An effort in early July to win over U.S. immigration officials through flowers seems to have paid off for some high-skilled Indian workers.

Emilio Gonzalez, the director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), received more than 200 bouquets at his office July 10 from Indian professionals across the country who are in legal limbo as they pursue permanent U.S. residency.

"The only way to get the other party to acknowledge your grief is to do something nonviolent, to show some compassion," Shyam Bindingnavale, a participant in the "floral protest" who works in Gaithersburg, Md., said to The Washington Post.

Immigration Voice, an online forum and community, organized the effort, which was inspired by Mohandas K. Gandhi's nonviolent campaigns for India's independence from Britain. Flowers were sent through myriad vendors, including ProFlowers.com and Ftd.com. (See photos).

Earlier this summer, thousands of H1B visa holders -- many of them engineers and doctors -- hurried to file applications by the State Department's July 2 deadline for permanent residency, according to the Post. On the day of the deadline, USCIS announced it had met its 140,000-person annual quota for employee-sponsored applicants, casting all other applicants back into limbo. (The agency said some new applications would be considered starting Oct. 1. Others might have to wait for years.)

While some workers in Silicone Valley staged a march in protest, and two class-action lawsuits have been filed, the idea to send flowers was a "more peaceful" response, Dilip Tekkedil, a software engineer from North Andover, Mass., said to the Post. "We don't trouble anyone else. A rally or something, you have to call law enforcement. It's too much trouble for other people."

National Public Radio reported last week that the administration had "reversed itself" and will now accept applications into mid-August. As for Gonzalez, he acknowledged the flowers -- and the spirit in which they were given -- and later donated them to Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

-- Mary Westbrook
mwestbrook@safnow.org

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