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Dreamers: You too can earn Legal status. Read about Elizabeth Olivas. If you are like Elizabeth, talk to an Immigration attorney. If you don't know an Immigration Attorney, go to your local Catholic Church and ask for their recommendations to find one.
(CNN) -- The Indiana high school student who was in danger of missing her graduation ceremony because of a visa mix-up in Mexico returned home early Friday morning. The smiling teen was met at the Indianapolis International Airport by her Dad and all of her family members, balloons and signs.
"Now I can continue to pursue my dreams," Elizabeth Olivas, 17, told reporters.
High school student Elizabeth Olivas had faced a three-year ban from the United States. Her attorney, Sarah Moshe, had said the U.S. State Department approved a waiver, allowing Olivas to return home and deliver the salutatorian speech at Frankfort High School on Saturday.
Elizabeth was an undocumented immigrant who was brought to the United States by her parents when she was 4. She traveled to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, last month to beat a deadline to apply for a visa. According to immigration laws, children of immigrant parents have until 180 days from their 18th birthday to leave the United States for their country of origin and apply for a visa. The consulate in Mexico granted Olivas an appointment for May 4. Her attorney, Moshe, calculated on two different legal calendars that the 180th day would fall on April 17, so Olivas departed for Mexico that day so not to miss many of her classroom courses in America. But at her May 4 appointment, Olivas was told she had left the United States on the 181st day.
The calendars her lawyer Moshe used did not account for the leap year. The mix-up could have meant Olivas would be banned from the United States for three years, living with her grandparents in Juarez until she could apply again.
"The waiver was approved, and we just finished issuing and printing her visa," read a statement from the U.S. State Department, according to Moshe. "We gave her the visa packet and she will be left the Consulate Thursday, visa in hand!. Congrats and best of luck to Elizabeth and her family! She is very lucky to have such a great team working on her behalf."
Olivas' father is a naturalized U.S. citizen. He filed an immigrant visa petition for his daughter to gain legal status. The petition process began years ago, but the process was slow, Olivas said. She said she had been "essentially begging for an appointment."
"The problem was we couldn't secure an appointment at the consulate," Moshe said.
In the six weeks since Olivas' arrival in Mexico, she participated in classes remotely with her laptop and kept her grades up during the final weeks of school.
Her only hope to return to Indiana quickly was a 400-page parental hardship waiver that she presented to U.S. consulate officials Thursday. Her appeal argued her diabetic father would suffer from being apart from his daughter.
Now back in the United States she plans to apply for permanent resident status.
Steve Edwards, principal at Frankfort High School, called Olivas a "phenomenal kid."
"She is a mentor to those younger than her," Edwards said. "There is just not a bad thing to say about Elizabeth. She's an awesome girl."
Olivas' medal and diploma were presented to her on Saturday, he said.
"Regardless of this whole process, she graduated on Saturday," Edwards said. "She gave her speech in front of the crowd. We are all so proud to see her graduate."
Dream Student: "Thoughts on Mitt's Immigration Plan for Self-Deportation"
ONE of my happiest childhood memories is of my parents at my First Communion. But that’s because most of my memories from that time are of their being absent. They weren’t there for my elementary school graduation, or for parent-teacher conferences.
From the time I was just a baby in Mexico, I lived with my grandparents while my parents traveled to other Mexican states to find work. I was 6 in 2000 when they left for the United States. And it took five years before they had steady jobs and were able to send for me. We’ve been together in this country ever since, working to build a life. Now I am 17 and a senior in high school in New York City. But my parents have left again, this time to return to Mexico.
Last week, when asked in a debate what America should do about the 11 million undocumented immigrants living here, Mitt Romney said he favored “self-deportation.” He presented the strategy as a kinder alternative to just arresting people. Instead, he said, immigrants will “decide they can do better by going home because they can’t find work here.”
But really this goes along with a larger movement in states like Arizona and Alabama to pass very tough laws against immigrants in an attempt to make their lives so unbearable that they have no choice but to leave. People have called for denying work, education and even medical treatment to immigrants without documentation; many immigrants have grown afraid of even going to the store or to church.
The United States is supposed to be a great country that welcomes all kinds of people. Does Mr. Romney really think that this should be America’s solution for immigration reform?
You could say that my parents have self-deported, and that it was partly a result of their working conditions. It’s not that they couldn’t find work, but that they couldn’t find decent work. My dad collected scrap metal from all over the city, gathering copper and steel from construction sites, garbage dumps and old houses. He earned $90 a day, but there was only enough work for him to do it once or twice a week. My mom worked at a laundromat six days a week, from 6 a.m. until 6 p.m., for $70 a day.
But the main reason they had to leave was personal. I have a brother, 16, a year younger than me, still living in Mexico. He was too little to cross the border with me when I came to the United States, and as the government has cracked down on immigration in the years since, the crossing has become more expensive and much more dangerous. And there was no hope of his getting a green card, as none of us have one either. So he stayed with my grandparents, but last year my grandmother died and two weeks ago my grandfather also died. My parents were confronted with a dilemma: Leave one child alone in New York City, or leave the other alone in Mexico. They decided they had to go back to Mexico.
