PRAVASI SAMWAD has been following the Green Card saga. We reproduce a story from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel by Sophie Carson. She writes about Indian NRI who grew legally in Wisconsin but the Green Card backlogs mean they may have to leave the US.
By Sophie Carson
Growing up in the northern Wisconsin town of Peshtigo, Srushti Patil felt like she was living the idyllic American childhood. The city of 3,400 was small enough to walk to school every day. She would bump into friends at the farmers market, and her parents were close with her piano and karate teachers. They’d host potlucks with other Indian-American families.
Patil and her parents moved to the US when she was 4 years old. She doesn’t know any other home.
Pragnya Vella’s childhood was also unmistakably American. She rode yellow school buses, recited the Pledge of Allegiance every morning and picked dandelions in the field at recess. Now a 16-year-old living in Sun Prairie, she came to the U.S. with her parents before her 2nd birthday. Vella is a varsity tennis player, captain of the mock trial team and secretary of the student council.
“I’m like any other American. I just can’t say that because I’m not American on paper,” she said. “But in every other way that actually matters, I am.”
Patil and Vella grew up on dependent visas. Their parents emigrated from India on highly skilled work visas and always imagined they would eventually receive green cards granting their families legal, permanent residency.
Immigrants from other countries on work visas typically receive their green cards within a year or two. But those from India face years-long waits because each country is allocated 7% of the total green cards granted in a year. Advocates say the formula puts immigrants from populous countries at a disadvantage.
While they wait, Indian immigrants working in crucial fields like science and technology continually must renew employment visas that were created to be temporary.
Their children, on dependent visas, generally aren’t authorized to work and are considered international students when applying to college. They don’t qualify for most financial aid, scholarships or cheaper in-state tuition.
And once they turn 21, they are bumped off their parents’ visas. Citizenship — open to green card holders after five years — essentially becomes unattainable for these young people.
First, they must find their own way to stay in the US, such as on a student visa, or by winning a work visa lottery and getting an employer to sponsor them for a green card.
Thousands of young people self-deport each year, advocates say, unable to find a legal way to stay. Those who do manage to acquire their own visas still face an uphill battle: Even if they’d been waiting for years with their parents, the 21-year-olds are pushed to the end of the backlogged green card line.
An Indian immigrant on an employment visa who applies today could wait 90 to 150 years, the Cato Institute estimates – meaning they’d likely die before being granted permanent residency.
It’s a misconception that if immigrants do “all the right things,” Patil said, they’ll be guaranteed citizenship.
“A lot of people sometimes forget how broken the immigration system is and how many lives it impacts on a daily basis. I’m just one of thousands,” she said.
Aging out of dependent visas at 21 has been a long-known issue in Indian-American communities, but young people are increasingly speaking out on it, feeling emboldened to advocate for change as green card backlogs get worse, lines get longer and more immigrants who arrived here as children turn 21 without a clear path to stay in the US.
DACA, or the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy announced by the Obama administration in 2012, protected from deportation certain undocumented young adults who were brought to the US as children, but it did not address children who arrived legally, noted Dip Patel, an advocate for so-called “documented dreamers.”
“This was both an oversight and also just a lack of attention to this particular population,” he said.
Patel, a pharmacist in Chicago, founded Improve the Dream about five years ago to take political action on the issue. The young people his group surveyed arrived in the US legally at an average age of 5 years old, he said.
There are about 200,000 to 250,000 children on dependent visas in the US today, Patel’s group estimates, a number that does include children whose wait for green cards would be shorter than those from India.
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has about 30 to 40 students on dependent visas in any given year, according to Jennifer Gruenewald, director of international student and scholar services. Five to 10 students deal with aging out each year, she said.
Most of the students surveyed by Improve the Dream attended American public schools and are earning degrees at American universities. Ninety percent of those surveyed were pursuing degrees in health care or STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).
“Most of them are going to do a master’s or beyond and then potentially are going to have to leave the country. It’s just something that makes no sense,” Patel said. “It’s a huge loss to America after having invested in us, invested in our education.”
Improve the Dream is advocating for legislation that would allow the child of a long-term visa holder to apply for a green card if they have been in the U.S. legally for at least 10 years and have graduated from an American university.
The America’s CHILDREN Act, as it is known, also would protect children from “aging out” of their parents’ visas at 21 years old. So even if they turn 21 before being granted a green card, they wouldn’t be bumped to the end of the line and would receive a green card when their parents do.
The bill was introduced in the US House of Representatives and the Senate in May with bipartisan support, but no action has been taken.
Srushti Patil, who spent some of her childhood in Peshtigo, didn’t realize how much having a dependent visa would affect her life until college. Now about to enter her senior year at UCLA, Patil had to defer enrollment the fall semester of her sophomore year to return to India because her family’s lawyer made a mistake in their paperwork to renew their visas.
With their green card application denied because of the mistake, her parents lost their authorization to work. In July 2021, her family gave away their two dogs and packed up their home, unsure if they’d be able to come back to the US, their home of the last 15 years.
Patil and her parents stayed in India for nine months, trying every day to book a visa appointment at the American embassy.
