大多数大学生都等不及他们的
21 岁生日了。但是 Lakshmi Parvathinathan 很害怕。
这是她为之努力的一切可能溜走的时刻。
“我所有的朋友都兴奋地谈论着 21 岁生日——击中酒吧，所有这些……但这只是我害怕的事情，”她说。
在她 21 岁那一天，Parvathinathan 将不再受到允许她父母从印度移民到美国的工作签证的保护。她可能会面临驱逐出境。
这被称为“老化”，专家估计大约有 200,000 人像 Parvathinathan 一样生活在类似的困境中。许多人在孩提时代就被合法带到美国，现在正争先恐后地想办法留在他们所爱的国家。有些人在没有选择的情况下被迫离开美国。
他们称自己为“记录在案的梦想家”，他们说他们的困境表明美国移民制度是多么破碎。
Dip Patel 说，即使是那些合法移民的人也会发现自己面临着无法克服的障碍。这位 25 岁的药剂师是“改善梦想”的创始人，这是一群“记录在案的梦想家”，他们向国会和拜登政府施压，以帮助挽救他们的未来。
“整个情况是大多数人都不知道甚至存在的事情，”他说，“一个移民孩子有可能被合法带到这里，在这里接受所有教育，但仍然没有机会成为一名美国人。”
“过时移民法的受害者”
移民政策研究所的高级政策分析师朱莉娅·盖拉特 (Julia Gelatt) 表示，这个问题正在影响越来越多的人。
一个主要原因：绿卡积压量巨大——尤其是对来自印度的移民而言；他们甚至可能需要几十年才有机会申请。这意味着很多小时候来美国的人到了21岁还在等待家人的轮候。到那时，成人签证持有人的孩子不再被视为受抚养人，他们被踢出线并被迫自己寻找合法留在该国的方式。
另一个因素：一些持某些临时工作签证来到美国的家庭永远没有资格申请成为永久居民。
而且由于这些群体中的年轻人持有签证，允许他们在美国合法生活，因此他们不受童年抵达延期行动 (DACA) 的保护，这是奥巴马时代的计划，该计划为数百人提供工作许可和免遭驱逐出境的保护。数以千计的无证移民在孩提时代被带到美国。
“‘记录在案的梦想家'只是我们过时的移民法的众多受害者之一，这些法律不再符合当今移民的实际运作方式，”盖拉特说。
改善梦想的成员希望解决这个问题。他们一直在华盛顿四处走动，推动国会议员通过一项拟议的法律，让“记录在案的梦想家”有机会成为美国的永久居民，前提是他们持有效身份证件在这里居住至少 10 年。签证并毕业于高等教育机构。
“我们只是希望我们所有人都有未来，我们可以留下来为我们称之为家的国家做出贡献，”帕特尔说。
Parvathinathan 说，如果没有，后果将是毁灭性的。
她在等待学生签证时生活紧张
这位 19 岁的费城德雷塞尔大学大二学生希望有一天能成为一名医生。 Parvathinathan 主修生物科学并努力专注于她的学业。但对她未来的恐惧笼罩着她。
她3岁时第一次来到美国。她不想被迫放弃她为之工作的一切而搬到印度，她说在那里她感觉自己像个外国人。
Parvathinathan 说她试图获得学生签证，这样她就可以在她 21 岁生日之后留在美国。在她申请后 14 个月，它仍然没有到达。每次电子邮件通知在她的手机屏幕上闪烁时，她都处于紧张状态，等待消息并跳跃。
“这是我一直在思考的事情，”她说。
移民政策研究所的 Gelatt 说，对于有记录的梦想家来说，申请学生签证可能很困难，因为申请人必须表明他们不打算留在美国——这对于花费最多的青少年来说很难证明他们在这里的生活。
甚至获得学生签证并没有结束他们的担忧——它只是为他们争取时间，直到他们必须争先恐后地寻找另一种留在该国的临时方式，例如雇主赞助的工作签证。
“这就像你溺水了，每隔几年你就会喘一口气，然后又被拉回来，”将于 1 月满 21 岁的阿纳格·库尔卡尼 (Anagh Kulkarni) 说。
库尔卡尼是俄亥俄州立大学的学生，也希望成为一名医生。但他知道自己的机会渺茫，因为他会被视为一名国际学生——这意味着大多数美国医学院甚至不太可能考虑接受他。他也无法获得任何医院工作经验来改进他的申请，因为他的受抚养人签证不提供就业许可。所有这一切都让库尔卡尼充满焦虑，不确定他在这个国家是否有未来。
“即使我做到了任何人做过的最好的事情，”他说，“我也不知道我是否能够留下来。”
她在找不到工作后被迫离开
艾琳·克罗斯比 (Erin Crosbie) 深知这是一个难题。在佛罗里达生活了近 17 年并从南佛罗里达大学获得护理学位后，她说她别无选择，只能在夏天搬回北爱尔兰，因为她找不到留在美国的方法状态。
她获得了学生签证，可以让她在 21 岁生日后留在这个国家，但随着到期日的临近，克罗斯比开始寻找工作。她说，大流行使她比以往任何时候都更加坚定地成为一名重症监护护士，但她申请的一份又一份工作告诉她，由于她的移民身份，他们无法雇用她。每一个拒绝电话都让她陷入恐慌。
“这很难。他们不是因为我说‘不'。不是我做错了什么，或者没有合适的资格，”她说。 “那是因为我无法控制的事情。我感到无能为力。”
现在，这位 24 岁的年轻人正试图在另一个国家重新开始她的生活——距离她最亲密的朋友和家人 4,000 多英里。不得不离开他们的痛苦仍然刺痛。她还不能用她的新位置来更新她的社交媒体资料。
她的父母奈杰尔和艾莉森克罗斯比说，这种分离令人心碎。他们于 2004 年持 E-2 签证来到美国，为美国企业的投资者带来了当时 7 岁的 Erin 和她 3 岁的妹妹 Morgan。
现在，这对父母说他们面临着一个令人痛苦的可能性——他们亲密的家庭重新团聚的唯一途径可能是他们出售他们花了 17 年时间建立的佛罗里达州的生意，然后搬回北爱尔兰。
“让我感到沮丧的是，我们所做的一切都是合法的，但如果你做的事情是非法的，你似乎会走得更远，”奈杰尔·克罗斯比说。
国会可以解决这个问题。但这可能不太可能
Nigel Crosbie 说，很难相信华盛顿会提供帮助。他说，移民问题对于任何政客来说似乎总是有毒。
“无论哪个政党执政，这似乎就像毒药杯。没有人愿意这样做。他们一直在路上踢罐头，”他说。 “他们只是没有意识到它对正在四分五裂的人们的生活产生的影响。”
Parvathinathan 说，在最近与“改善梦想”的其他成员一起访问华盛顿后，她感到很乐观。该小组与过道两侧的立法者分享了他们的故事。他们希望今年早些时候出台的帮助他们的立法最终能获得足够的两党支持以通过——而且拜登政府将他们纳入计划中的 DACA 改革。
众议院民主党最近通过的大规模社会支出法案将为他们提供一些保护，但它在参议院面临着一场艰苦的战斗。任何人都在猜测何时——以及是否——会出现任何缓解。
