokes apart - I-485 is the actual step of converting someone to a real Permanent Resident.
You don't have to worry about your Skill sets , loads of paperwork - you can do everything that an American can do apart from Voting. Its not a administrative processing step like I-140.
If on a higher level the politicians feel that economy is bad , umeployment is rocketing up they would do nothing to speed up 485 , rather slow it down... They don't want an extra immigrant to stand in the line for Food stamp or unemployment benefits.
Makes sense ?
Is tehre is any way for PREMIUM PROCESSING for I485 pending case ?
In my case PD is current since years the I140 is approved. Backbround check etc is over. Confirmed by various sources that my case JUST needs to be picked up by IO.
I have somebusiness trips coming up. My employer want me to find out the way to get the GC faster that way there wont be any hassle for every year renewal od AP and also EADs. and then appplying VISAs which will expire along with teh AP last date.
Along with me my employer is also fed up now:p.
Our lawyer being stupid; the employer wants me to find out the way to expedite I485. Since it is in last stages I think theer could be quicker way.
I know there is the way WOM but is there any other way?:rolleyes:
You don't have to worry about your Skill sets , loads of paperwork - you can do everything that an American can do apart from Voting. Its not a administrative processing step like I-140.
If on a higher level the politicians feel that economy is bad , umeployment is rocketing up they would do nothing to speed up 485 , rather slow it down... They don't want an extra immigrant to stand in the line for Food stamp or unemployment benefits.
Makes sense ?
Is tehre is any way for PREMIUM PROCESSING for I485 pending case ?
In my case PD is current since years the I140 is approved. Backbround check etc is over. Confirmed by various sources that my case JUST needs to be picked up by IO.
I have somebusiness trips coming up. My employer want me to find out the way to get the GC faster that way there wont be any hassle for every year renewal od AP and also EADs. and then appplying VISAs which will expire along with teh AP last date.
Along with me my employer is also fed up now:p.
Our lawyer being stupid; the employer wants me to find out the way to expedite I485. Since it is in last stages I think theer could be quicker way.
I know there is the way WOM but is there any other way?:rolleyes:
GodHelpUs
03-21 10:48 AM
I am really shocked on looking at this article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/21/nyregion/21immigrant.html?hp
An Agent, a Green Card, and a Demand for Sex
Article Tools Sponsored By
By NINA BERNSTEIN
Published: March 21, 2008
No problems so far, the immigration agent told the American citizen and his 22-year-old Colombian wife at her green card interview in December. After he stapled one of their wedding photos to her application for legal permanent residency, he had just one more question: What was her cellphone number?
Skip to next paragraph
Enlarge This Image
Uli Seit for The New York Times
Isaac R. Baichu, 46, an adjudicator for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, was arrested after he met with a green card applicant at the Flagship Restaurant, a diner in Queens. He is charged with coercing oral sex from her.
Audio A Secret Recording
Enlarge This Image
Uli Seit for The New York Times
The Flagship Restaurant, where Mr. Baichu met with a green card applicant.
The calls from the agent started three days later. He hinted, she said, at his power to derail her life and deport her relatives, alluding to a brush she had with the law before her marriage. He summoned her to a private meeting. And at noon on Dec. 21, in a parked car on Queens Boulevard, he named his price � not realizing that she was recording everything on the cellphone in her purse.
�I want sex,� he said on the recording. �One or two times. That�s all. You get your green card. You won�t have to see me anymore.�
She reluctantly agreed to a future meeting. But when she tried to leave his car, he demanded oral sex �now,� to �know that you�re serious.� And despite her protests, she said, he got his way.
The 16-minute recording, which the woman first took to The New York Times and then to the Queens district attorney, suggests the vast power of low-level immigration law enforcers, and a growing desperation on the part of immigrants seeking legal status. The aftermath, which included the arrest of an immigration agent last week, underscores the difficulty and danger of making a complaint, even in the rare case when abuse of power may have been caught on tape.
No one knows how widespread sexual blackmail is, but the case echoes other instances of sexual coercion that have surfaced in recent years, including agents criminally charged in Atlanta, Miami and Santa Ana, Calif. And it raises broader questions about the system�s vulnerability to corruption at a time when millions of noncitizens live in a kind of legal no-man�s land, increasingly fearful of seeking the law�s protection.
The agent arrested last week, Isaac R. Baichu, 46, himself an immigrant from Guyana, handled some 8,000 green card applications during his three years as an adjudicator in the Garden City, N.Y., office of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of the federal Department of Homeland Security. He pleaded not guilty to felony and misdemeanor charges of coercing the young woman to perform oral sex, and of promising to help her secure immigration papers in exchange for further sexual favors. If convicted, he will face up to seven years in prison.
