Sumana Kaluvai And The Hidden Dreams of Childhood Visa Arrivals
The Hidden Dream
For over 200,000 young adults across the country, a 21st birthday isn’t a milestone or a cause for celebration— it’s an expiry date on their legal status in the United States. Referring to themselves as “Documented Dreamers,” this category of immigrants is known as “childhood visa arrivals,” and faces the unique challenges of self-deportation and “aging out” of America’s immigration system at 21 years old.
Sumana Kaluvai, a 24-year-old childhood visa arrival, is one of these Documented Dreamers.” Having been born in India and brought to the United States legally at only 2 years old, California is the only home Kaluvai has ever known. But three years ago, she “aged out” of America’s immigration system, losing her dependent visa status and any chance of a path towards permanent residency.
For others like Kaluvai, the American immigration system offers scant solutions. These Documented Dreamers are the children of legal immigrants, allowed to grow up in the U.S. due to one or both of their parents being granted an H1-B “high-skilled worker” visa. As children, they obtain legal status on an H4 visa— a “dependent” visa tied to their parent’s stay in the U.S. But once they reach 21 years old, they’re “aged out” of their legal status. No longer a child in the eyes of the American immigration system, they lose out on their former “dependent” status, having to pursue an independent visa to stay in the country.
So, what exactly does “aging out” look like for a 21-year-old Documented Dreamer?
“Once you turn 21, one of the biggest hurdles a Documented Dreamer faces is that the immigration system no longer recognizes you as a dependent. So, you have to basically figure out your own paperwork, and you get booted off of all of your parents' green card applications. When I turned 21, I switched to an F1 [visa], and basically, in the eyes of the American government, I was just an international student, even though I have lived here since I was two years old,” explained Kaluvai.
Switching to an F1 visa is one of the most prevalent— albeit temporary— solutions available to childhood visa arrivals who find themselves in this predicament. To make this switch, they must return to their home countries and apply for an F1 “international student” visa to return as international college students— a process known as “self-deportation.” Despite having grown up in the U.S. nearly their entire lives, these students pay international rates to attend public colleges and face the risk of having their F1 visas go unapproved— leaving them stranded in “home” countries they’ve hardly ever known.
And their self-deportation doesn’t just separate them from their education, their homes, and their lives in the United States, it especially separates mix-status families. As Documented Dreamers age out, and transfer to a student visa, their parents and siblings remain on separate visas, creating barriers to reunification.
For the hundreds of thousands of Documented Dreamers in the U.S., immigrant statuses rise to the forefront of any life decisions. “The first question we'll ask ourselves is, how will this decision impact my status? I don't think any of us consider happiness,” said Kaluvai. For Kaluvai, decisions like that meant choosing a career in a STEM field simply because a STEM degree grants F1 visa holders an additional year of legal residency in the United States.
And those social, personal, and professional factors of immigrant life are precisely what are chronically neglected in the crafting of immigration policy. “I feel like the system was built without consideration of the human aspect of immigration. The system is utterly broken. And when you're a Documented Dreamer, it's not just aging out at 21 that kids fear about, and that deportation that's waiting for you— the danger of 21. It's also the fact that, for example, that our mothers can't travel when we're undergoing a change of status, because if they leave the U.S. to go see their family, for example, we become undocumented. So, we are tethered to our mothers and our mothers are tethered to us. And in most cases, Documented Dreamers come from a single-income household because their moms can't legally work. In very few cases do they qualify for a work permit. So there's this financial tie to the main visa holder as well, and pressure on our fathers to provide in a system that doesn't pay them equally, doesn't recognize their skills properly, and then forces them to do jobs that they may not feel passionate about long term,” explained Kaluvai.
In light of the plights they’re faced with, what solutions lay ahead for Documented Dreamers?
Some hold hope for the adoption and passage of the House version of the “Dream and Promise Act of 2021”, a law that includes some solutions but still wouldn’t fix the immigration processing backlogs that are at the root of their problems. Others have turned to community building.
Kaluvai, and her fellow co-founders of “The Hidden Dream,” are among that group. According to Kaluvai, at The Hidden Dream, the team’s “goal is to find more kids in this situation and support them, because I think it's really hard to expect an advocacy movement, a successful one, to be born out of a group of children that don't feel supported.” The Hidden Dream works to give Documented Dreamers access to scholarships, therapy and mental health support, and much more to address these needs. “We host different workshops on how to apply to college, how to write your essays, and most importantly, how to make sure your visa transition is done properly so that you are at a much lower risk of getting deported,” explained Kaluvai. Above all, “we hope that as a result of having access to this community, the safe space, and these resources that slowly more people will come out of this hidden state and be willing to talk about this,” she added.
Ultimately, the pitfalls that Documented Dreamer face as they navigate America’s broken immigration system are yet to be addressed by policy changes. To help The Hidden Dream aid vulnerable Documented Dreamers across the country, you can visit https://thehiddendream.org/. To show your support, call your lawmakers to let them know you want to pass the House version of the Dream and Promise Act to protect childhood visa arrivals.