[migrawatch-public] [Fwd: Green cards go unclaimed by many youths in foster care]

*The Los Angeles Times, June 25, 2007*

Green cards go unclaimed by many youths in foster care

*Certain abused or abandoned dependents of the state are eligible for
legal residency. But not all know the law.*
*By Anna Gorman
Times Staff Writer*

Abused children throughout California and the nation who are
undocumented but entitled to green cards are frequently not receiving
them ? putting them at risk of deportation and drastically limiting
their educational and work opportunities.

Under federal law, certain abused, neglected or abandoned dependents of
the state are eligible for legal residency, but officials in many
counties are unaware of the benefit. As a result, many youths leave
foster care as illegal immigrants, social workers and advocates say.

After a childhood of abuse, Viridiana Garcia, 23, spent her teenage
years in and out of group homes, mental hospitals and foster families.
She should have received her green card and become a U.S. citizen years
ago. Instead, Garcia, who lives with her 5-month-old twins in Santa
Barbara County, is still undocumented.

"It's hard because I want to walk like a free person," she said. "I'm
worried I might get caught and sent back to Mexico."

Congress passed the law in 1990 to grant legal status to several classes
of vulnerable children.

Los Angeles County is among the few areas where the law works well,
experts said. The county's program is seen as a model nationwide,
because social workers, judges, immigration officials and pro bono
lawyers work together to ensure that eligible juveniles get green cards.

But elsewhere around the nation, the law is not implemented as
consistently, according to a 2006 report by the Annie E. Casey
Foundation, which supports programs that help vulnerable children and
families. The report cited several problems, including unnecessary
delays by immigration officials.

To get a green card, the youths must be unmarried, under 21 and abused,
abandoned or neglected. Youths in dependency or delinquency proceedings
or in Probate Court are eligible.

Though the government doesn't specifically track the number of young
people who receive Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, 634 Juvenile Court
dependents nationwide were granted permanent residency in 2004, 679 in
2005 and 912 in 2006, according to the Office of Immigration Statistics.

Advocates say they do not know how many more youths nationwide may be
eligible, but estimates are in the thousands.

"If you look at the number of immigrants coming into this country and
the number of unaccompanied minors coming into the country, it's
shocking," said Sally Kinoshita, a staff lawyer at San Francisco's
Immigrant Legal Resource Center who wrote a manual about the benefit.
"The number of people who have received Special Immigrant Juvenile
Status is not at all a reflection of the number that would be eligible
for it."

The failures ? though unwitting ? are an abrogation of the counties'
commitment to children they have brought into their welfare systems and
agreed to help raise, said Ken Borelli, retired deputy director of Santa
Clara County's Department of Children and Family Services, who helped
draft the law.

"What are their options if their legal status isn't resolved?" Borelli
asked.

To raise awareness, advocates and government officials are conducting
training sessions for judges, social workers, lawyers and youths around
the country, including in rural areas where immigrants are just
beginning to settle.

"It just takes one person to identify that someone is eligible," said
Kristen Jackson, a lawyer at Public Counsel in Los Angeles who has
represented hundreds of juveniles.

Karen Grace-Kaho, ombudsman for foster care with the state Department of
Social Services, said some undocumented foster youth may be better off
in their native countries if they have supportive relatives. But many
were brought to the U.S. when they were young and don't speak their
parents' native language, Grace-Kaho said.

"That would be a severe hardship for them to go back to their country,"
she said.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration
Studies, which favors tight controls on immigration, said the benefit
was necessary for some children but added that green cards should be
approved sparingly.

"Some judges are going to be somber, careful and use it as a last
resort," Krikorian said. "Others are going to see it as an opportunity
to do whatever they want to do."

Fany Almendarez received her green card last year, just before she
turned 21. Raised in Honduras by her grandmother, Almendarez sneaked
across the border as a teenager to live with her mother in Los Angeles.
But soon after her arrival, she said, her stepfather abused one of her
sisters and she was placed in foster care. Then her mother died of cancer.

