random ramblings

Happy Halloween ! I had my first ever trick-or-treaters at my door this evening.  I wasn’t expecting any so I didn’t prepare any candy. Luckily I had 2 small bags of candies from a birthday party last Saturday so I gave those away.

I had a fabulous time this weekend, but of course it was too short and now I’m back in loneliness :’(  …

Hendrik came in late Friday night, and we had supper in Mama’s House, a Korean restaurant in Pendleton Pike. The food was great, too bad we couldn’t really enjoy it since the waitress was rushing to close in less than half an hour.

Saturday we spent half a day in Bloomington. The fall colors were so pretty. Everywhere we looked the leaves were red, pink, orange, yellow, .. but I didn’t bring my digicam

We decided to try something different for lunch, so we went to Anyetsang’s Little Tibet, a decision that we later regretted :p  .. Maybe we ordered the wrong items on the menu hehehe

But the main reason we went to Bloomington was to visit Oliver Winery.  Jamie and her mom recommended this place, and we weren’t disappointed ! We went for a very short tour of the wine production, and hung around the tasting bar for a little bit. We sampled 8 different kinds of wines out of the 27 that were available this season. We ended up buying 3 bottles of the semi sweet ones.

Afterwards we went home and took a nap hehe and woke up just in time for dinner. Magda & Yuldi joined us for dinner in Patio, a Greek fast-food place. 

Next stop was the Fear Fair, a haunted house in Seymour. We were supposed to go with Kas’ family but they weren’t ready yet. They’re still at their colleague’s birthday party. So we crashed that party hahaha. We finally arrived at the haunted house around 10PM.. after several U-turns in the middle of very dark corn fields   Kas & Shahreel couldn’t come in with us because they brought their 1 year old baby !! so they just waited in the car.  Hendrik, me, Jamie, and Mimi went in. The line inside was long.  We stood in line for about 45 mins,  and oh, we were the only non-white people in line   The first ‘ghost’,  dressed in a hooker costume, :p, greeted us with "Konnichiwa"  hahaha.

Anyway, it was fun… we all screamed, but it was not THAT scary, just a lot of surprises …the ghosts here arelike the demons & monsters we see in Charmed, Buffy, or Angel, the tv series.  The minute I was out of there, I immediately forgot about them.. no impression whatsoever .. If it’s anything like the ghosts in The Ring, Ju-On, Jelangkung, or any of the Asian horror movies, it’s probably a different story :p

Sunday we had lunch buffet in Sichuan in Carmel. Terrific food!  Hendrik liked it so much. Then we just killed time in ToysRUs, BestBuy, and Castleton Square Mall to wait for his time to leave again :’(   I dropped him back to the airport at 5PM   … it really sucked coming home to an empty house again :’(  it will be 4 weeks before we see each other again…

A few weeks ago I added 2 online countdown trackers to my Friendster Profile, one is a countdown to my vacation to go home, the other is for my 6th Anniversary with Hendrik.

and this is what it looks like today :

Sometimes I can’t believe that we’ve been together for 6 years.. that’s a long time, huh ?

This was us in early 2000  

Look at his hair and I was wearing an overall !  Hehe anyway, Happy Anniversary Honey

Just last weekend I had this conversation with Hendrik

me      : What would you do if you suddenly win $50 million ?
Hendrik : I’ll give $10 million to my brother.
me      : Wowww.. that’s a lot of money, you would give $10 mil to Bob ?
Hendrik : Yeah. Why not ? He’s my brother I’ll give Alex $10 mil too.
me      : What about Lung2 then ?
Hendrik : Hmm.. okay Alex and Lung2, $5 million each then. Then I’d set aside $1 million to spend for myself, and the rest goes to savings account or investment
me      : and me? me ? How much would I get ?
Hendrik : Nothing for you. Why do I need to give you anything
me      : huaaaaaaa :’(

huehehe anyway.. we were just talking, What If .

If it’s up to me.. if I have $50 million hmmm…

$30m -> savings .. locked.. can’t touch for 10-20 years :p
$10m -> family (parents & siblings)
$5m  -> charity?? well that’s the plan and intent right now hehe
$5m  -> spend it now .. new house ? new car ? maybe take 1 year off work and travel around the world .. of course with my honey .. hehehe i wish :p

hehe ok.. need to stop this daydreaming… but after work today I plan to buy some Powerball tickets and try my luck hehehe.. the Jackpot has gone up to $340 million  I think I’m gonna spend $10 on it.. who knows I’ll become a millionaire tonight ?   .. btw I never ever bought a lottery ticket before, but reading all this news about the Powerball jackpot makes me want to join in the fun too.. just for fun   Indiana is the state with the most Powerball winner.. so … who knows :p    oh.. I’ve also checked that non-residents / non-citizens are eligible to play  hehehehehe

I started to think that it’s hopeless for me to get my PR here .. I don’t even think about it anymore. I’m now just going to follow Hendrik’s case closely ;p

So after LC, he can now move on to the 2nd Step : I-140. This is filed in the USCIS Texas Service Center (TSC), the current processing date is July 2005. That means about 4 months processing time ? .. but getting this 2nd step approved means nothing …..

