VIOLATION OF BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS
Western Illinois officials cancelled illegally our US supported Permanent Residence Application
In November 2007, my wife approached WIU officials to seek their support for our application for the PERM, a program offered by the US Department of Labor (DOL) to help newly hired professors of foreign origin become permanent residents. A faculty member is eligible to apply for the PERM only within eleven (11) months of his hire. WIU officials agreed to support our application, like they usually do for other foreign faculty members who make a similar request.
Twenty-four hours after our application was filed, the Assistant Provost of WIU, Dr. Judy Dallingher contacted the immigration office we hired for processing our PERM application and ordered its withdrawal and cancellation (Doc 1). As a reason for this unprecedented abuse, she told my wife that only an attorney chosen by WIU should process a PERM application. In fact, we were not informed of the existence of such a policy (Doc 2), and it was not applied to other WIU faculty members of foreign origin when they hired the same immigration office to file their PERM application. My wife and I suffered numerous consequences of this cancellation and we lost several thousands of dollars we paid for service and application fees.
Following the withdrawal of our PERM application, the Associate Provost asked my wife to initiated another PERM application using a lawyer chosen by WIU. Unfortunately, we realized only later, that this new application was just a diversion.
Western Illinois officials intentionally failed to provide the documents required for the processing of the new PERM application filed using the lawyer they chose
About a year after our new application was filed through a lawyer from WIU, the office of the provost informed my wife (the principal applicant) that our PERM application was “pulled out by the DOL for audit” but refused to let my wife see the folder of the application returned by the DOL. It took our family attorney to get a copy of the application folder in September 2010. In the Audit Notification letter found in the application folder, the DOL pointed out that several documents were missing in the application filed by the WIU attorney on behalf of my wife. The DOL asked WIU officials to provide the missing documents. Unfortunately, the office of the Provost failed to provide them. Furthermore, in his letter dated July 16, 2010 (Doc 3), the DOL stated that my wife’s PERM application was denied “because the employer failed to provide the documentation required in the Audit Notification letter”. The DOL offered, as usual, to WIU officials the option to request reconsideration any time within 30 days from the date of issuance of this denial or to correct the information provided in the application for which the denial has been received and re-submit the application. Curiously, WIU officials followed none of these recommendations and chose not to inform us about the status of our application. Meanwhile, the WIU attorney told my wife that the PERM application is a property of WIU who can choose to ignore the recommendations of the DOL. Documents found in our PERM application folder indicated that the Associate Provost, Kenneth Hawkinson, [current Provost and Vice-President for Academic Affairs] was the official who responded to the Audit notification but did not provide the documents requested by the DOL.
As my wife and I became aware of the responsibility of WIU Provost Office in the outcome of our new PERM application, WIU officials including Iraj Kalantari, the Chair of the Mathematics Department, and the Office of the Provost proposed to my wife that they will re-advertise the assistant professor position she has been holding for three years so that she could re-apply to become once again eligible for another PERM application. This proposition was confirmed by the WIU attorney in an e-mail (Doc 4) to my wife. My wife refused to play such a game.
Western Illinois officials prevented my wife and me from receiving our approved green cards
Because of the repeated obstruction caused by WIU officials to the processing of our PERM application, I decided to file my own permanent resident application as an “individual with exceptional ability for the national interest” (EB2), having my wife as dependent. The EB2 required no employer sponsorship, and is granted to individuals recognized as exceptional in their field of expertise by peers around the world. My application was based on my research achievements, publications, scientific presentations at international meetings, and their potential benefits to the USA. Several renowned professors around the world provided letters to support it.
While my EB2 application was pending at the USCIS Nebraska Office, the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC) offered me a Visiting Lecturer position to teach a quantum chemistry course during the summer of 2009. I informed the then Provost of WIU of the offer. In April 2009, while UIUC was about to file an application for expedited H1B on my behalf for my visiting lecturer position, I received the approval notice on my EB2 application from the USCIS with a note that the green cards for my wife and myself will be mailed in the coming days. By courtesy, I informed officials of WIU and UIUC that my own EB2 application has just been approved and that I no more needed and expedited H1B. The WIU attorney who handled our second PERM application to failure became furious that I have been granted permanent residency through my own application. He told me on the phone that either him or WIU officials determine who should be granted the permanent resident status.
