Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: They grew up in the United States, and their starry-eyed parents dreamt that their youngsters, the Documented Dreamers, would one day become full-blooded Americans.
Documented Dreamers are children whose parents immigrated legally to the US.
Some of them even became lobbyists, supporting the Republicans or the Democratic Party, in the hope that they would be allowed to stay on in the country they grew up in as children and sought to adopt it as their own.
Recently, media reported that some of these over 200,000 young Indians, who face imminent deportation from the USA, tried to convince senior Biden administration officials at the White House, and influential lawmakers in the Congress, to request that they be allowed to stay on in ‘Amrika’.
Many of them have spent their childhood, adolescence, and teenage in the US, but now face imminent deportation to India as they have attained the age of 21 years and can no longer depend on their parents’ visas to stay in the US. Even their parents have for years been waiting to get ‘green cards’.
The US government issues a Permanent Resident Card, popularly known as ‘Green Card’ to the immigrants as proof that the bearer has the privilege of residing permanently in America.
Exasperated, some young enterprising Indians, led by Dip Patel, 25, met many congressmen and senators at the US Capitol last week requesting their help for continued stay in the US.
They got assurances. ‘Have patience as things move slowly in Washington DC and legislative changes take time.’
Patel said his organization, Improve the Dream, is an advocacy group led by young immigrants who have grown up in the US as child dependents of long-term visa holding parents, without a clear path to citizenship. ‘We represent over 200,000 Documented Dreamers and are collectively raising awareness about the various issues that cause us to age out of the system when we turn 21’.
He was born in India and came to the US with his parents as a nine-year-old E2 visa dependent from Canada in 2005. ‘We will soon have a Congressional letter sent to the administration, signed by many members of Congress. Also, a bill to permanently end aging out, America’s Children Act, will be introduced by Congresswoman Deborah Ross’, he said.
The voices of Documented Dreamers like myself have gone unheard for far too long now but I am now certain that our voices are being heard, said Lakshmi Parvathinathan.
Among others, they met Indian American Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, and Deborah Ross; Senators Joe Manchin, Lisa Murkowski, Rev Raphael Warnock, and Michael Bennet, according to reports.