Thread by @ReclaimTheRecs

💸 A BLACK FRIDAY SALE? 💸
🤬 NO, A 492% PRICE HIKE! 🤬

Hello again from Reclaim The Records! We're interrupting your probable post-Thanksgiving stupor to bring you some important and time-sensitive records access news.

This is long, but important. Please read and retweet.
1/

Two weeks ago, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (@USCIS ) proposed an unprecedented *492% increase* in fees for researchers who want copies of historical records held by their Genealogy Program.

Yes, that did say 492%. No, it's not a typo.
2/

This special Genealogy Program was set up about a decade ago as a way for researchers to bypass the usual tedious @USCIS Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests system, which can take six months or more to respond.
uscis.gov/genealogy
3/

In return for the expedited handling for these historical files, @USCIS charged a bit more than the usual FOIA fees, but only enough to recover the costs of running the program.

Basically, a pay-for-play skip-the-line special FOIA queue. Fun!

But.
4/

But under this brand new proposed rule change, the price of a copy of a single paper file could rise in 2020 from $65 to a whopping $625!

SIX HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE DOLLLAAAAASSS

WHAT
5/

Obviously, we want to stop this thing.

So, please read our latest e-mail newsletter, where we tell you all about it, in rather more detail! Here's the link:

mailchi.mp/reclaimthereco…
6/

And we're happy to announce that Reclaim The Records has teamed up with our fellow nerds, as an ad hoc and non-partisan crew of genealogists, historians, and records access peeps, to make 'Records, Not Revenue':

recordsnotrevenue.com

(You should check that out, too.)
7/

And we at Reclaim The Records are starting the process of talking to our awesome crew of lawyers to see what we can do about this mess, from a legal point of view.

Because OF COURSE.
8/

(Like, millions of massively important genealogy records weirdly not being available under FOIA and being made functionally unavailable to the public just so a government agency can unjustly profit off their exclusive access is just totally completely EXACTLY our specialty!)
9/

Also? A whole lot of these incredibly important USCIS records are *already* supposed to be available at @USNatArchives (NARA), based on USCIS' own records retention schedules!

(Example: the A-Files of US immigrants who were born more than 100 years ago.)

But they're not.
10/

Also? Of the records that USCIS did bother to turn over to @USNatArchives, many of them are still functionally unavailable to the public due to USCIS restrictions! With no end in sight!

(Example: Alien Registration Forms [AR-2's] are on microfilm at NARA but are restricted.)
11/

This is one of those times we honestly wish @USNatArchives had some kind of retention schedule enforcement division that could go rap government knuckles and win our records back for us.

Like a records repo man.

But they don't. So we all have to help them.
12/

So in the meantime, as long as most of these files remain stuck at USCIS, or restricted at NARA, they're targeted for this newly proposed and totally unreasonable fee hike.

Which means $625.

For a single, wonderful, important, historical paper file about your own family. 🥺
13/

Wanna see some real-life example files, the kind that would be affected by this $625 fee?

Check this page out!
recordsnotrevenue.com/example-files/

Records of American immigrants from Germany, China, Italy, Czechia, Japan.

Records that would become too expensive for most laypeople.
14/

So yeah, pass the word on to your friends.

RECORDS, NOT REVENUE!
recordsnotrevenue.com

And most importantly, SEND IN YOUR COMMENTS BY DECEMBER 16 2019!

Directions and links are on the site. Even a snail mail address is provided, if a good old letter is more your thing.
15/

RECORDS, NOT REVENUE!
RECORDS, NOT REVENUE!
RECORDS, NOT REVENUE!

Thanks for listening.
16/16