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Journal of Law and Policy

Abstract

In 1990, Congress enacted the Immigration Act, amending the Immigration and Nationality Act to provide qualifying young immigrants with a pathway to residency and citizenship. Through the new Act, Congress created Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (“SIJS”) to protect immigrant children in a similar way as the domestic foster care system protected U.S. citizen children. An immigrant child may qualify for SIJS if they are under the age of twenty-one, unmarried, and cannot be reunified with one or both of their parents due to abuse, neglect, or abandonment. Many SIJS cases involve a claim of harm against only one parent, with the non-offending parent still caring and providing for their child in the U.S. After following the process through state family court and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”), a child who receives SIJS can adjust to lawful permanent residence and eventually naturalize as a U.S. citizen. Unlike other naturalized U.S. citizens, however, a former SIJS recipient can never petition for lawful status for their noncitizen parent, even if that parent was not the subject of the previous finding of abuse, neglect, or abandonment. This disparity leaves mixed-status families even more vulnerable to family separation. A SIJS recipient may be protected by their personal lawful status, but the law renders them powerless in trying to protect their parent. As a result, Congress has failed SIJS’s original purpose of providing complete protection to vulnerable immigrant children. This Note explores how the gaps in SIJS protection preserve and perpetuate the nation’s devastating tradition of employing family separation as a violent tactic of enforcing immigration law. Ultimately, this Note proposes amending the laws governing SIJS to permit a former SIJS recipient, who then naturalized as a U.S. citizen, to petition for lawful residence for their non-offending parent.

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