The U.S. resident must, however under the typical course, petition U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (CIS, formerly understood as “INS”) for a green card and an immigrant visa application for his/her immigrant partner based on the marital relationship. This process is not always helpful to the immigrant– in many instances, it offers one of the most abusive ways a sponsoring partner can exercise control over the immigrant, by holding the immigrant’s tentative immigration status over her. With a masters degree or recognized skill, one might try to qualify in other ways:
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A commonality in almost all abusive marriages including an immigrant spouse is the danger of deportation, typically in the form of the violent U.S. citizen or lawful permanent citizen partner threatening to withdraw his/her sponsorship of the immigrant’s visa petition, not file at all, or contact CIS and lie about her in an effort to have her deported.
Often, immigrants are given the ultimatum that they either inform nobody about the abuse and thus, let it continue, otherwise face deportation. This hazard of deportation, a type of serious mental abuse, can be more frightening to an immigrant than even the worst physical abuse possible. Numerous immigrants have kids and member of the family in the U.S. who count on them and many fear going back to the nation they left, for fear of societal reprisal, inevitable hardship, and/or persecution.
Mistreated immigrants who are married to a U.S. resident or Lawful Permanent Resident or who separated their abuser in the past 2 years might now petition on their own for an immigrant visa and green card application, without the abuser’s understanding or consent. In this confidential process, CIS representatives are lawfully bound to refrain from calling the abuser and informing him/her anything of the mistreated immigrant’s efforts to obtain a green card under VAWA.
This process also supplies temporary protection from deportation for immigrants not in deportation currently (called “deferred action status”) and restored work permission to legal permanent residents who generally deal with a longer waiting period due to visa number backlogs.
Further, the immigrant partner does not need to appear prior to a judge (the procedure is paper driven) and s/he may leave her abuser at any time, without harm to her migration status. Even an immigrant spouse who is not married to a lawful permanent resident or U.S. citizen however is instead married to an undocumented immigrant or an immigrant holding a short-lived work or visiting visa has options under VAWA. Because VAWA was amended in 2001, now no matter the immigrant or abuser’s status, the immigrant might acquire legal migration status through the brand-new “U” visa, which enables the immigrant to ultimately acquire a green card if s/he has proven likely or helpful to be helpful to a law enforcement investigation of a violent crime.
The above programs that abused immigrants typically do have options. A mistreated immigrant does not need to continue to live with the hazard of physical, mental or monetary damage from an intimate partner because of fear of being deported.