Indian-American documented dreamer tells lawmakers she’d be forced to leave US without change in immigration system. There are nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants, including over five lakh from India, according to a policy document issued by the Biden campaign in November 2020.
A grey area within the US Immigation system, or rather a glaring flaw that cruelly divides and irrevocably separates legal immigrants from their children.
Under a US Immigratiion rule, minor children of immigrants are treated as undocumented dependents or ‘dreamers. On the one hand they are eligible to stay in the country as the dependents of the parents only until the age of 21.
After that they are liable to be deported to the country of origin. But for most such children, there is actually no such place. In their 20 years of stay, the United States is the only country they have known as their own.
What cruel irony that the same hand that once extended mercy and compassion, now acts with pitiless severity to uproot them, sever familial ties and permanently dump them in what may be called a non-existent, no-man’s land.
An Indian-American undocumented dreamer has told lawmakers that she would be forced to leave the US, where she has spent her entire life since the age of four, in eight months in the absence of any meaningful legislative reforms in immigration system that addressed the major issue of ‘aged-out’ kids.
Dreamers are basically undocumented immigrants who enter the US as children with parents. There are nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants, including over five lakh from India, according to a policy document issued by the Biden campaign in November 2020.
“Without a change in eight months, I will be forced to leave, not only my home of 20 years but also my mom who is my only family left,” Athulya Rajakumar, a 23-year-old recent graduate of the University of Texas at Austin from the Moody College of Communication, told members of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship and Border Safety recently
Testifying before the subcommittee during a hearing on “Removing Barriers to Legal Migration,” the Indian-American told the Senators that over 5,000 documented dreamers face this every year.
An aspiring journalist, Rajakumar, from Washington State, shared the story of her family’s struggle through years of immigration limbo, which contributed to her brother’s tragic death.
Rajakumar told lawmakers that she got a full-time offer from a major news corporation in Houston, a top 10 market, but the same company who saw her potential withdrew their offer the second they heard about her visa status. “But worst of all, being considered an alien, an outsider in the only place you know to call home is a different kind of pain,” she said.
“Indian nationals have been hit especially hard because our system’s per-country caps do not allow them to receive more than seven per cent of the available employment-based visas in any given year” Ranking Member Senator John Cornyn said
“I’m outraged by this broken system that you, your brother, and thousands of documented dreamers have had to face. We organised this hearing today because we cannot allow the inaction of Congress to continue to cause this suffering,” Senator Alex Padilla said in his remarks.
Padilla is chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, and Border Safety. Barriers to legal migration routinely separate families across international borders for years, he said.
“Visa caps that keep employers from expanding their businesses and hold back the US economy, an arbitrary cut-off for legal status that forced children, visa holders, to leave the only country they’ve ever known when they age out of their parents’ visas”, he addedd.
“Employment-based visas allow participating immigrants to bring extraordinary skills to our workforce, start new businesses, create new jobs in rural areas, and to help address worker shortages in industries like healthcare,” he said.
“But only 1,40,000 of these individuals can obtain visas every year. Because the spouses and children who accompany them count against the total, far fewer than 70,000 visas actually go to eligible workers. Hundreds of thousands of others are left in limbo, restricted by a temporary visa, or turned away from their dreams and they’re kept from realising their potential,” he said.
During the hearing, Padilla questioned Rajakumar about her experience as a documented dreamer and how a pathway to citizenship and the enactment of America’s Children Act would impact her life.
Rajakumar pointed to the fact that it would mean that she wouldn’t have to be separated from her family and the country she’s called her home for the last twenty years.
Ranking Member Senator John Cornyn said the Congressional Research Service recently estimated that without significant changes, the employment-based green card backlog could exceed 2 million by 2030.
“Indian nationals have been hit especially hard because our system’s per-country caps do not allow them to receive more than seven per cent of the available employment-based visas in any given year,” he said.
“To make matters worse due to processing inefficiencies attributable in part to USCIS’ paper-based system and to the closures of many of our consulates, we fail to issue as many as 92,000 employment-based visas in the height of the pandemic,” he said.
Dip Patel, president of Improve the Dream, in a statement, said that Rajakumar’s moving testimony shows the urgent need to update the broken system, including the need to permanently end the problem of aging for children who are raised and educated in the United States.
“For thousands of young people growing up with uncertainty, there is constant anxiety regarding one’s future in what we consider our home…We urge Congress to consider this and act fast to pass common-sense immigration reform,” he said. (Some inputs from The Tribune, Chandigarh)
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