Srushti Patil moved to the US with her parents when she was 4 years old. She lacks a clear pathway to citizenship because of long lines for green cards for Indian immigrants.
The wait was especially long because the embassy had limited hours due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For the spring semester, Patil enrolled in a full course load of online classes and attended lectures overnight.
When she was finally at the embassy in line for her visa interview in April last year, the first-time Indian immigrants beside her commented on her American accent.
“Are you sure you’re in the right line?” they asked.
She was. But the experience was telling. She felt so thoroughly American, and so different from the new immigrants in line with her. She realized that as a member of the Indian diaspora, she’s “not Indian” in the way that people raised there are.
“Although I am very fond of my culture, and I am Indian to my core, growing up in the US has fundamentally shaped me,” Patil said. “My perspectives, how I interact with people, is very different in culture than India’s.”
She’d been a pre-med major when she left for India. But once she returned and got involved with Improve the Dream, Patil decided to go into public policy. She understands how much it can affect individual lives, she said.
If the US doesn’t change its policy on dependent visa holders, it will lose so many students who have been shaped by American ideals and culture, Patil said. While stuck in India, she considered enrolling at a Canadian university or moving somewhere else.
She turns 21 in November. Her family had been on one of the last steps to receive their green card before they had to go back to India.
Now, she’s in limbo, unsure if they’ll receive them by her birthday.
“America is a place that allows people from all different backgrounds and stories to have the ability to pursue the American dream,” Patil said. “It would be such a loss if we’re not fighting for the people who are contributing to what makes America so great.”
Young adults who age out of their parents’ visas at 21 often pursue STEM majors and earn advanced degrees in part because it could give them a better chance of staying in the US. But the system is complicated, and there are no guarantees.
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“So what if a young person ages out and can’t secure a work visa or find a job? It hasn’t been a priority of the Biden administration to track down and forcibly deport those who age out.”
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But many leave on their own because they are no longer authorized to work in the U.S. and lack a legal way to stay.
STEM graduates can stay in the US for three years after college — which means three chances to win the H-1B work visa lottery. Non-STEM majors have one year, and one chance.
A student who isn’t randomly selected in the annual lottery must return to their home country.
The first challenge, though, is finding an employer to sponsor them for that work visa.
Doing so would be difficult without an advanced degree, said Erin Barbato, director of the Immigrant Justice Clinic at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
“In order to get these immigrant employment-based visas, you have to show that you’re the best and brightest in the world already,” Barbato said. A 21- or 22-year-old graduating with a bachelor’s degree generally wouldn’t be able to compete, she said.
So what if a young person ages out and can’t secure a work visa or find a job? It hasn’t been a priority of the Biden administration to track down and forcibly deport those who age out, Barbato said. But many leave on their own because they are no longer authorized to work in the U.S. and lack a legal way to stay.
Barbato hopes that Congress will act to help those with dependent visas and those under DACA. Both populations are “getting left in limbo”, she said. “It seems almost nonsensical not to provide pathways to citizenship”, to them, she said.
Sneha, 24, knows well the challenges of trying to stay in the U.S. after aging out of her dependent visa. She came to the U.S. with her family when she was 11 years old and went to high school in Michigan. She asked to use her last name only for this story because of her sensitive immigration status.
Sneha had to fight for in-state tuition at Michigan State University after initially being denied, and she wasn’t eligible for any federal aid or most scholarships. Then, when she was a junior, she turned 21 and was bumped off her parents’ visa. She applied for a student visa, but the pandemic caused long delays. She had no idea what to do. She recalls staff at the international student office telling her: “We can’t help you. You have to go back to India.” She left the office sobbing.
“I can’t go back,” she remembers thinking. “Where would I go? My parents and my sister are here.” Sneha went on to found The Hidden Dream, a group with more than 800 members that offers resources to other young people on dependent visas who are going through similar challenges. They have leaned on each other as sources of both emotional support and advice for aging-out.
“A lot of these kids want to work hard, but the government’s physically stopping them from doing so,” Sneha said. “People deserve to live life without these anxieties and this stress.”
She sees the heavy toll that stress is taking on the young people involved in The Hidden Dream. It can be isolating if friends and even parents don’t fully grasp what they’re feeling, she said.
Sneha recently earned a master’s degree in higher education, found work at a university and moved to Washington, D.C. She made friends and enjoyed being a young professional in a new city. But she learned last month that her employer won’t sponsor her for a work visa.
She has to leave her job in January. And unless she can quickly find another job willing to sponsor her, she will have to leave the country by March. The chances of finding a new employer in her field who agrees to invest time, legal resources and thousands of dollars in sponsoring her are very low, she said.
The US is the only place Sneha ever dreamed of living. “I had hoped that maybe this would work out for me, and it just didn’t,” she said. Her parents recently moved to Canada, having lost confidence they’d receive their green cards in the near future. She might go stay with them for a little while. She also might be able to live with an aunt in India. She doesn’t know what’s next. “It feels so hopeless,” she said. “What am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to be fighting for this for the rest of my life?”
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