They grew up in the USA, but will have to leave the country when they turn 21: how DACA destroys the lives of those it should help - ForumDaily
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They grew up in the US, but will have to leave the country when they turn 21: how DACA destroys the lives of those it should help

Children of temporary visa holders who are unable to obtain permanent residency are one of several groups calling on the Biden administration to take action on immigration reform. The New York Times.

Photo: Shutterstock

In 2011, after five years of working and living with his family in the United States on a temporary visa, Baratimohan Ganesan applied for a green card for his wife, his 5-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son.

Ganesan, who was born in India and has also lived in Singapore and Australia, was nervous about when his wife and children might get residency. He knew the waiting list was especially long for Indians with his type of visa, the H-1B, which allows US companies to hire skilled foreign workers. Due to constant delays, it can take years to process the data of those who apply for permanent residence on work visas.

Last year, ten years after he applied, Ganesan, his wife and daughter received green cards. But his son turned 21 and missed the deadline by several months. Therefore, he needs to fight for a visa that would allow him to stay in the United States.

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Ganesan's son is among more than 200 children who have grown up in the country under the protection of their parents' temporary visas, which can be extended indefinitely. But children risk losing their legal status when they turn 000. Unable to become permanent residents, they must obtain another visa, remain in the United States without legal status, or leave entirely. According to the Cato Institute, more than 21 children cease to be eligible for a green card every year. Countless people end up leaving, often leaving behind their families.

These young people are not eligible for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. The DACA program, created by the executive branch under the Obama administration, protects from deportation about 650 young people, or "dreamers" (beneficiaries of the DACA program, which protects against deportation of illegal immigrants brought to the US by children), who were smuggled into the United States and left without legal status. Because the program requires applicants to be undocumented, it does not offer individuals with legal status the opportunity to stay.

It is unlikely that comprehensive immigration reform will take place in a midterm election year. The Biden administration is under increasing pressure as the Trump-era public health order known as Section 42 is due to be lifted at the end of May, which is expected to spark a surge in migration across the southwest border.

A bipartisan group of senators resumed deliberations on immigration on April 28 to try to identify individual proposals that would win support from both sides.

When asked if the administration, which is renewing DACA, is considering extending protections to registered youths, Alejandro N. Majorcas, head of the Department of Homeland Security, told the House Judiciary Committee that the department has no plans to do so. He said his goal was to "strengthen the existing DACA program" and shift the responsibility for documented young people to Congress, adding that their situation speaks to "the need for immigration reform."

In interviews, more than a dozen people who have lived in the United States on temporary visas since they were young described their struggles with the anxiety associated with staying in the country that has become their home. They are calling on the Biden administration, if it does not provide a path to citizenship, to offer them a way to legally stay in the country.

Ganesan's son, Niranjan Baratimohan, is only able to stay in the United States until November because immigration officials extended his dependent visa. Baratimohan, a student at the University of Texas at Dallas, will have to travel to Singapore, where he was born, to apply for a student visa that will allow him to return and complete his degree.

His application may be rejected; because he previously tried to get a green card, he showed an intent to immigrate to the United States, which is not allowed. Applicants may be asked to show that they intend to leave the country after graduation. Baratimohan faces the prospect of being stuck in Singapore, where he has no family or roots.

Ganesan asks how his son will handle this alone. “I was really devastated that just because of my country of birth, my son’s opportunities are very limited,” he said.

While family protections exist when parents move to the United States on a temporary work visa, they end when the children turn 21 as they are no longer considered part of the family.

“I don’t think the people who originally wrote the laws foresaw a situation where children brought here on visas would grow up and be educated here, but there would be no clear opportunity to stay and become Americans,” said Deep Patel, founder of Improve the Dream, an organization that campaigns for a path to citizenship for these children.

“Delay in action will not only lead to more families being torn apart, but will also continue the enormous emotional distress faced by thousands of families,” he said.

Similar situations arise in other families. Like Ganeshan, Deva and her husband brought their children to the United States from India when they were young. For more than a decade, the children and Deva lived as dependents on her husband's indefinite work visa.

Deva said her husband's employer, an American automaker, could decide at any time not to renew his visa, which must be renewed every three years. She asked not to be identified by her real name. She said she was afraid to antagonize her employer if she was recognized when she spoke publicly about her family's plight.

The family's hopes of staying together in the United States ended in December when Deva's daughter turned 21. Having exhausted the possibilities for an extension and being unable to apply for another visa, the daughter moved to Canada a few days later.

The consequences for the family were far-reaching. According to Deva, a week before her daughter's departure, her son, now 17, tried to harm himself, alarming his sister. She delayed her departure for a week while the family sought counseling for him.

According to Deva, during the consultation, her son said he struggled with his mental health for several months, watching his family change their legal status. Her daughter, who went on to graduate school in Canada, is less than an hour away from her friends and family but cannot enter the United States while she waits for her tourist visa.

In a Senate hearing in March, Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the top Republican on the commission's immigration subcommittee, pledged to work on legislation to help people who grew up in the United States, but have a clear path to citizenship.

Giving emotional testimony at the hearing, Atulya Rajakumar, 23, spoke about growing up in Seattle as a dependent of her single mother who had a temporary work visa. She described how she and her brother struggled with depression and how her family's status as temporary visa holders prevented them from getting the treatment they needed. Her brother later committed suicide.

"We didn't know how much it would affect us," Rajakumar, who lives in Texas on a work visa, said in an interview.

Muzaffar Chishti, director of the Migration Policy Institute at New York University. The law school described this problem as one of many in a system that has not been truly updated since the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which established pathways for legal immigration that are still in place.

“Immigration is not a set of policies – it is a system,” Chishti said, adding: “If one part of the system becomes problematic, it affects other parts of the system.”

Those who grew up in the United States on certain temporary visas are not eligible to apply for permanent residence. Such was the case for Summer Rusher, who was born in the UK and moved to Florida at the age of 1 with her parents, who arrived on an investor visa that allows some foreign nationals to reside in the country indefinitely if they invest in US businesses. The program does not offer a path to citizenship, which means there is no opportunity for children to become permanent residents.

Rusher, 23, was able to stay on a student visa after she turned 21. She graduated top of her class from Southeastern University in the Master's Program in Education for Students with Special Needs, earning her certification in Florida for Instructors of Students with Disabilities.

Now a teacher in Winter Haven, Florida, Rusher was among a large number of applicants for a limited number of work visas. But in March, she learned that she had not been selected in a randomized process used by the USCIS. If she cannot obtain another visa before her work permit expires in June, she will have to return to the UK, where her qualifications are not recognized.

With the exception of a legislative overhaul of the system, the advocacy group Improve the Dream has worked to raise awareness of the issue and is calling on the Biden administration to make changes. But the children of nonimmigrant visa holders have criticized the administration for being too slow or unwilling to take action on proposed changes, such as expanding DACA to include documented youth.

Matthew D. Burke, a spokesman for the immigration agency, said the Department of Homeland Security is "well aware" of the issues young documented people face and is "exploring legal methods to make it easier for this population to immigrate where possible."

As Deva and her husband wait for their green cards, which they applied for in 2016, she said they were having financial problems. Now she hopes that her children will be able to build a future in Canada.

You may be interested in: top New York news, stories of our immigrants, and helpful tips about life in the Big Apple - read it all on ForumDaily New York.

Rusher said she was on the verge of leaving her family, school and career behind. Her US-born brother does not face such restrictions.

“I got to do everything a typical American kid dreams of,” Rusher said. “I don’t want this to end just because of where I was born.”

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