Kurzban Kurzban Tetzeli & Pratt | Attorneys At Law

Update: Woman on parents’ E-2 visas gets reprieve for birthday

On Behalf of | Aug 16, 2012 | Deportation and Removal |

On August 1, this blog discussed the plight of a woman who lives in the Midwest who was about to lose her legal status in the United States. The woman has been in the country since she was a small child on her parents’ E-2 investor’s visas. The young woman’s legal status was to dissolve upon her 21st birthday (which was on August 8).

The young woman had made plans to leave the country voluntarily if she did not get her immigration issue worked out before her birthday. She had not faced any imminent deportation threat from the federal government.

Her story made the news. Since the last post on her immigration battle, she has been given a reprieve from U.S. immigration officials. The Department of Homeland Security is allowing the young immigrant to remain in the United States for two more years. DHS says that the decision to defer any action toward the woman was based upon prosecutorial discretion.

The young woman has been seeking her own visa for roughly nine years. As this blog reported earlier this month, the woman’s grandparents are naturalized citizens and an application for a family based visa was submitted years ago for the young immigrant, but that petition is sitting in the backlog of applications.

A friend of the young immigrant says that as a U.S. citizen, the woman’s immigration battle “is really disheartening,” according to CNN Money. The friend had reportedly traveled to Washington with the young immigrant to lobby Congress for the immigrant’s legal status. The friend told CNN Money that, “People like [the young woman] are falling through the cracks. America’s a melting pot. I learned that in middle school. You’d think that would be a priority.”

Source: CNN Money, “Immigration officials spare entrepreneurs’ daughter,” Jose Pagliery, Aug. 13, 2012

Categories

Archives

FindLaw Network