Families From India Have Harder Time Getting Green Cards

Friday, September 8th, 2023 -- 11:00 AM

(Sophie Carson, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) Growing up in the northern Wisconsin town of Peshtigo, Srushti Patil felt like she was living the idyllic American childhood.

According to Sophie Carson with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the city of 3,400 was small enough to walk to school every day. She would bump into friends at the farmers market, and her parents were close with her piano and karate teachers. They’d host potlucks with other Indian-American families.

Patil and her parents moved to the U.S. when she was 4 years old. She doesn’t know any other home. Pragnya Vella’s childhood was also unmistakably American. She rode yellow school buses, recited the Pledge of Allegiance every morning and picked dandelions in the field at recess.

Now a 16-year-old living in Sun Prairie, she came to the U.S. with her parents before her 2nd birthday. Vella is a varsity tennis player, captain of the mock trial team and secretary of the student council.

“I’m like any other American. I just can’t say that because I’m not American on paper,” she said. “But in every other way that actually matters, I am.” Patil and Vella grew up on dependent visas.

Their parents emigrated from India on highly skilled work visas and always imagined they would eventually receive green cards granting their families legal, permanent residency. Immigrants from other countries on work visas typically receive their green cards within a year or two.

But those from India face years-long waits because each country is allocated 7% of the total green cards granted in a year. Advocates say the formula puts immigrants from populous countries at a disadvantage.

While they wait, Indian immigrants working in crucial fields like science and technology continually must renew employment visas that were created to be temporary. Their children, on dependent visas, generally aren’t authorized to work and are considered international students when applying to college.

They don't qualify for most financial aid, scholarships or cheaper in-state tuition. And once they turn 21, they are bumped off their parents' visas. Citizenship, open to green card holders after five years, essentially becomes unattainable for these young people.

First, they must find their own way to stay in the U.S., such as on a student visa, or by winning a work visa lottery and getting an employer to sponsor them for a green card. Thousands of young people self-deport each year, advocates say, unable to find a legal way to stay.

Those who do manage to acquire their own visas still face an uphill battle: Even if they’d been waiting for years with their parents, the 21-year-olds are pushed to the end of the backlogged green card line.

An Indian immigrant on an employment visa who applies today could wait 90 to 150 years, the Cato Institute estimates, meaning they’d likely die before being granted permanent residency.

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