Now once again I am missing my parents. I know it was very difficult for them to leave me here, worrying about how I will survive because I’m studying instead of earning money working. I’m living with my uncles, but it is hard for my mother to know that I’m coming home to a table with no dinner on it, where there had been dinner before. And it’s hard for me not having my parents to talk to, not being able to ask for advice that as a teenager you need. Now that they are in Mexico, I wonder who will be at my graduation, my volleyball games or my birthday? With whom will I share my joy or my sad moments?
I know a girl named Guadalupe, whose parents have also decided to return to Mexico, because they can’t find work here and rent in New York City is very expensive. She is very smart and wants to be the first in her family to attend college, and she wants to study psychology. But even though she has lived here for years and finished high school with a 90 percent average, she, like me, does not have immigration papers, and so does not qualify for financial aid and can’t get a scholarship.
People like Guadalupe and me are staying in this country because we have faith that America will live up to its promise as a fair and just country. We hope that there will be comprehensive immigration reform, with a path to citizenship for people who have spent years living and working here. When reform happens, our families may be able to come back, and if not, at least we will be able to visit them without the risk of never being able to return to our lives here. We hope that the Dream Act — which would let undocumented immigrants who came here as children go to college and become citizens and which has stalled in Congress — will pass so that we can get an education and show that even though we are immigrants we can succeed in this country.
If, instead, the political climate gets more and more anti-immigrant, eventually some immigrants will give up hope for America and return to their home countries, like my parents did. But I don’t think this is something that our presidential candidates should encourage or be proud of.
Immigrants have made this country great. We are not looking for a free ride, but instead we are willing to work as hard as we can to show that we deserve to be here and to be treated like first-class citizens. Deportation, and “self-deportation,” will result only in dividing families and driving them into the shadows. In America, teenagers shouldn’t have to go through what I’m going through
This month, Benita Veliz was SAVED from Deportation by President Obama's "Morton Memo" which saves Dreamers and Workers from Deportation. Benita is a 24-year-old college graduate from San Antonio who works in a church office. She is smart, self-sufficient and hard-working. She is bursting with academic and professional ambitions — DREAMS that were set aside because her paths to achieve them were temporarily shut down as she and her Immigration attorneys pleaded her case.
Benita arrived from Mexico with her parents in 1993 on a tourist visa. She was small child of 8 when she arrived and has lived nowhere else since. By any standard, Benita is an American, a Texan. She is also valedictorian of Jefferson High School. She graduated at 16. She went to St. Mary’s University in San Antonio on a full scholarship. She double majored in biology and sociology and fully deployed herself beyond the classroom in clubs, student government and choir. She volunteered in a children’s hospital. And she waited tables 45 hours a week in a Mexican restaurant.
Benita's honors thesis was about the Dream Act. The Dream Act: a Congressional bill that allows students to earn citizenship after going to college or serving in the military. Though the Dream Act was NOT passed due to Nay Votes by ALL REPUBLICANS plus 5 Rogue, Blue Dog Democrats, the President and the "Morton Memo" of June, 2011, saves young students like Benita.
Benita's immigration troubles began in January, 2009. A police officer pulled her over, saying she had rolled through a stop sign. Benita explained, that while she did not roll through the stop sign, she does acknowledges driving without a license. She had a Mexican consular identity card, and after a series of questions, the officer called immigration authorities. She was jailed overnight and released on bond. Her immigration lawyers said Benita met some of the requirements that might have allowed her to stay in the United States. She has been here more than 10 years and is demonstrably of good moral character. But without a qualifying parent, spouse or child to petition on her behalf, initially she was told she could not stay. Many of Benita's supporters petitioned for her support. Benita even took her case to You Tube. In video testimony on YouTube filmed in 2009, Benita said she had "absolutely no family in Mexico" and knows "absolutely no one" in Mexico. She suggested courts take into account how young she was when her parents brought her to the U.S.
Now, thanks to President Obama, Benita was spared deportation earlier this month under deportation guidelines established by the Morton Memo on Prosecutorial Discretion, issued by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement this past June.
But Benita's troubles are far from over. Benita still can't get a work permit — to apply for one, she'd have to leave the country and face a 10-year ban before she could come back — and the government can at any time pick up the deportation proceedings right where they left off.
Still, Benita was jubilant after her court hearing Wednesday morning. “This is my home, this is the only place I've known. I'm ready to work in the United States. I'm ready to give back to my community.”
TO ALL OF MY READERS:
BENITA IS ONE EXAMPLE, BUT THERE ARE COUNTLESS OTHER STUDENTS AND WORKERS, JUST LIKE BENITA, WHO LOVE OUR COUNTRY AND BRING SO MUCH VALUE! THEY ARE STUDENTS. THEY ARE SOLDIERS FIGHTING FOR OUR FREEDOM. THEY LOVE OUR USA!
MR. PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS -- PLEASE -- PASS THE DREAM ACT!!!!
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