On Valentine’s Day 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., Bruna Oliveira’s geography teacher was shot dead at her feet as he ushered students to shield them from an approaching gunman. The girl feared she would be killed next — dead at 14. The shooter moved down the hallway.
Oliveira’s Brazilian family was living temporarily in the U.S. with no intention of staying. Her mother, an architect enrolled in an English immersion program, had brought her two children along on her student visa.
The worst high school shooting in U.S. history made Oliveira a would-be American. Told that the U.S. offers a special visa to victims of serious crime who are helpful to law enforcement, Oliveira and 74 other survivors of the massacre applied for what is known as a U visa, reports the New York Times. Little did they know that the U visa program is among the most dysfunctional in the whole troubled immigration apparatus, with benefits far more delayed than those of the notoriously backlogged asylum program.
Tthe little-known U visa program serves as a potent example of just how broken the system has become. Created by Congress 24 years ago with overwhelming bipartisan support, the visa was meant to encourage unauthorized immigrants fearful of deportation to report crime; it was billed as a law enforcement and a humanitarian tool. Underestimating the prevalence of serious crime and the dearth of other pathways to legalization, lawmakers imposed an annual cap of 10,000 visas that now undermines the program’s intended purpose. With three times as many applicants most years, a backlog has mushroomed. U visa applicants wait an average of five years for work authorization and as long as 20 years for the visa itself. In comparison, an asylum seeker generally secures working papers in seven to eight months, and cases go through immigration court in about four years. If the U visa system worked as Congress had intended, Oliveira and the other Parkland survivors would possess not only U visas but green cards by now. Instead, they are inching forward on a slow-moving queue alongside not only hundreds of thousands of victims of domestic violence, rape and armed robbery, but also other survivors of the growing number of mass shootings, including the 2017 Las Vegas attack at a music festival and the 2019 shooting at a Walmart in El Paso.
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