New York Times
By Liz Robbins
March 9, 2016
Gov.
Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio made it clear in January: New
York State and New York City were stepping up efforts to protect
some of the most vulnerable immigrants from deportation.
Undocumented immigrants who are victims of crime and cooperate with law enforcement would have more avenues to
apply for special visas that let them stay in the country and work legally.
But the fanfare masked just how difficult it is to get one of the visas — as one woman from Honduras can attest.
Yoselin,
31, seemingly did everything right when all went wrong for her. She
reported domestic violence to the
police in Freeport, N.Y., on Long Island, last fall. But she and her
advocates say they ran into a series of roadblocks: police prejudice,
ignorance of the law on the part of court officials, limited resources
from their own organization and suspicion from
the authorities that she was trying to get a free pass to stay in the
United States by seeking what is known as a U visa.
“I
didn’t go through everything for that,” Yoselin said, “because I had no
idea that due to my domestic violence I could get a visa.” She
asked to be identified only by her first name because she fears
retribution from her ex-boyfriend.
The
legislation granting visas to victims of certain crimes has been in
place since 2000, but the agencies that
can certify their eligibility vary by county and state. For a victim to
qualify, certifying agencies must confirm that the criminal act is on a
prescribed list and that the victim was helpful in assisting the
police. If approved by the United States Citizenship
and Immigration Services, the visas permit crime victims to stay and
work in the country up to four years, and to apply for permanent
residency.
“This
isn’t some backdoor, it isn’t a loophole, it is one of the few forms of
humanitarian relief that Congress
has put out there to help victims of serious crimes,” said Theodor S.
Liebmann, a professor of immigration law at Hofstra University.
In
his State of the State address, Mr. Cuomo announced that the Division
of Human Rights and the State Police
would certify visas for certain crimes, joining the State Labor
Department. Mr. de Blasio then announced he was expanding the city’s
visa certification policy to include the city’s Commission on Human
Rights.
The
New York Police Department said its Domestic Violence Unit certified
152 U visas in 2015 out of 580 applications.
Amid pressure from advocates, the department proposed rule changes last
summer that would establish clearer protocols for its certification
process.
There
is also a logjam at the highest level of the program: The federal
government caps U visas at 10,000 a year.
As of September, there were nearly 64,000 applications pending — a
backlog of six to seven years. During that time some applicants are
granted temporary protection from deportation.
“The
federal government needs to address the backlog because it’s just
massive,” said Carmen Maria Rey, the deputy
director of the Immigration Intervention Project for Sanctuary for
Families, a New York nonprofit that handles 400 U visa cases a year.
“With an increase in certification, we’re not going to see a decrease in
U filings.”
Yoselin fled Honduras in 2012. She said she was harassed by her superiors at work there when they found out she
was H.I.V.-positive.
After
arriving in New York, she filed for asylum, fearing that the
persecution based on her H.I.V. status would
continue and that the government would not protect her. Since April
2013, Yoselin has been working with a legal team at Immigration
Equality, a nonprofit organization representing lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender and H.I.V.-positive clients.
She began a relationship with a fellow immigrant after February 2015, when they were both renting rooms in the
ground floor of a house in Freeport.
In
September, Yoselin had just returned home from having emergency surgery
on her gallbladder and pancreas when,
she said, she saw the man there, high. According to a restraining
order, when she told him she was calling the police, he said he would
kill her and her unborn baby.
When officers responded, she said she felt they played down her account. “They said, ‘This is very common among
Latinos,’” she recalled. “‘It’s just a fight; you’ll make up and be happy.’”
After
a subsequent encounter with her former boyfriend, when he pushed her
aggressively, she said, her lawyers
said she went into preterm labor and was taken to a hospital. She filed
two police reports, but the police did not find probable cause to
arrest the man.
Her
advocate, Laura Rodríguez, a fellow with the Immigrant Justice Corps,
said she placed several calls to Detective
Michael Pomerico of the Freeport Police Department regarding Yoselin’s
safety and the status of the case. Ms. Rodríguez said that when she
asked in late October about certifying her cooperation, Detective
Pomerico referred to her previous calls as a calculated
attempt to get “this visa thing.”
The department declined to discuss Yoselin’s account.
According to a Freeport law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not permitted
to discuss legal matters, “a large majority of officers” do not know what a U visa is.
That
is despite the fact that Nassau County, where Freeport is, has been
calling attention to visa certifications
as a crime-fighting method. The county district attorney’s office
recently formed a unit to encourage immigrant crime victims to come
forward to the police, despite fears about their legal status.
In November, Yoselin was hospitalized for a week in a psychiatric ward because of the emotional stress of the
abuse, she said. She lost her job that week and was evicted from her home.
Immigration
Equality, which has just five lawyers on staff, decided that it did not
have the resources to pursue
a U visa that might take years to come through. “We decided to spend
our time and resources preparing for her pending asylum case,” said
Pamela Denzer, who is accredited to work immigration cases.
That
is not uncommon, said Camille Mackler, legal director for the New York
Immigration Coalition, which oversees
immigrant advocacy groups. “The problem is that U visas are not simple
applications — there’s a lot of legal strategy,” Ms. Mackler said.
“There aren’t enough lawyers, and there’s not enough funding for
lawyers.”
Yoselin’s
next court appearance, when she will set up a future hearing on her
asylum claim, is in August. As
she negotiates her way through the immigration system, she has one
certainty in her life: Her son, Gabriel Isaiah, born on Feb. 24, is a
United States citizen.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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