When I was an infant, my mom, dad and I moved from our native India for my dad’s job as a semiconductor engineer. We made our home in the bustling metropolis of Singapore, where my sister was born and my dad’s career flourished.
So, when my dad’s company asked him to transfer to their headquarters in Utah just as we were settling, my parents thought long and hard about this decision.
My father’s expertise was in high demand, and the company needed his skills to grow. But uprooting our young family was a tall order. Eventually, my parents decided to make the leap. Although we were leaving our friends and relatives, we took comfort in knowing that our nuclear family would always be together. Sadly, my parents were unaware that arcane U.S. immigration policies would threaten to tear us apart.
When my family was recruited to the U.S., we wanted this to be our forever home. We settled down in Draper, a city 20 miles south of Salt Lake City. My younger brother was born here. My dad dedicated himself to transforming a new tech venture into a high-volume manufacturing facility that employs nearly 2,000 American workers.
My mom devoted herself to raising my siblings and me and helped us forge a community within our local Catholic Church.
We fell in love with the natural beauty of Utah, often awestruck as we hiked the trails of Big Cottonwood Canyon. My siblings and I all worked hard in school, and as the oldest, I ventured off to college first, determined to become a physician.
I remember sitting at an orientation session for international students at the University of Utah when I learned that students on H4 visas would “age out” of their immigration status at age 21 and be forced to self deport. I was in shock. My parents, who could never have foreseen this painful reality, vowed to help me find a way to stay.
My father brought my sister and I to the U.S. on the H4 visa, later qualified for permanent residency and filed for our family green card. We knew the green card process was difficult, but we had no idea that the wait times for immigrants from highly populous countries like India had grown astonishingly, in some cases, to more than a century.
I never saw this coming. Why would a country recruit my family, educate and invest in me and my sister, only to make us leave?
I’m now 23 and a second-year medical student at the University of Utah. My F1 international student visa allows me to stay in the country through medical school. But after I graduate, I may be forced to move back to India, a country I left as a baby.
It’s astonishing that the U.S. would force out an American-trained doctor, especially when many parts of this country face an alarming shortage of physicians. In medical school, I work directly with patients who struggle to access medical care, wait months for appointments and, for rural patients especially, drive several hours to see a doctor. Nationally, a whopping 135 counties lack a single physician and 80 percent of small, rural counties are without a single psychiatrist, according to the American Immigration Council.
I’m one of 200,000 children of legal immigrants who are currently staring down self-deportation. We call ourselves “documented Dreamers.” Our parents work for American companies and 87% of their children are pursuing or have completed STEM degrees. Recently, we’ve organized under the group Improve the Dream, and have received support from many of our nation’s leaders.
I’m urging Utah Sens. Mitt Romney and Mike Lee to support an age-out protection provision that passed the House with bipartisan support in the National Defense Authorization Act and is now being considered for another end of the year bill. This provision would ensure that American-raised and educated children of legal immigrants would be allowed to remain in the country, pursue their educations and careers and remain close to their families until they receive their green cards.
Our parents have dedicated their careers to helping American companies and communities thrive. Their children — budding doctors like me — should be able to do the same.
Merry Joseph
Merry Joseph is a second-year medical student at the University of Utah. She’s the co-founder of the mental health initiative We Be Well and a member of Improve the Dream.