Immigration freeze hurts reunification efforts in US

Fourteen years is a long time to wait to reunite with a relative.

But that is how much time has passed since Suraiya Sharker’s family first applied for a green card for her uncle to come and live permanently in the United States from Bangladesh.

The wait almost seemed over this month. That is when her uncle was scheduled to have his visa interview at the U.S. embassy in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, after years of waiting in line for a green card because of limits on the number of green cards the U.S. hands out each year.

But now Sharker’s family has no idea when her uncle, his pregnant wife, and the couple’s young daughter will be able to come to the U.S.

First the pandemic hit, forcing the U.S. State Department in March to temporarily close all U.S. embassies and consulates around the world and suspend routine processing of visas, including green cards.

Then on April 22, President Donald Trump signed a proclamation to temporarily suspend for 60 days legal immigrants such as Sharker’s uncle from coming to the U.S. with green cards.

Trump said one of the main goals of his executive order is to protect Americans who have lost jobs due to the pandemic from having to compete with immigrants arriving from other countries.

But as the Sharker family shows, U.S. citizens also are being hurt by Trump’s immigration suspension by further prolonging them from being reunited with loved ones abroad, often after they have already waited for years.

“It’s really frustrating,” said Sharker, a 22-year-old political science student at Georgia State University who lives in suburban Atlanta. She also works as an organizer for the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, an advocacy group.

Having the arrival of her uncle and his family from Bangladesh thrown in limbo has taken an emotional and economic toll, she said. Born in Bangladesh, Sharker is a naturalized U.S. citizen, as is her father, who is the main sponsor for a green card for her uncle in Bangladesh.

Besides the disappointment of not being reunited this month after years of waiting, her family has spent thousands of dollars on attorney fees, application fees and other paperwork trying to get her uncle a green card, Sharker said. Now her family is worried they will have to shell out more money to refile paperwork.

That would put additional financial hardship on her family after her father was laid off from his restaurant manager’s job because of the new coronavirus emergency, Sharker said. She currently is the family’s main breadwinner.

She said she also found it insulting that Trump says the immigration suspension is needed to protect jobs for Americans from immigrants.

Most of the Bangladeshi immigrants she knows started small businesses after they came to the U.S. and created jobs, she said.

“And so they’re hiring Americans,”

Sharker said.

For example, an uncle owns the franchise restaurant that employed her father as a manager until he was laid off.

Another Bangladeshi friend owns a gas station that offered to provide a job to her uncle in India once he comes to the U.S., she said. Now they are worried the job may no longer be available by the time her uncle is finally allowed to receive a green card and come to the U.S., Sharker said.

The sudden upending of plans has created a rift between her family and her relatives in Bangladesh, Sharker said.

“They feel like we aren’t trying to bring them here,” she said. “They think we are purposely stalling the process because they think we don’t want them to move and stay with us. And so there has been a lot of family tension, people feeling like we are being really selfish and (them) not really understanding the situation.”

Trump’s executive order suspending immigration is supposed to end June 22, but the order gives Trump the option of extending it, said Sharvari DalalDheini, government relations director at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, an advocacy group.

Trump’s executive order calls on the secretaries of Labor, Homeland Security and State to recommend whether the scope of the immigration suspension should be expanded to other categories, including temporary workers.

On April 25, AILA, along with the Justice Action Center, filed a court motion asking a judge for a temporary restraining order to block Trump’s immigration suspension. A federal judge denied the request to block the immigration freeze.

An extension of the immigration freeze or an expansion in scope would likely be met with more legal challenges, Dalal-Dheini said.

There is concern that the Trump administration is trying to circumvent Congress to carry out permanent restrictions to the nation’s immigration system that the administration has been pushing for years, she said

For example, the Trump administration has tried to get Congress to pass legislation that would curtail what Trump derisively refers to as “chain migration” by restricting the ability of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents to apply for relatives abroad. Trump also wants to replace the family-based immigration system with a merit-based system that gives preference to immigrants based on their education and skills rather than their blood ties.