H-1B visa children fear deportation
WASHINGTON: For a 12- or 13-yearold child of an H-1B visa holderparent waiting for Green Card, ‘ageing out’ is not a concept easy to understand.
Mohit Nagendra, 13, from New Jersey, first heard of it a week ago, as something that could affect him or turn his life upside down. Like teens his age, he googled it and concluded, “It means that when you turn 21, you have to apply for your own H-1 visa (he meant H-1B), and if you don’t get it … you have to self-deport, and you have to leave this country and go to your home country.”
He worries about having to “pretty much start all over again” if he had to return.
For Adhitya Arasu, 12, from Ohio, ageing out meant: “When you are 21, you become an international student and have to pay double the fee (for college).”
Technically, neither was completely right, or wrong.
The US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency that administers this law, describes it thus: “Anyone who turned 21 at any point prior to receiving permanent residence (Green Card) could not be considered a child for immigration purposes. This situation is described as ‘Ageing out’.”
Drastic consequences follow, as Nagendra and Arasu understand, well enough to skip school last Thursday to stand with their parents in the open, freezing cold in Capitol Hill, with hundreds of other H-1B visa-holding Indians as they waited to lobby Congress.
This was the third wave of Indian H-1B visa holders waiting for their Green Card coming to Washington DC from all over the country.
They were there to involve themselves in the ongoing immigration debate triggered by the plight of 700,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children and now facing deportation because their Obama-era protection has been rescinded by President Donald Trump.
The first group was led by the Republican Hindu Coalition and it held a demonstration outside the White House. The second, led by Immigration Voice, lobbied Congress intensively in support of a long-standing legislation sympathetic to their cause. And the last, that had Nagendra and Arasu and their parents, was hosted by Skilled Immigration in America. All had the same objective : to cut the waiting time for getting a Green Card.
Nagendra and Arasu’s parents are among an estimated 1.5 million H-1B visa holders with approved Immigrant Petitions waiting for their Green Card, a wait that could for some of them last for up to 70 years, according to one estimate, because of an expanding backlog that worsens every year, feeding on a growing number of fresh applications from Indians.
There has been widespread bipartisan support to their plight for years now. A legislation to address the backlog is before the House of Representatives, with more than 300 co-sponsors in the 435-member body. And there is a legislation in the Senate that has the best fix to their problem and, according to its supporters, has the backing of the White House.
They will be following closely the immigration debate that will take place next week as promised by US Senate’s majority leader Mitch McConnell, as part of the budget deal that was signed into law by President Donald Trump on Friday.
Akshita Ramesh, 13, from Washington DC, dreads the prospect of ageing out.
“I worry every night. I don’t want to go back to India. I want to stay here. I grew up in the US. This is my country… It’s just heartbreaking to think I might have to go back and live a totally foreign life.”
Born in Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, Akshita came to the US with her father Ramesh Ramanathan and mother.
She was a year and a half, and has very little recollection of India. She has been to the country on vacations but really didn’t connect — “not my type”, adding that she doesn’t speak “any Indian language”.
But the 13-year-old is clear about her future. If her parents don’t get their Green Cards in time, she is prepared to look for ways to stay on, like an F-1 or an H-1B visa for herself.