A few days following this attorney’s vehement remarks, the USCIS Nebraska Office notified me by letter that my EB2 file has being transferred from Nebraska to the USCIS Chicago field Office. After this transfer, the processing of our permanent resident card was frozen, although the Director of the USCIS Chicago Office confirmed in a letter that my application for adjustment of status has been granted. For nearly two years, the USCIS Chicago Office did not produce our cards. My wife and I travelled several times to this office to inquire about them. Officers in this service just sent us back saying that our cards were being processed. At two occasions, the USCIS Chicago officers only stamped our passports to state that we were permanent residents of the United States for a period of sixty days, then asked us to leave their office. While our passports were being stamped as permanent residents by USCIS Chicago Office in 2010, Dr. Iraj Kalantari, the Chair of the Mathematics Department at WIU asked my wife to apply for another H1B because she will never receive her green card. Dan Casteel, the employee in charge of immigration affairs at WIU sent me an e-mail to reiterate that we will never receive our green cards and the only option left to us was to apply for another H1B through WIU. The Provost of WIU at the time, [the current President] was informed about those developments. He took no action. Around March 2010, I asked to know the name of the supervisor at the USCIS Chicago Field Office who was preventing the issuing of our green cards. The USCIS agent at the lobby refused to give me the name of his supervisor but promised that he will finally have our cards mailed to us within a week. A week later, I received my permanent resident card in the mail, but no card was sent to my wife.
Later...
I.4. The Provost of Western Illinois supposedly took my wife’s green card from the Macomb Post Office
After waiting in vain for more than a year for my wife’s green card, I wrote a letter to the Honorable Dirk Durbin, Senator of the State of Illinois to ask for his help. Ms. Stacy Hackler, an assistant of Senator Durbin, responded to my letter and offered to help us get my wife’s permanent resident card. She reached out to the Chicago USCIS Field Office to understand why my wife was kept without her green card two years after it was approved. The officer in charge of our case stated that my wife’s permanent resident card was not issued for nearly 2 years because while the cards were being produced, “the folder of my wife slept through the machine”. A few days later, this officer sent Ms. Hackler, another e-mail indicating that my wife’s green card has been sent to our home address through Certified USPS mail. Ms. Hackler forwarded these e-mail correspondences (Doc 5) to my wife. Using the USPS tracking number, we could follow the pathway of the mail (Doc 6) containing my wife green card.
On February 8, 2011, the online USPS tracking record indicated that the package was out for delivery at 8:19 am in Macomb, as shown in Doc. 6. Curiously, 24h after this information was made available online, no card was delivered to our home and no notice was left in our mail box. Therefore, On February 9, 2011, my wife visited the Macomb Post Office with a printed copy of the USPS tracking record to find out why the package was not delivered to us. There, the Manager of the Post Office told my wife that WIU may have her green card. She advised my wife to contact WIU officials, especially the Provost to get it back. The following day, I accompanied my wife to the Post Office to ask the manager how a mail sent by a government office to a private home could end up in WIU possession. We told her that it was rather her responsibility to get it from WIU Provost office, and failure to do so could expose her to an official investigation by USPS services. At that point, the Manager of the Macomb Post Office promised to get the green card back. When my wife and I returned home, the Manager of the Macomb Post Office had already left two voice messages on our phone in which she apologized for what has happened but promised to do everything she can to bring the mail back. On February 12,13, and 14, 2011, the online USPS tracking record strangely indicated that the mail containing my wife’s green card was processed through a facility in Elk Grove, Chicago. It appeared that those records did not match what the Manager of the Macomb Post Office kept telling us and no indication was given about how the mail out for delivery in Macomb on February 8, 2011 ended up being sorted out at ELK Grove, 300 miles away from Macomb. On February 18, 2011, the manager of the Macomb Post Office left a message asking us to come pick up our mail. On Saturday, February 19, 2011, we finally received at the Macomb Post Office an envelope postmarked Kansas City, MO containing my wife’s permanent resident card. The e-mails, tracking records in Doc 6 and else, and the recorded messages in relation to this mysterious disappearance suggest that the permanent resident card initially sent to my wife was taken from the Macomb Post Office and eventually directed to the Provost of WIU, as indicated by the Manager of the Macomb Post Office. It appeared that the green card mailed from Kansas City, MO and received on February 19, 2011 was a new card issued to replace the one taken away from my wife in Macomb, and which might have been destroyed.
