Little known law could allow many of the unaccompanied children to remain in the U.S. legally if they are “abandoned”
Special Immigrant Juvenile Status.
If you haven’t heard of it before now, you probably will as tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors flood across the border, having been “abandoned” by their parents in Central America.
A Legal Insurrection reader tipped us off to what could be a coming legal onslaught to give these children a right to stay in the U.S. permanently:
“Special Immigrant Juvenile Status is something that we attorneys on the border have been getting CLE training in for a while, but largely it has not been well known outside of CPS attorney work.SIJS regulations are part of 8 CFR 204.11
With the invasion now taking place, it is going to explode. No parents means that any immigrant child under 18 can apply for a Green Card as soon as they are deemed “abandoned” by their parents for 6 months by the court system. There are some other minor rules, but that is the big one….
The bill renewal was the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008. It modified and exempted application of certain rules which would normally result in inadmissibility…. Also, it set up an “expedited” review schedule that USCIS is REQUIRED to adjudicate SIJ petitions within 180 days of filing, and that interviews may be WAIVED for SIJ petitioners under 14 years of age or when it is determined that an interview is unnecessary.
Further, per the Violence Against Women Act of 2005, a SIJ petitioner may not be required to contact an individual who allegedly abused, abandoned or neglected the Juvenile.
What nobody is talking about (or maybe nobody has realized yet) is that this is going to flood the child welfare courts FIRST, before they get to the USCIS (certain findings of fact which can only be made by the state are prerequisites to SIJS applications) with a sudden influx of “abandoned” children, and put a strain on the CPS system like nothing that has ever been seen.”
