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For Green Card Applicants, Waiting Is the Hardest Part
Rajesh Poudyal, with wife Mala and five-week-old son Shreya, is still waiting for his green card. He arrived 15 years ago on a student visa and applied for his green card in November 2001.
(By Preston Keres -- The Washington Post)
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"In government terms, that has been quite a short amount of time," said Emily Stover DeRocco, assistant secretary of labor for employment and training.
The backlog stems from the passage of legislation that allowed undocumented immigrants or immigrants who had overstayed their visas to apply for green cards if a family member or employer sponsored them -- but they had to do it by April 2001. The result was a surge of green card applications.
The result has also been some resentment of workers who have not been in the United States legally from workers who have.
"They've given priority to illegal immigrants," said Poudyal, who is on the visa for highly skilled but temporary workers known as an H-1B."That's how we've become stuck."
Most difficult, the immigrants and their advocates say, has been the lack of communication from the Department of Labor about their status. Is their folder in a box that has even been opened? Is it in the data-entry process? Is their employer's address being verified, their pay being analyzed?
"It has gone into a black box," said Poudyal, the father of two who owns a home in Lanham. "You don't know what's inside."
His employer and lawyer have tried to check on the status with no luck. "So you just hope," Poudyal said.
At the center, officials say it is not uncommon for irate immigrants to show up at their doors. They say calls from members of Congress and human resources managers inquiring about specific applications are getting more common. But they remind critics that the system of immigration is driven by employers' needs and not immigrants' wants.
It is not a perfect system, DeRocco said in a recent interview. She said her agency has responded to "tens of thousands" of requests for status reports. Behind every case number, every file, she said, is someone who desperately wants to call the United States home.
"We care very deeply about that," she said. "We not only understand but believe we are doing it for those individuals."
The Labor Department will be involved in discussions about overall immigration reform, she said.
"H visas are not meeting the employers' need," DeRocco said, referring to the temporary work-related visas. "Immigration reform is very high on everyone's agenda."
