No green card OK for DACA children

SANAA, Yemen — Yemeni rebels on Monday killed onetime ally Ali Abdullah Saleh, the country’s former president, as they gained the upper hand in days of fighting with his forces for control of the capital.

The tumult threw the country’s three-year civil war into an unpredictable new chapter just as Yemen’s Saudi-backed government had hoped the Shiite rebels would be decisively weakened.

Saleh’s recent defection from the rebel camp, and now his death, shattered the alliance that had helped the Iranian-backed rebels, the Houthis, rise to power in 2014 — giving the government and the Saudi coalition supporting it with air strikes hope for a turning point in a stalemated war.

It was a grisly end for the 75-year-old Saleh, who ruled Yemen for more than three decades until an Arab Spring uprising forced him to step down in 2012.

He later allied with the Houthi rebels hoping to exploit their strength to return to power. That helped propel Yemen into the ruinous civil war that has spread hunger and disease among its 28 million people. Your children can get green cards only if they can prove that you will suffer extreme hardship if they must leave the United States. Because they were here unlawfully, they must return home for their immigrant visa interview.

I’m guessing they were in the United States unlawfully a year or longer before applying for DACA. If that’s the case, when they leave the United States, they become subject to the 10-year “unlawful presence” bar to getting a visa. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will waive the bar for an applicant who can prove extreme hardship to a permanent resident or U.S. citizen parent or spouse.

The good news is that your children can apply for the waiver and get a USCIS decision before leaving the United States. If the agency approves the waiver, the unlawful presence bar will no longer be a worry when they travel abroad to get their visas. Because of a backlog in their visa category, the process will take many years.

AYou are still a permanent resident. Your card may have expired, but your permanent residence status has not. As a permanent resident, you qualify for Social Security retirement

Abenefits. The Immigration and Naturalization Service issued the I-151 cards you refer to before 1979. They had no expiration date. The INS — now known as Immigration and Customs Enforcement — required that permanent residents replace these cards with cards that expire after 10 years. Note that if you cannot afford the filing fee, you may qualify for a USCIS fee waiver.