Almendarez's social worker started the paperwork for her green card in
2005. Though Almendarez wanted to move in with her boyfriend, she
decided it was more important to stay in foster care and wait for her
green card.

"I knew I was going to lose this chance to get my residency," said
Almendarez, who lives in Rialto and works at a children's day-care
center. "Now I have my car, I have my driver's license. And if one day I
don't want this job and I want another, I know it's going to be easy for
me."

Almendarez's sister, Karol, 20, who was also in foster care, ran away
before her paperwork could be completed.

"I wanted my independence," she said. She got a job dancing at a club,
where she met her boyfriend. She got married and had a baby. She remains
undocumented.

In Los Angeles County, more than two-thirds of the youths who get
Special Immigrant Juvenile Status are Mexican and about 15% percent are
from Central America. The rest come are from countries around the world,
including Vietnam, Ukraine and Nigeria. Some escaped abusive homes in
their native countries and crossed the border by themselves; others were
abused or neglected by parents after they arrived in the United States.
Still others became orphans when their parents died in car accidents or
from AIDS.

"What we are concerned about are the children ? that's it," said Judge
Michael Nash, who presides over the county's Juvenile Court. "It doesn't
matter what their nationality is. If they come into our care, we
obviously want to see that they leave our care in as healthy a situation
as possible."

Cecilia Saco, a supervising social worker who heads a special county
unit dedicated to these children, cross-checks databases and works
closely with her staff to identify eligible youths. Because the process
can take up to a few years, Saco files the applications as early as
possible. If they age out of the child welfare system as illegal
immigrants, she said, they are unable to work legally and are more
vulnerable to exploitation.

"How can they ever survive and be successful without being legal?" she
said. "It's impossible."

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials in Los Angeles said
they streamlined the process, accepting applications directly and
scheduling interviews well ahead of an applicant's 21st birthday.

" 'Age out' issues are of concern," said Dan Clippinger, supervisory
adjudications officer. "In order to prevent that from happening ? we try
to shorten that processing time frame as much as possible."

The Los Angeles office sees a few dozen special immigrant juvenile cases
each month. But elsewhere in the country, other offices rarely see such
cases and may not be as familiar with how to handle them, a CIS
spokeswoman said.

The process to get a green card is twofold.

First, a Juvenile Court judge must sign an order saying that it is not
in the child's best interest to be sent to his home country and that the
child cannot reunify with his parents because of abuse, abandonment or
neglect.

Second, the Citizenship and Immigration Service must approve the
application for the special status. If it does so, the youth is eligible
for a green card immediately and for citizenship five years later, if
18. If the application is denied, the youth can be deported ? more
likely for teenagers who have committed crimes and are in delinquency
proceedings, lawyers said.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security must give consent to allow
youths in federal custody to go to Juvenile Court for a judge's order.
Immigration lawyer Peter Schey of the Center for Human Rights and
Constitutional Law in Los Angeles, who has filed a class-action lawsuit
against the federal government, said the department does not have
expertise in assessing abuse and shouldn't be denying these children
what may be their only chance at legalization.

Garcia, the mother of infant twins in Santa Barbara County, began her
path to foster care when she was a child in Mexico. Her mother
physically abused her and then took her across the border when she
decided she didn't want her anymore, Garcia said. The teen moved in with
her father in Santa Barbara.

Within months, Garcia said, her father began sexually abusing her. After
contacting police, Garcia said, she was placed in foster care. Her
father was arrested and served time before being deported.

While in foster care, Garcia fought, ran away from group homes and tried
to kill herself, resulting in placement in mental hospitals. She dropped
out of high school and aged out of foster care. Using a fake Social
Security number, she worked at a McDonald's.

She may be able to get legal status through another program designed for
undocumented crime victims who cooperate with law enforcement, lawyers
said. But for now, Garcia lives as an illegal immigrant with her
boyfriend, who supports her and their daughters by working as a sushi chef.

She fears being deported to Mexico, where her father is living. "I'm
scared that I am going to go over there and he is going to hurt me," she
said.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
/anna.gorman@latimes.com <mailto:anna.gorman@latimes.com>
/
/ /

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