所以 Parvathinathan 试图提醒自己要有耐心。但她发现自己仍然面临着太多她无法回答的问题。
在最近对她所在大学的一个项目的采访中，有人问她在 5 年或 10 年之后对自己的看法。
她不知道该说什么。
Why hundreds of thousands of kids in the US dread their 21st birthdays
(CNN)Most college students can't wait for their 21st birthdays. But Lakshmi Parvathinathan is terrified.
It's the moment when everything she's worked for could slip away.
"All my friends excitedly talk about turning 21 -- hitting the bars, all of that...but it's just something that I dread," she says.
The day she turns 21, Parvathinathan will no longer be protected by the work visa that allowed her parents to immigrate to the United States from India. And she may face deportation.
It's known as "aging out," and experts estimate that about 200,000 people like Parvathinathan are living in a similar limbo. Brought legally to the United States as children, many are scrambling to find ways to stay in the country they love. Some are forced to leave the US when they run out of options.
They've dubbed themselves "documented Dreamers," and they say their plight shows how broken the US immigration system is.
Even those who immigrate legally find themselves facing roadblocks that are impossible to surmount, Dip Patel says. The 25-year-old pharmacist is the founder of Improve the Dream, a group of "documented Dreamers" pressing Congress and the Biden administration to help save their futures.
"The whole situation is something that most people don't really know even exists," he says, "that it's possible for an immigrant child to be brought here legally, do all their education here, but still not have a chance to become an American."
'Victims of outdated immigration laws'
The issue is affecting a growing number of people, according to Julia Gelatt, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.
One major reason: the green card backlog is immense -- especially for immigrants from India; it can take decades for them even to have a chance to apply. That means many people who came to the US as young children are still waiting for their family's turn by the time they turn 21. At that point, the adult visa holders' children are no longer considered dependents, and they're kicked out of line and forced to find their own way to remain in the country legally.
Another factor: some families who come to the United States on certain temporary work visas aren't ever eligible to apply to become permanent residents.
And because young adults in these groups had visas allowing them to live legally in the United States, they weren't protected by Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, the Obama-era program that provided work permits and protection from deportation to hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children.