His agency has suspended him with pay, and the inspector general of Homeland Security is reviewing his other cases, a spokesman said Wednesday. Prosecutors, who say they recorded a meeting between Mr. Baichu and the woman on March 11 at which he made similar demands for sex, urge any other victims to come forward.
Money, not sex, is the more common currency of corruption in immigration, but according to Congressional testimony in 2006 by Michael Maxwell, former director of the agency�s internal investigations, more than 3,000 backlogged complaints of employee misconduct had gone uninvestigated for lack of staff, including 528 involving criminal allegations.
The agency says it has tripled its investigative staff since then, and counts only 165 serious complaints pending. But it stopped posting an e-mail address and phone number for such complaints last year, said Jan Lane, chief of security and integrity, because it lacks the staff to cull the thousands of mostly irrelevant messages that resulted. Immigrants, she advised, should report wrongdoing to any law enforcement agency they trust.
The young woman in Queens, whose name is being withheld because the authorities consider her the victim of a sex crime, did not even tell her husband what had happened. Two weeks after the meeting in the car, finding no way to make a confidential complaint to the immigration agency and afraid to go to the police, she and two older female relatives took the recording to The Times.
Reasons to Worry
A slim, shy woman who looks like a teenager, she said she had spent recent months baby-sitting for relatives in Queens, crying over the deaths of her two brothers back in Cali, Colombia, and longing for the right stamp in her passport � one that would let her return to the United States if she visited her family.
She came to the United States on a tourist visa in 2004 and overstayed. When she married an American citizen a year ago, the law allowed her to apply to �adjust� her illegal status. But unless her green card application was approved, she could not visit her parents or her brothers� graves and then legally re-enter the United States. And if her application was denied, she would face deportation.
She had another reason to be fearful, and not only for herself. About 15 months ago, she said, an acquaintance hired her and two female relatives in New York to carry $12,000 in cash to the bank. The three women, all living in the country illegally, were arrested on the street by customs officers apparently acting on a tip in a money-laundering investigation. After determining that the women had no useful information, the officers released them.
But the closed investigation file had showed up in the computer when she applied for a green card, Mr. Baichu told her in December; until he obtained the file and dealt with it, her application would not be approved. If she defied him, she feared, he could summon immigration enforcement agents to take her relatives to detention.
So instead of calling the police, she turned on the video recorder in her cellphone, put the phone in her purse and walked to meet the agent. Two family members said they watched anxiously from their parked car as she disappeared behind the tinted windows of his red Lexus.
�We were worried that the guy would take off, take her away and do something to her,� the woman�s widowed sister-in-law said in Spanish.
As the recorder captured the agent�s words and a lilting Guyanese accent, he laid out his terms in an easy, almost paternal style. He would not ask too much, he said: sex �once or twice,� visits to his home in the Bronx, perhaps a link to other Colombians who needed his help with their immigration problems.
In shaky English, the woman expressed reluctance, and questioned how she could be sure he would keep his word.
�If I do it, it�s like very hard for me, because I have my husband, and I really fall in love with him,� she said.
The agent insisted that she had to trust him. �I wouldn�t ask you to do something for me if I can�t do something for you, right?� he said, and reasoned, �Nobody going to help you for nothing,� noting that she had no money.
He described himself as the single father of a 10-year-old daughter, telling her, �I need love, too,� and predicting, �You will get to like me because I�m a nice guy.�
Repeatedly, she responded �O.K.,� without conviction. At one point he thanked her for showing up, saying, �I know you feel very scared.�
Finally, she tried to leave. �Let me go because I tell my husband I come home,� she said.
His reply, the recording shows, was a blunt demand for oral sex.
�Right now? No!� she protested. �No, no, right now I can�t.�
He insisted, cajoled, even empathized. �I came from a different country, too,� he said. �I got my green card just like you.�
Then, she said, he grabbed her. During the speechless minute that follows on the recording, she said she yielded to his demand out of fear that he would use his authority against her.
How Much Corruption?
The charges against Mr. Baichu, who became a United States citizen in 1991 and earns roughly $50,000 a year, appear to be part of a larger pattern, according to government records and interviews.
Mr. Maxwell, the immigration agency�s former chief investigator, told Congress in 2006 that internal corruption was �rampant,� and that employees faced constant temptations to commit crime.
�It is only a small step from granting a discretionary waiver of an eligibility rule to asking for a favor or taking a bribe in exchange for granting that waiver,� he contended. �Once an employee learns he can get away with low-level corruption and still advance up the ranks, he or she becomes more brazen.�
�Despite our best efforts there are always people ready to use their position for personal gain or personal pleasure,� said Chris Bentley, a spokesman for Citizenship and Immigration Services. �Our responsibility is to ferret them out.�
When the Queens woman came to The Times with her recording on Jan. 3, she was afraid of retaliation from the agent, and uncertain about making a criminal complaint, though she had an appointment the next day at the Queens district attorney�s office.
