WASHINGTON — Shyam Bindingnavale had spent years of anguish in pursuit of permanent residency, so when the government offered him an opportunity to apply for it and then abruptly snatched it away, he was furious and deeply disappointed.

Bindingnavale, 36, a Gaithersburg, Md., resident and financial analyst working here on an H1B visa for skilled technical workers, struck back the most effective way he could imagine: He sent flowers to Emilio Gonzalez, the director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. So did about 200 other green card applicants, most of them professionals, natives of India and working legally in this country.

They did it because that's what Gandhi would have done.

On Tuesday, their bouquets of purple roses, pink lilies and yellow daisies, which cost about $40 each and which were sent from all over the country, piled up on the immigration office's loading dock on Massachusetts Avenue, addressed to Gonzalez and stacked high.

The agency forwarded them to soldiers recovering at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, not far away.

"We know the reason behind it and understand the symbolism. We donated them in the same spirit in which they were provided to us," said an agency official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of a lawsuit over the matter filed by an advocacy group.

The idea for the protest began with the Indian immigrant community on the online forum Immigration Voice, a site devoted to issues facing skilled, legal workers seeking permanent residence in the United States. Their method was inspired by Mohandas Gandhi, who spent years campaigning nonviolently for India's independence from Britain.

Green card applicants were given hope on June 12, when the State Department posted a bulletin offering H1B visa holders who had been stuck in a bureaucratic logjam an opportunity to take that last step needed to apply for permanent residency.

Thousands of engineers, doctors and other educated foreigners scrambled to apply before the July 2 deadline.

Vacations were canceled, and lawyers were called in. Elderly parents in far-flung corners of the world stood in line for hours to get copies of birth certificates and immunization records.

Then, on the day of the deadline, the State Department retracted the bulletin. The immigration agency, which processes the applications, said it had already met its 140,000-person annual quota for employee-sponsored applicants.

Those who tried to apply were told they had to wait. Some new applications may be considered again starting Oct. 1, but others may have to wait for years. The wait has become even longer after a surge in green card applications, amplified by a provision in 2001 that allowed undocumented immigrants or immigrants who had overstayed their visas to apply for green cards. The problem was exacerbated by the increased FBI security checks required after 9/11.

"Only someone with the saddest mind can do this," said Ashish Mundada, 31, an information technology consultant who works in New York City. Mundada had persuaded his wife to cancel a trip back to India for a sister's wedding to take advantage of what seemed like a brief window of opportunity. Mundada, like many other protesters, said he did not want any favors, just that his application be fairly considered.

The flowers were inspired by a Bollywood film, "Lage Raho Munnabhai," in which the main character turns to Gandhian methods to solve his problems. The movie has stirred Indians to emulate Gandhi, assassinated in 1948, a year after India achieved independence.

"The only way to get the other party to acknowledge your grief is to do something nonviolent, to show some compassion," said Bindingnavale, who works for MedImmune.

But in America, lawsuits and hearings also hold sway.

Crystal Williams, deputy director for programs at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, suspects that there may still be open slots in the annual green card quota.

"They lied. That's the simple part of it. They lied to keep from having to take these applications," Williams said. The association's sister organization is suing to force the government to accept the filed applications.