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USCIS Asks for E-Comments – Let's Tell 'em What We Think!

By David North, April 16, 2010

The USCIS Office of Public Engagement has issued an invitation for comments on its various programs, and it behooves one and all to respond.

The survey is online at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/6N2T3BQ and is open to the public.

As one might imagine, the questions do not deal with illegal immigration, or the massive current levels of arriving immigrants and nonimmigrants, or the impact of millions of newcomers on the demography or on the environment of the nation.

This is USCIS, after all, and its questions reflect its narrow self-image as a service agency for people wanting immigration benefits. So many of the alternatives it wants you to consider are pretty specialized, such as which visa category needs to be reviewed first.

My advice is to pull down the list of issues of concern to USCIS, and, in most cases choose "other" or "N/A" and then in the comment area below tell them how you feel about the bigger immigration policy issues that concern you – even though the survey form discourages such thoughts.

Though it is optional, I signed mine with my own name; if I were looking at the results of the survey, I would pay more attention to signed views than anonymous ones.

Further, anger does not help.

Yes, you may be (and you should be) upset about the way our immigration policy is managed, but bitter words will not help.

Tell USCIS quietly and firmly, in response to its various questions, that it should start doing everything it can to control illegal immigration, and to put some sensible limits on the inward flows of people to this somewhat over-populated and under-employed land of ours.

http://www.cis.org/north/uscis-survey