Damned for Being Documented, Young Immigrants Face Prospect of Self-Deportation

Growing up, Karthikeyasubburaj said, she felt no different from her friends who are U.S. citizens. That changed when she entered college.

“Honestly until I was like 18 starting university, I did not know the specifics of my status. I just did not know much of anything about visas. I wasn’t exposed to it. My parents dealt with all of it,” she said.

“I saw myself just like my friends,” she added. “So that hit very hard when I realized that ‘Oh no. I’m very different.’ … I couldn’t get a simple job, like just work at the library or something like that. … But honestly what hit worse was that there was a chance I’d have to leave.”

Her status has forced her to tailor her career goals to a field where she has a better chance of getting an H1-B visa like her father. She is specializing in data science in her master’s program.

She said her initial goal was to attend medical school, but because she is considered an international student and no Texas medical schools accept such students for MD programs, she would have had to attend one out of state. “I’d be in at least $500,000 debt. So it’s just not a viable option for me," she said.

While H1-B visa holders can obtain green cards, and if they get them their spouses and children can too, it’s unrealistic for Indian children to think this will happen before they turn 21 and are forced to fend for themselves in the U.S. immigration system.

The U.S. limits immigrants of any single country to no more than 7% of the green cards made available in a given year.

Since so many Indians have moved to U.S. on H1-B visas, they must wait decades before their place in line comes up allowing them to apply for green cards, long past the time their children would have been eligible to tag-along on their applications.

For Karthikeyasubburaj that means once she obtains her master’s degree she’ll have to pursue another degree, take her chances on trying to get an H1-B visa via an employer, or move back to India, which she said she has not prepared for.

“Honestly, it’s kind of like a nightmare,” she said with a laugh. “And you’d think I should be prepared but I honestly don’t know how to prepare.”

She’s also considering trying to move to Canada, which she said is more welcoming to immigrants than the U.S.

As founder of Improve the Dream, Dip Patel, 25, splits his time between caring for patients as a pharmacist at a rural hospital in Illinois and educating congressional staffers about “documented Dreamers” like the Herreras, Karthikeyasubburaj and himself, who have been left out of the DACA program.

Experts say there are more than 200,000 immigrants in the U.S. who would qualify for DACA but for the requirement of being undocumented when former President Barack Obama started the program.

Like the Herreras, Patel’s parents are business owners. After moving to Canada from India when Patel was 4, they obtained E-2 visas a few years later, moved to southern Illinois and opened a convenience store.

As with many young immigrants facing the possibility of having to leave the country they consider home, Patel seems wise beyond his years. His maturity could be attributable to the fact he’s had to learn to navigate the country’s byzantine immigration system.

“I grew up as American as my neighbors, participating in school clubs and playing baseball, soccer and tennis,” Patel wrote in a December 2020 op-ed for NBC News. “Upon turning 21, I had to give up my E-2 status, however, and switch to an international student visa. After graduating with a doctor of pharmacy degree, I started working at a suburban Chicago hospital under the Optional Practical Training program, which thankfully gives one year of work authorization to international students.”

Patel said he wanted to stay at that suburban hospital to care for Covid-19 patients, but because of immigration laws there was no way for it to retain him.

“I was going to have to self-deport,” he said in a phone interview. “Thankfully, I was able to find a rural hospital that was willing to keep me on this temporary status, called a TN status that's available to Mexican and Canadian citizens in certain professions. … So I have another couple years before I might have to self-deport.”

If he qualified for DACA, Patel said, he wouldn’t have these problems as the DACA work authorization is universal – if one has it, they can work wherever they want.

Patel said at first his parents were apprehensive about him advocating for other immigrants because of his status. But they have come around as they see the progress he’s making with the help of a network of over 2,000 parents and children he has built through social media and online meetings.

Last month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the American Dream and Promise Act and included a way for both DACA recipients and documented Dreamers to become citizens.

A bipartisan group of senators has also started discussions on immigration reform legislation. Patel said he hopes anything the group comes up with to benefit DACA recipients includes documented Dreamers. 

“My whole vision is just all children who come here, whether they are documented or undocumented, who grow up here should have that same path," he said. "Like being documented or undocumented shouldn’t be a deciding factor. It certainly shouldn't be a requirement to be undocumented. That doesn't make sense.”

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