Reclaim the Records needs our help TODAY

Question

Reclaim the Records (a non-profit org that has been successfully fighting the US government for a few years to get lots and lots of records made public and free for genealogy use) just put out a newsletter. The title is really enticing:  USCIS keeps confusing your great-grandpa's records for their piggybank.

The newsletter is full of some of their recent successes and the writing style is exciting - I'm sure WikiTreers will enjoy reading it at https://mailchi.mp/reclaimtherecords/the-return-of-the-records-rtr-vs-uscis?e=33cc7c2961.

After their news, they get to the main point:

As fun as all of that may be, this particular newsletter will discuss our longstanding friendship *cough* with everyone’s favorite federal agency, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The genealogical community has been at odds with USCIS for more than four years, ever since they tried to raise the fees for access to genealogical records to exorbitant prices. Although they abandoned their proposed fee hike in 2020 (well, after a judge made them) USCIS is at it again now, trying to raise the cost of many genealogical records by nearly 300%! The new fee is part of a larger fee hike, and the public can comment on this proposal until this Monday, March 13th. We hope that everyone reading this newsletter will submit a comment opposing this. Our friends at "Records not Revenue" have all of the information you’ll need to do submit a comment in opposition to the proposed fee hike.

Because the comment deadline is today, I'm posting this here to help get lots of us to submit comments.  If this post moves toward the bottom of the list, please post an answer to bump it back up so it gets maximum exposure today.

Comments

Do you think it is worthwhile to comment on the proposed changes, even if one has not had any dealings with USCIS?

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I did just that.  Reclaim the Records files lawsuits against a lot of US government entities to force them to release records to the public, which they then publish.  They have an amazing record of accomplishment.  I often see citations on familysearch attributing a record to Reclaim the Records.  You don't have to have had dealings with USCIS to be able to benefit from them releasing records that may later be of use to you when they are available publicly.

This is about trying to keep costs as low as possible to get records - it's in the interests of everyone who works on genealogy.

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I made a brief comment.  Hopefully, that's a little better than doing nothing.