Thousands of Immigrant Youth Stuck in Limbo Due to Immigration Backlog

The day a person gets an approval notice for their immigration application should be a cause for celebration – for securing immigration status is truly life-changing news. But right now, there are tens of thousands of young immigrants who have been approved for something called Special Immigrant Juvenile Status yet are stuck in a many-years limbo, unable to enjoy the benefits or protections of the immigration status for which they’ve already qualified. 

Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS) is a special status created in 1990 to offer protection to vulnerable immigrant youth who have been abused, abandoned, or neglected by a parent and for whom returning to their home country is not in their best interest. Immigrant Legal Defense has supported hundreds of young people in accessing SIJS protections; we currently have 182 active SIJS cases from countries as far-ranging as El Salvador, Nigeria, Guatemala, Jamaica, and Vietnam. While some SIJS applicants have lived in the U.S. for years, many of these youth left their home country on their own, traveling to the U.S. unaccompanied, and they now find themselves in deportation proceedings, fighting for the right to stay safely in the U.S. 

The application process for SIJS differs from most other immigration relief because it first requires action by a state court. Once a state court judge finds that a child is eligible for SIJS, they can apply for this special protection with US Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS) and are automatically eligible to adjust their status to permanent residency (also known as a “green card”) and, eventually, to apply for citizenship. 

This all used to happen pretty quickly; in fact, after the initial state court determination, a person could submit applications to USCIS for SIJS, a work permit, and permanent residency all at the same time. Usually, it would only take a few months for eligible applicants to get a work permit and a few more for their permanent residency card to arrive. But now, that has changed; a groundbreaking 2021 report by the End SIJS Backlog Coalition and The Door revealed that in 2020, over 44,000 young people whose SIJS had already been approved by USCIS are stuck in limbo, waiting for their permanent residency to take full effect. 

The problem is that the U.S. government puts an annual cap on how many permanent residency visas can be granted annually via SIJS. (For more information on these caps, see the Immigrant Legal Resource Center’s SIJS Practice Advisory.)  This creates an effective ghost status and a massive backlog that strands young people from all over the world in a state of rampant insecurity. They “won” a critical piece of their immigration case, but they are not able to adjust their status accordingly. Meanwhile, the date they can apply for permanent residency is dictated by something called “the visa bulletin,” a chart that changes every month. These youth are left fully at the whims of this chart and the astronomical wait times. 

Each and every one of ILD’s 182 active SIJS applicants is or will be subject to the backlog. The wait for SIJS applicants from certain countries can now be longer than five years. That means if someone is granted SIJS by USCIS today, they won’t receive their permanent residency until roughly the spring of 2028, or perhaps even later. Four years is a lifetime for a young person – and far too long for anyone to have to wait under such insecurity and unstable conditions.

As of April 2022, SIJS recipients are eligible for deferred action, which allows them to work and protects them from deportation while they wait in the unfathomably long line for their permanent residencies. But even with this deferred action in place, many young people are left with insecurity and uncertainty. Even with deferred action, these youth are still barred from accessing federal financial aid to attend college or other higher education in many states. They cannot access the public benefits they are otherwise eligible for until they receive permanent residency. 

Before April 2022, a Special Immigrant Juvenile Status recipient stuck in the backlog could not legally work, leaving them vulnerable, as outlined in a recent Washington Post story, to predatory and exploitative employment practices and employers. 

Another absurdity of this backlog limbo is that many youth deemed eligible for SIJS are still in active immigration removal proceedings until they receive their deferred action, with the fear and stress of deportation looming over them even as they follow and meet the application requirements for immigration status. And even once they get deferred action, many young people still live in a state of precarity and fear. 

“Five years after I won my SIJS, I still fear being deported,” an ILD client from El Salvador, who is now twenty-two years old, shared. He and his siblings, who are also part of the backlog, “practically grew up here. I see videos online of people being deported, and I think this could happen to me because of these delays. After having a life here and growing up here, it is hard to think about going back to a country where I have no one and nothing there.” Though he has deferred action, he says, “I don’t feel safe and I won’t until I have my green card.”

Some stuck in the SIJS backlog are also unable to travel outside of the U.S. while they wait in this seemingly endless line. 

“When I first meet with a new client to talk about SIJS, “I have to advise them that it is unlikely they can travel outside of the United States, including returning to their country to visit family, until they have their green card.” That means they won’t see the elderly grandmother who raised them or their younger brother for seven, eight, even more years. That’s a lifetime for any of us, but especially a young person,” explains ILD Managing Attorney, Katie Annand. 

In this way, the Special Immigrant Juvenile Status backlog is yet another mechanism of family separation at the hands of US authorities. 

Image by Julia Kuo of The Marshall Project

Despite all of the adverse impacts of the SIJS backlog, it is currently only growing – and though it’s impossible to know for certain, wait times could end up even longer. 

“I used to tell clients it would be approximately three years, but I’m now saying five to seven years, and it could be even longer” Annand explains. She tells ILD clients that there are dedicated people advocating for change, but that “right now, this is the reality of the wait time.” 

ILD is a founding member of the End SIJS Backlog Coalition, a coalition of lawyers, child welfare organizations and impacted youth working to educate decision makers about the impacts of the SIJS backlog and dismantle the conditions behind it. 

It’s important to note that the SIJS backlog is not the only backlog in the U.S. immigration system. But the SIJS backlog is particularly reprehensible because it impacts young people who have already succeeded in navigating the draconian U.S. immigration system and shown they qualified for status under U.S. law. Even so, the government’s bureaucratic logjams keep them from securing the benefits that they both deserve and have proven to qualify under U.S. law. 

Such backlogs function as another abuse against immigrants in our country’s machinery of immigration exclusion. 

Thanks to national advocacy, there is hope – the “Protect Vulnerable Immigrant Youth Bill” will soon be presented in Congress to exempt Special Immigrant Juvenile Status beneficiaries from the numerical visa limitations which cause the backlog. 

For more information on the SIJS backlog, and those fighting for justice for people trapped in SIJS limbo, visit the End SIJS Backlog Coalition website.