For the past 2 years, we’ve belived that LC was the longest step, and once we’re passed it, it’s gonna be a smooth ride to a greencard. Technically, I-140 and I-485 (3rd and LAST step) could be filed concurrently, if a visa number is available for you.  So the 2nd step was almost invisible since it’s filed together with the 3rd step. Just like H-1B visas, there are visa quotas assigned to each category. Once your I-485 application have been filed for 180 days AND the I-140 was approved, we would be eligible to apply for EAD ( Employment Authorization Document ) and  AP (Advanced Parole). The EAD card would allow us to work here without H-1B visas and we can also change jobs.  The AP could be used to travel / re-enter the US. That means when we go home we don’t need to apply for the visa stamp for the passport anymore. Basically, we would be very close to getting a greencard if we ever reach that stage.. we’re pretty much SAFE there…

However…..last July or August, just a couple of months ago, the visa number for EB3 catogories became Unavailable (quota was reached). And just this month, October 2005, which is the beginning of a new fiscal year, they published a new priority date.

What this table is saying is, EB3 people whose priority date is later than March 2001 can’t apply for I-485 yet. We have to wait until our priority date becomes current. See all the C’s in the table. The priority date is the date we applied for LC. Hendrik’s is Jun 2003.  China, Mexico, India, and Phillipines have their own dates since they are significantly more applicants from these countries. This issue is now infamous among people in the same situation .. it’s called the visa retrogression issue.

EB2 category is still current. Only if Hendrik has a Master’s degree, he would be in EB2 category and probably would be celebrating tonight after the good news of Hendrik’s LC approval. Gosh !! Now we have to wait (2+ years) just to get in the queue.  Right now I just checked the processing time for I-485 is only about 6 months for TSC. But who knows that it won’t be backlogged too once we’re there… ?   hopeless.. hopeless…

Frustration.. frustration… but I know people in worse condition than we are .. so I guess I shouldn’t really complain too much..

My next cube Indian coworker applied for her Labor cert in April 2002 ( a year before me ), and she’s still in the same boat with me. She’s already in her 7th year of H-1B visa now. She’s eligible for a 1 year extention (renewable every year)  because of her pending labor cert application. Her husband’s H-1B visa expired in 2004, and he had to leave the country for 1 whole year in order to be eligible for another 6 year visa. So he did that in 2004, he moved to Canada leaving his wife (my coworker) and their newborn baby here.  They saw each other every few weeks, he came down here with a visitor visa for weekends. He wasn’t eligible for the 7th year extention because he never applied for a labor cert himself. Since they’re husband and wife, they’re counting on 1 application for both of them.  Her husband is now eligible for EB1 (manager role) category, and actually could just go ahead and filed I-485 now without a Labor Cert. But stupid company policy wouldn’t sponsor both husband and wife, since they already sponsor the wife. Now even if my coworker got her Labor Cert approved, she would face the same visa retrogression issue. For her it’s even worse since she’s EB3 from India. I feel really bad for them. 

My neighbor’s parents applied through a sibling (US citizen) back in 1997, but today their priority date for the visa number is February 1994 !!  The worst worst worst priority date I’ve seen is March 1983. Yup 22 years ago, that wasn’t a typo. That’s the priority date for Phillipinies people who applied through a sibling ( category 4 – Family Based ).  Poor people ! waiting 22 years for a US greencard ? What’s so great about this country ?

This visa situation is making everyone’s life miserable.  Sometimes I wonder why we still want to live here ! :p

OK.. this is the longest I’ve ever written.. did anybody actually finish reading this hehehhee

WARNING : This is gonna be a long one

"So, do you have a greencard now ?" .. I don’t know how many times people asked me that questions.. especially old friends back home.  They have no idea how difficult and excruciating the process to obtain a PR is over here. 

Usually companies would wait at least 1-2 years before they apply PR for an employee.  I was actually one of the lucky ones that started the PR application right after I got my H-1B visa.