"'Documented Dreamers' are just one of many victims of our outdated immigration laws that are no longer aligned with the way immigration is really working today," Gelatt says.
Members of Improve the Dream are hoping to fix that. They've been making the rounds in Washington, pushing members of Congress to pass a proposed law that would give "documented Dreamers" a chance to become permanent residents of the US, provided they've lived here for at least 10 years on a valid visa and graduated from an institution of higher education.
"We're just hoping there's a future for all of us, and we can stay and contribute to the country we call home," Patel says.
If not, Parvathinathan says, the consequences would be devastating.
She's living on edge while she waits for a student visa
The 19-year-old sophomore at Drexel University in Philadelphia hopes to become a doctor someday. Parvathinathan is majoring in biological sciences and trying to focus on her studies. But fears about her future loom over her.
She first came to the US when she was 3 years old. And she doesn't want to be forced to abandon everything she's worked for and move to India, where she says she feels like a foreigner.
Parvathinathan says she tried to get a student visa so she can stay in the United States past her 21st birthday. It still hasn't arrived, 14 months after her application. She's on edge, waiting for word and jumping every time an email notification flashes across her cell phone screen.
"It's something that I think about all the time," she says.
Applying for student visas can be difficult for documented Dreamers, says Gelatt of the Migration Policy Institute, because applicants are required to show they don't plan to stay in the United States -- something that's hard to prove for teens who've spent most of their lives here.
And even securing a student visa doesn't end their worries -- it merely buys them time until they must scramble to find another temporary way to remain in the country, such as an employer-sponsored work visa.
"It's like you're drowning, and every couple of years you get to take one breath, then are pulled back down," says Anagh Kulkarni, who will turn 21 in January.
Kulkarni is a student at Ohio State University and also hopes to become a doctor. But he knows his chances are slim, since he'll be seen as an international student -- which means most US medical schools are unlikely to even entertain the notion of accepting him. He also can't get any hospital work experience to improve his application, since his dependent visa doesn't provide employment authorization. All that leaves Kulkarni full of anxiety and unsure of whether he has a future in this country.
"Even if I do the best that anyone has ever done," he says, "I don't know if I'll be able to stay."
She was forced to leave after she couldn't find a job
It's a dilemma Erin Crosbie knows all too well. After living in Florida for nearly 17 years and getting a nursing degree from the University of South Florida, she says she had no other choice but to move back to Northern Ireland over the summer when she couldn't find a way to remain in the United States.
She'd secured a student visa that let her stay in the country past her 21st birthday, but with its expiration date looming, Crosbie started searching for work. The pandemic had made her more determined than ever to become a critical care nurse, she says, but job after job that she applied to told her they couldn't hire her because of her immigration status. Each rejection phone call sent her into a panic.
"It was hard. They weren't saying 'no' because of me. It wasn't that I had done something wrong, or didn't have the right qualifications," she says. "lt was because of something that was out of my control. I felt powerless."
Now the 24-year-old is trying to start her life over in another country -- more than 4,000 miles away from her closest friends and family. The pain of having to leave them behind still stings. She hasn't been able to bring herself to update her social media profiles yet with her new location.
Her parents, Nigel and Alison Crosbie, say the separation has been heartbreaking. They came to the United States in 2004 on an E-2 visa for investors in US businesses, bringing Erin, then 7, and her sister Morgan, then 3.
Now the parents say they're faced with an agonizing possibility -- that the only way their close-knit family can be together again may be for them to sell the Florida business they've spent 17 years building and move back to Northern Ireland.
"It's frustrating to me that we've done everything legally, but if you do things illegally, you seem to get further," Nigel Crosbie says.
Congress could fix this. But that may be unlikely
And it's hard to believe help will come from Washington, Nigel Crosbie says. Immigration matters, he says, always seem to be too toxic for any politician to touch.
"No matter what party is in power, it seems to be like the poison chalice. Nobody wants to do it. They keep kicking the can down the road," he says. "They just don't realize the impact that it has on people's lives that are being torn apart."
Parvathinathan says she's feeling optimistic after a recent visit to Washington with other members of Improve the Dream. The group shared their stories with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. They're hoping legislation introduced to help them earlier this year will eventually secure enough bipartisan support to pass -- and also that the Biden administration will include them in the planned revamp of DACA.
The massive social spending bill House Democrats recently passed would give them some protection, but it faces an uphill battle in the Senate. When -- and whether -- any relief will come is anyone's guess.
So Parvathinathan is trying to remind herself to be patient. But she finds herself still facing too many questions she can't answer.
In a recent interview for a program at her university, someone asked where she sees herself in 5 or 10 years.
She didn't know what to say.
