Has exposed the myriad chinks, loopholes in the immigration system.
By Sujeet Rajan
NEW YORK: Should all legal immigrants who have waited patiently, indeed pathetically, for a decade or more for a Green Card, file a lawsuit against the State Department and the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, for their act in the Devyani Khobragade case, flouting laws, pushing undeserving people up the line to receive permanent residency?
The most ironical, indeed ridiculous, element of the alleged visa fraud case against Khobragade is the way the US has done a furtive Abbottabad-like operation to get the family of Sangeeta Richard out of India, including the American Embassy buying three tickets to fly them from New Delhi to New York – at the expense of taxpayers in the US. They also furnished the trio with T visas, given to victims of human trafficking.
If the State Department and Bharara determined that the family were exploited by the Indian government, it was imperative they be airlifted secretly to join the beleaguered Sangeeta Richard, with visas that lead to automatic Green Cards, then what about the exploitation of the legal immigrants here by the broken policies of the USCIS. Who will help the legal immigrants in a broken system where some experts predict might take workers in some category visas as long as 30 to 40 years to see a Green Card? Who will airlift these workers out of their misery? Will Santa Claus provide them with a Green Card?
President Obama failed to implement immigration reforms with Congress not acting on it, but some officials at the State Department and Bharara seem to have a different line of thinking on how to grant succor and visas to people they think deserve it.
Doesn’t Mr. Bharara realize there are hundreds of thousands more deserving candidates in the US for a Green Card? How many times has he taken up cudgels for a legal immigrant in New York who’s been exploited by an unscrupulous employer through the H-1B visa system, got them T visas? Is he so intent of securing a victory in court against Khobragade that he paid scant respect to the laws of India, may indeed have contempt for it, by ignoring the fact that Sangeeta Richard had a case pending in a court in Delhi; India wanted her extradited when found?
Bharara has reasoned that the family of Richard is important to his case against Khobragade. If it’s Sangeeta Richard who has filed a case, provided documents to prove her point, convinced him and the State Department to act on the basis of that complaint, then how are her husband and two children from India going to substantiate the case? How can they explain Sangeeta Richard’s working conditions 3,000 miles away, since they never visited her during the time she worked for Khobragade in New York?
The case against Khobragade is of visa fraud, providing false information. How can the family of Sangeeta Richard possibly be reliable witnesses in these two matters, since it transpired on applications at the American Embassy? Will the two children saying in court that their mother was promised a certain amount of money, but never received it, or that she worked longer hours, be considered as reliable witness accounts, be pertinent to the case? Does that qualify them for a T visa? Will the husband’s testimony likely to shed new light on the case? Why did he get a T visa?
Why should the State Department and Bharara bring charges against a diplomat, which might send her to jail for 10 years, tear her family, including her two daughters of 7 and 3 years old, apart, while they strived hard to bring together the accuser’s family together in New York?
The critical question is, does Khobragade deserve to go to jail for an alleged crime – if found guilty – which has been deemed a civil matter in the past in at least two other similar cases involving diplomats from India?
Consul Dr. Neena Malhotra and the Consul General Ambassador Prabhu Dayal, both stationed at the Consulate in New York, were accused similarly by their respective maids. Allegations similar to in the Khobragade case were brought up against Malhotra and Dayal as civil cases, lawsuits filed against them, one settled out of court. So what changed in Khobragade’s case? Did the law change in any way? Why is her case deemed to be criminal? Why was she arrested publicly, strip-searched, cavity searched, DNA swabbed, jailed with criminals with a record? Why was Dayal spared from those procedures? Malhotra had left the country when her maid filed charges against her.
The Khobragade case has exposed the broken immigration system in this country. It’s a microcosm of the fault lines that have widened over the years, stretching right from the inept handling of the maid, Richard’s visa application, at the American Embassy in New Delhi, where the visa officer didn’t bother to question how it was possible for her to get an annual salary of $54,000 (at $4,500 a month) when her employer Khobragade didn’t make that much money herself (wonder what transpired in the visa interview) – to the way visas have been gifted to the family of Richard’s, who are not deserving of them. It’s an insult to the tens of thousands of people who are waiting in line for years for their family reunification visas to come through.
Even as the deportations of illegal immigrants in this country increase – more than 1.9 million people have been deported under the Obama administration – and legal immigrants on L1 and H-1B visas are scared to go out of the country to visit their family overseas in the fear of not being allowed to get back into the country, and those on H4 visas wonder daily when their psychological limbo, miserable state of affairs, will end and they be allowed to work and feel like a real person again (at least the ones who want to work), it’s unfathomable that the greatest country for mankind should have legal and immigration loopholes in their system through which populations the size of small cities sneak in every year.
During the fiscal year that ended on September 30, 36,026 people were granted temporary asylum in the US, the highest number in 20 years. The previous fiscal year that number was just 13,931, representing an increase of 158.6% over just one year. The 36,000 visas facilitated by the State Department this year under asylum is roughly equivalent to the population of metropolitan towns like Alexandria in Maine, Bay City in Texas, Canton in Illinois, and Fort Dodge in Indiana.
Interestingly, even as Khobragade is spending sleepless nights thinking what her fate would be, wondering if she would be allowed to continue to be with her family or instead be in jail next year, the options for Sangeeta Richard to soon become a citizen of the US look bright.
Shah Peerally, an immigration lawyer based in California, points out that “while everybody is looking at the diplomatic mess and literally feeling sorry for the “maid†or domestic worker, we wanted to analyze what are her benefits in all this situation.â€
According to Peerally, Richard has a coterie of visas available to her. She is eligible for a U visa, accorded to a domestic worker who has been victim of a crime. She would get a work permit under the visa, and ultimately after three years, get a Green Card. Richard could also get asylum, on the grounds of being fear of persecution in India. She might also be eligible to file for a T visa offered to people victims of human trafficking, which has already been given to her husband and two children. She might also be given a Special Executive Order, granting her stay in the US. The government, in that case, might decide to protect her. She might be eligible to obtain legal status through a direct order from the executive branch.
“There are probably many other options that she (Richard) can use. While not discounting all her difficulties, it seems that at the end of the day, it will be a ‘happy ending’ for her,†says Peerally.
The important question, however, is: how will this turn out for Devyani Khobragade and her family?
(Sujeet Rajan is the Editor-in-Chief of The American Bazaar)
To contact the author, email to sujeetrajan@americanbazaaronline.com