VisaJourney.com News » Blog Archive » Senate adds ammendment to pending bill to quit deporting widows

Senate adds ammendment to pending bill to quit deporting widows

August 3rd, 2009
by VJ News

Still pending approval, a spending bill being sent to the House of Representatives contains an amendment to prevent the deportation of widows of US Citizens trapped by the so called “Widow Penalty”. Meanwhile, last month, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano granted a 24-month reprieve to those immigrant widows and widowers of U.S. citizens denied residency status because their spouses died before they were married two years.

Published online:

In July the Senate passed an amendment to prevent deportation of widows who were married to American citizens.

The measure, introduced by Florida Senator Bill Nelson and others, was attached to a homeland-security spending bill which has yet to be considered by the House.

The so-called “widow penalty’’ under current law says a foreigner must be married to an American for two years to qualify for legal residency in this country. Those widowed before two years can be deported.

Nelson cited the case of Natalia Goukassian of Daytona Beach, who faced deportation proceedings after her husband died in 2006. The widow had come to this country legally from Russia.

Nelson said she is one of hundreds of widows trying to fend off deportation.

and a quote from the Mainstreet Business Journal

Hatch’s amendment also remedies the unintended and unjustified administrative procedure of what has become known as the “widow penalty.” In recent years, several aliens whose spouses died while their applications were stuck in the government’s bureaucracy have filed lawsuits, arguing that their application for permanent residency should not be denied simply because DHS had not yet finished processing the application before the citizen spouse met an untimely death.

Hatch’s amendment would eliminate the requirement that alien widows and widowers of deceased U.S. Citizens must have been married to the U.S. Citizen for a minimum of two years or face automatic denial. Such aliens seeking to stay in the United States would still be required to meet the universal standard for proving to the satisfaction of DHS that their marriage was bona fide and not entered into for the purpose of obtaining an immigration benefit. While the numbers of aliens affected by this penalty are small, several of their cases are highly sympathetic: they include individuals widowed by tragic accidents, and surviving spouses who had young children with the U.S. Citizen before the citizen’s untimely death.

The amendment would also codify in law DHS’s current regulation allowing DHS to continue to consider an alien’s application for permanent residency that had already been in process when the alien’s sponsoring relative dies, subject to the Secretary’s exercise of discretion. Applications may only be considered if the paperwork was on file at the time of the sponsor’s death, and if such aliens have continued to reside in the United States.

Share this article:

return to index

This entry was posted on Monday, August 3rd, 2009 at 2:54 am and is filed under General Immigration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.