Something happened today making me want to rant about this issue .. stop reading if you’re not interested to know about the Greencard process here hehe :p

After 2.5 years of being in the process, I think I’m almost an expert at this stuff now 

There are mainly 2 different ways of becoming a PR.
1 – Through family relations  -   marrying a citizen would be the fastest track
2 – Through employment

There are 5 different categories for Employment Based (EB) track :
EB1 – Priority Workers, Extraordinary Ability, Outstanding Professor or Researcher, Multinational Executive or Manager
EB2 – Members of the professions holding advanced degrees and "aliens of exceptional ability"
EB3 – Individuals who are "skilled workers, professionals, and other workers"
EB4 – Special immigrants, including religious ministers, certain long-time employees of the U.S. government etc.
EB5 – For those who invest one million dollars in a new enterprise.

And I’m only describing the steps for EB2 and EB3 here. The steps for other categories are different, and I’m not familiar with them, but I
know they’re simpler and faster !  Btw, both Hendrik and I
are in EB3 category.

So .. there are 3 STEPS :
1. Labor Certification (LC)                           
2. Immigrant Worker Petition (I-140)
3. Adjustment of Status (I-485)     –> this is where we would actually get the "green card"      

Where are we in the process ??  Well I’m still waiting for my LC. My company filed my application in Feb2003.  Hendrik filed his in Jun2003, and today he just received an email from his attorney that his application has been approved !! is this Good news ??? ermmmmm naah.. still a long way to go !

Why does it take so long ? Well it’s just my LUCK that I live in the MOST BACKLOGGED and the SLOWEST PROCESSING STATE in the country ! There were 2 different routes too, to apply for LC. The route were chosen for me, RIR – Reduction In Recruitment, was supposedly the FASTER track to an LC, compared to the old Traditional way. This first stage was divided into 2 more stages : State Workforce Agency (SWA) and Regional Department of Labor (DOL). Each State and Regional office posted their current processing time every month so we could check whether they’ve gotten to our application yet. When I first applied in early 2003, I checked that Indiana was processing April 2001 applications that month. hmm so I thought .. it was gonna take 2 years roughly to get through this stage.  So I checked back a few months later, and a few months later, and later .. for 2 years … the status was still April 2001 !!!  There were some states (KS,NC,SC,KY,..)  whose processing dates were almost current, meaning applications would get processed immediately as they were received, and Indiana in late 2004 were still stuck in April 2001.   

Hendrik’s got his State approval in December 2003, just 6 months after he filed it, and he moved on to Regional. That time we checked the processing time of the Regional office,  it was January 2003. So we thought it would take about a year in Regional. Once again we were wrong. For 1 year the date only progressed a month to February 2003 ! 

Dallas was actually the slowest Regional office and Indiana was  the slowest State in the country.  My regional office, Chicago, was actually one of the fastest one, only if I’d ever made it past State.
How convenient for both of us !!

THEN in March ths year, they published a new system for Labor Certification called PERM (Program Electronic Review Management). They put a stop on new filings of RIR / Traditional Labor cases, and now all new applications must use the PERM route. It is supposed to be tougher initially with the advertising, paperwork, and whatnot, but once you filed it (electronically), the response time is only supposed to be 45-60 days ONLY !! That means now people could get a labor cert approved in just 2 months !

so What happened to all the cases in the old system (both State and Regional cases) ? They were all shipped to 2 Backlog Processing Centers. All old cases in all states are now divided in 2 centers, Dallas and Philadelphia. They announced early this year that they expected to process everything, First In First Out, in 24-30 months. They’re supposed to convert every case into the computer, and as they enter the data they will send employers a letter asking whether they’re still interested to pursue that application. The company has 45 days to respond to the letter. If there’s no response, the application will be dropped.

Hendrik never knew about his 45 day letter,  but apparently his attorney received it a long time ago and responded to it without notifying him. And just this morning he found out his RIR was already approved !! but me ??  I still haven’t even received my 45 day letter !!!

OK.. all this rants and that’s only the first step toward a greencard.

— to be continued —

I finally pushed the button this afternoon at 5.30PM!  I meant the button to submit my first six sigma project for closure .. hopefully there’s no other problem in the approval process.  The past 2 weeks must have been the busiest 2 weeks this whole year !! Last Friday I worked from Austin, and I REALLY WORKED 8 hours and I didn’t even turn on MSN messenger !!, in addition to the 40+hours I’d put from Monday-Thursday =p .. Last Thursday morning I was even worried that I might have to cancel my trip to Austin   .. yeah.. it was THAT serious.. I was THAT busy..

but now 1 project’s down ! 

It felt like I haven’t been online for so long.  I haven’t checked friendster for a while, haven’t been reading people’s blogs, and other websites that I usually frequent :p  How much have I missed ?

Btw I noticed that Friendster has added another new feature…

hmmm don’t like it at all….. invasion of privacy