High court holds fate of children who aged out of green-card line

Correction: Immigrant teachers’ children maintain their place in the immigration process based on the date the parents filed the petitions for their children, not on the date the parents received their green cards. This article referred incorrectly to the way the parents’ petitions for their children are meant to be tracked by the government.

NEW YORK -- Desperate to fill classroom vacancies, New York City school officials sent recruiting teams around the world in the late 1990s, promising jobs and help in obtaining green cards that would be a path to citizenship.

Thousands of teachers arrived to educate other people's children. But those teachers' children say their own dreams have been dashed for a simple reason: They lost their places in the slow-moving immigration system because they turned 21 before their parents received their green cards.

Now the children's future and fate of many young illegal aliens across the country in the same situation may hinge on a case that the Supreme Court is expected to decide soon, perhaps as early as today.

Under federal law, illegal aliens can name children younger than 21 as dependents on their applications. But unless the parents receive green cards before the children turn 21, the children "age out" of the immigration system. So they face a painful choice as they approach adulthood -- remain here illegally or return to countries they left years ago.

"It's manifestly unfair," said Richard Alba, an immigration expert and sociology professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. "These are young people who have been raised partly or wholly in the United States. Socially and culturally they're Americans, and to toss them out on this kind of legalism is cruel."

Some of the New York City teachers' children say they lost time when they were teenagers because the school system initially directed their parents into the wrong visa category. A spokesman for the city's Education Department, David Pena, said it provided support for the teachers, including paying for the lawyers who handled their visa applications -- but not the applications for their children.

Even so, their tenuous legal standing reflects what critics say is a fundamental failing of the immigration system: It is not structured to keep families intact.

That is one issue in the Supreme Court case, which involves a California woman who immigrated from El Salvador in 1998 and whose son aged out before she received her green card. An administrative immigration tribunal ruled in 2008 that when he turned 21, he lost his spot in the long line for permanent residency and would have to start over.

His mother and her lawyers say that violates a 2002 law signed by President George W. Bush to keep illegal alien families together. It said, in essence, that the immigration system would "freeze" children's ages if they turned 21 before their parents were issued green cards so that the children would keep their places in line.

Immigration advocates say the tribunal, the Board of Immigration Appeals, interpreted the law too narrowly, a point echoed in a brief from lawmakers who supported the 2002 law. The government argued that the tribunal's interpretation was reasonable because there is no specific immigration category for aged-out beneficiaries.

The government also argued that the language in the 2002 law was ambiguous, a point disputed in the brief from the lawmakers. They called the language in the law "unambiguous" and said they had intended children who aged out to retain what is known in immigration law as their original priority date -- that is, the date on which their parents' green cards were approved.

Should the Supreme Court rule for the mother in the California case, the teachers' children could then try to obtain green cards, said Alina Das, a co-director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at New York University's law school who has been advising some of the children.

New York City's Education Department said it hired 6,000 to 8,000 international teachers between 2002 and 2007, and 1,500 are still employed.

Kira Shepherd, director of campaigns for the Black Institute, a nonprofit that handles immigration issues affecting people from the Caribbean, said she had been told by Education Department officials that the number with pending green card applications was about 500. The International Youth Association, a group started by two of the teachers' children who aged out, says that at least 300 children accompanied the teachers, but it is not clear how many of the children had turned 21 without receiving green cards.

Shepherd said some teachers had been drawn by advertisements in newspapers in the Caribbean.

"The teachers came here under the assumption that it wouldn't be hard for them to get onto a quick pathway to citizenship for themselves and their children, and that did not happen," she said.

Pena, the Education Department spokesman, said green cards and a path to citizenship were "never part of the recruitment effort" and could come only from the federal immigration agency. But the department arranged for work visas and assisted immigration lawyers chosen by the teachers, the spokesman said. Starting in 2008, the department required teachers beginning the green card process to use lawyers it had hired. The department said it never paid for the applications for children or other relatives.

A Section on 05/19/2014

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