Mr. Baichu was arrested as he emerged from the diner and headed to his car, wearing much gold and diamond jewelry, prosecutors said. Later released on $15,000 bail, Mr. Baichu referred calls for comment to his lawyer, Sally Attia, who said he did not have authority to grant or deny green card petitions without his supervisor�s approval.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/21/nyregion/21immigrant.html?hp
An Agent, a Green Card, and a Demand for Sex
Article Tools Sponsored By
By NINA BERNSTEIN
Published: March 21, 2008
No problems so far, the immigration agent told the American citizen and his 22-year-old Colombian wife at her green card interview in December. After he stapled one of their wedding photos to her application for legal permanent residency, he had just one more question: What was her cellphone number?
Skip to next paragraph
Enlarge This Image
Uli Seit for The New York Times
Isaac R. Baichu, 46, an adjudicator for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, was arrested after he met with a green card applicant at the Flagship Restaurant, a diner in Queens. He is charged with coercing oral sex from her.
Audio A Secret Recording
Enlarge This Image
Uli Seit for The New York Times
The Flagship Restaurant, where Mr. Baichu met with a green card applicant.
The calls from the agent started three days later. He hinted, she said, at his power to derail her life and deport her relatives, alluding to a brush she had with the law before her marriage. He summoned her to a private meeting. And at noon on Dec. 21, in a parked car on Queens Boulevard, he named his price � not realizing that she was recording everything on the cellphone in her purse.
�I want sex,� he said on the recording. �One or two times. That�s all. You get your green card. You won�t have to see me anymore.�
She reluctantly agreed to a future meeting. But when she tried to leave his car, he demanded oral sex �now,� to �know that you�re serious.� And despite her protests, she said, he got his way.
The 16-minute recording, which the woman first took to The New York Times and then to the Queens district attorney, suggests the vast power of low-level immigration law enforcers, and a growing desperation on the part of immigrants seeking legal status. The aftermath, which included the arrest of an immigration agent last week, underscores the difficulty and danger of making a complaint, even in the rare case when abuse of power may have been caught on tape.
No one knows how widespread sexual blackmail is, but the case echoes other instances of sexual coercion that have surfaced in recent years, including agents criminally charged in Atlanta, Miami and Santa Ana, Calif. And it raises broader questions about the system�s vulnerability to corruption at a time when millions of noncitizens live in a kind of legal no-man�s land, increasingly fearful of seeking the law�s protection.
The agent arrested last week, Isaac R. Baichu, 46, himself an immigrant from Guyana, handled some 8,000 green card applications during his three years as an adjudicator in the Garden City, N.Y., office of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of the federal Department of Homeland Security. He pleaded not guilty to felony and misdemeanor charges of coercing the young woman to perform oral sex, and of promising to help her secure immigration papers in exchange for further sexual favors. If convicted, he will face up to seven years in prison.
His agency has suspended him with pay, and the inspector general of Homeland Security is reviewing his other cases, a spokesman said Wednesday. Prosecutors, who say they recorded a meeting between Mr. Baichu and the woman on March 11 at which he made similar demands for sex, urge any other victims to come forward.
Money, not sex, is the more common currency of corruption in immigration, but according to Congressional testimony in 2006 by Michael Maxwell, former director of the agency�s internal investigations, more than 3,000 backlogged complaints of employee misconduct had gone uninvestigated for lack of staff, including 528 involving criminal allegations.
The agency says it has tripled its investigative staff since then, and counts only 165 serious complaints pending. But it stopped posting an e-mail address and phone number for such complaints last year, said Jan Lane, chief of security and integrity, because it lacks the staff to cull the thousands of mostly irrelevant messages that resulted. Immigrants, she advised, should report wrongdoing to any law enforcement agency they trust.
The young woman in Queens, whose name is being withheld because the authorities consider her the victim of a sex crime, did not even tell her husband what had happened. Two weeks after the meeting in the car, finding no way to make a confidential complaint to the immigration agency and afraid to go to the police, she and two older female relatives took the recording to The Times.
Reasons to Worry
A slim, shy woman who looks like a teenager, she said she had spent recent months baby-sitting for relatives in Queens, crying over the deaths of her two brothers back in Cali, Colombia, and longing for the right stamp in her passport � one that would let her return to the United States if she visited her family.
She came to the United States on a tourist visa in 2004 and overstayed. When she married an American citizen a year ago, the law allowed her to apply to �adjust� her illegal status. But unless her green card application was approved, she could not visit her parents or her brothers� graves and then legally re-enter the United States. And if her application was denied, she would face deportation.