In summary
In summary, WIU officials cancelled illegally our petition for PERM handled by an immigration service we chose. To cover up their illegal action, they asked my wife to file a new petition through a lawyer of their choice. After my wife re-applied with this lawyer, WIU officials intentionally failed to provide the information requested by the DOL so that the application was denied. After the DOL returned the application and asked WIU officials to correct their mistakes and re-submit it, they ignored the DOL’s requests and kept the application folder on their desk for a year until the time for our eligibility to apply for the PERM expired. After they found out that my wife and I have been granted permanent resident status through my own application, they actioned their network at the USCIS to transfer our file from the USCIS Nebraska Field Office to the USCIS Chicago Field Office to prevent us from getting our cards. Finally, when my wife’s green card was processed and sent to her thanks to the Office of Senator Dick Durbin, WIU officials, supposedly the Provost, conspired with agents of the USCIS Chicago Office and the Manager of the Macomb Post Office to steal my wife’s initial permanent resident card.
Transition
It seems like for officials of Western Illinois, my wife and I, originally from the Ivory Coast and both assistant professors at the time, have no right to become permanent resident of the United States although our education and performance qualify us for that. For them, we should remain at their servitude and be exploited with temporary working documents that offer limited opportunity for career development, as if when it comes to us, slavery was not abolished. Because, as a family man, I was leading the efforts to get the documents we deserved and needed to perform our work as professors; because I was the primary applicant for the EB2 permanent resident application that was granted to me and my wife; because I became aware of the mystery behind the disappearance of my wife’s green card and the supposed implication of the Provost of WIU in this disappearance, I became an imminent target and the subject of a witch hunt. Officials of WIU engaged in developing strategies to get rid of me. · Just after the cancellation of my wife’s PERM application, Rose McConnell, the Chair of the Chemistry department moved my office to the basement of Currens Hall, in a room without air conditioning, close to radioactive materials stored and labelled as dangerous. · Rose McConnell prevented me from using any of the scarce lab equipment in the Department · Rose McConnell started falsifying my student’s evaluations and hiding evaluations praising me as an excellent teacher. She attempted to hide peer evaluations, but was discovered. · Rose McConnell started making an issue of my foreign accent, although she had previously praised me as an excellent teacher, and when she has assigned me more courses to teach than to other faculty members, she had said that it was because my excellent teaching attracted more students. · My teaching assignment of 3 courses per semester was regularly changed up to 5 courses/ semester while other faculty members maintained the teaching load of 3 courses. · Rose McConnell assigned me a course to teach in a classroom but changed the lock of the room and left me without key to access the room. Meanwhile, other faculty members had the right key to the room. · Rose McConnell selectively prevented my graduate student from obtaining assistantship after she allegedly asked a faculty member to change the student’s GPA to a lower mark. · The probationary evaluations of my portfolio by the DPC and the Chair were forged and inserted to my personnel file in the Office of the Provost. It appears that those targeted actions were intended to hinder my performance so that WIU could portray me as a bad faculty and get rid of me. But, despite those treatments and the forgery of my records, my performance in all three (3) areas of evaluation including, teaching (primary duty), scholarly and professional activities, and services were still rated EXCELEENT in six consecutive probationary evaluations. Furthermore, between 2008 and 2012, my cumulative performance in teaching, scholarly and professional activities, and service afforded me to win three (3) Professional Achievements Awards (PAA). That was the highest number of PAA earned by a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry the time I was there.