She had another reason to be fearful, and not only for herself. About 15 months ago, she said, an acquaintance hired her and two female relatives in New York to carry $12,000 in cash to the bank. The three women, all living in the country illegally, were arrested on the street by customs officers apparently acting on a tip in a money-laundering investigation. After determining that the women had no useful information, the officers released them.
But the closed investigation file had showed up in the computer when she applied for a green card, Mr. Baichu told her in December; until he obtained the file and dealt with it, her application would not be approved. If she defied him, she feared, he could summon immigration enforcement agents to take her relatives to detention.
So instead of calling the police, she turned on the video recorder in her cellphone, put the phone in her purse and walked to meet the agent. Two family members said they watched anxiously from their parked car as she disappeared behind the tinted windows of his red Lexus.
�We were worried that the guy would take off, take her away and do something to her,� the woman�s widowed sister-in-law said in Spanish.
As the recorder captured the agent�s words and a lilting Guyanese accent, he laid out his terms in an easy, almost paternal style. He would not ask too much, he said: sex �once or twice,� visits to his home in the Bronx, perhaps a link to other Colombians who needed his help with their immigration problems.
In shaky English, the woman expressed reluctance, and questioned how she could be sure he would keep his word.
�If I do it, it�s like very hard for me, because I have my husband, and I really fall in love with him,� she said.
The agent insisted that she had to trust him. �I wouldn�t ask you to do something for me if I can�t do something for you, right?� he said, and reasoned, �Nobody going to help you for nothing,� noting that she had no money.
He described himself as the single father of a 10-year-old daughter, telling her, �I need love, too,� and predicting, �You will get to like me because I�m a nice guy.�
Repeatedly, she responded �O.K.,� without conviction. At one point he thanked her for showing up, saying, �I know you feel very scared.�
Finally, she tried to leave. �Let me go because I tell my husband I come home,� she said.
His reply, the recording shows, was a blunt demand for oral sex.
�Right now? No!� she protested. �No, no, right now I can�t.�
He insisted, cajoled, even empathized. �I came from a different country, too,� he said. �I got my green card just like you.�
Then, she said, he grabbed her. During the speechless minute that follows on the recording, she said she yielded to his demand out of fear that he would use his authority against her.
How Much Corruption?
The charges against Mr. Baichu, who became a United States citizen in 1991 and earns roughly $50,000 a year, appear to be part of a larger pattern, according to government records and interviews.
Mr. Maxwell, the immigration agency�s former chief investigator, told Congress in 2006 that internal corruption was �rampant,� and that employees faced constant temptations to commit crime.
�It is only a small step from granting a discretionary waiver of an eligibility rule to asking for a favor or taking a bribe in exchange for granting that waiver,� he contended. �Once an employee learns he can get away with low-level corruption and still advance up the ranks, he or she becomes more brazen.�
�Despite our best efforts there are always people ready to use their position for personal gain or personal pleasure,� said Chris Bentley, a spokesman for Citizenship and Immigration Services. �Our responsibility is to ferret them out.�
When the Queens woman came to The Times with her recording on Jan. 3, she was afraid of retaliation from the agent, and uncertain about making a criminal complaint, though she had an appointment the next day at the Queens district attorney�s office.
Mr. Baichu was arrested as he emerged from the diner and headed to his car, wearing much gold and diamond jewelry, prosecutors said. Later released on $15,000 bail, Mr. Baichu referred calls for comment to his lawyer, Sally Attia, who said he did not have authority to grant or deny green card petitions without his supervisor�s approval.
snathan
02-17 08:03 PM
I am working in US from Feb 2007 to till date. I was on H1-B visa This H1-B petition is valid till 30 sep,2009. I am currently on project which ends on 31 March 2009 . Before that I want to change my employer .
Some ppl suggested me Transfer H1 with extention immediately. Some said that stay with current employer have extention and then transfer .
Is there any problem now a days for H1 Transfers ?
Please give me your valuable suggestions.
Thanks...
If you have all the papers in place and never be out of status, you can do tranfer now itself. If everything is in place, still if you get REF...its out of luck. In that case you might get RFE in extension also.
If fact you can do the transfer and extension at the same time. I did file in couple of weeks gape and both got approved.
Some ppl suggested me Transfer H1 with extention immediately. Some said that stay with current employer have extention and then transfer .
Is there any problem now a days for H1 Transfers ?
Please give me your valuable suggestions.
Thanks...
If you have all the papers in place and never be out of status, you can do tranfer now itself. If everything is in place, still if you get REF...its out of luck. In that case you might get RFE in extension also.
If fact you can do the transfer and extension at the same time. I did file in couple of weeks gape and both got approved.
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