Welcome to the Ultimate T Visa Guide.
The T Visa is an excellent way
to get a green card because it allows you to get legal status even if you enter
the country illegally or even if you have a prior deportation order.
And it allows you
to get a green card inside the United States without having to leave.
It is also one of the best choices for an application,
especially if you do not have any U.S.
citizen relatives to depend on for getting you a green card.
And once you are approved for a two visa, you are automatically granted
a work permit and any old deportation orders
that you already have are considered to be rescinded by operation of the law.
And it puts you on a pathway to citizenship.
You can even help adjust the status of family members
either inside the United States or outside the United States as well.
But what exactly is a T visa and how can you qualify for one?
How do you apply for it?
And what can you do to increase your chances of getting your application
approved?
Keep watching because we are going to answer all of these questions.
My name is Moumita
Rahman and I have been practicing immigration law for the past 13 years.
If you would like my help on your case,
give us a call at 212-248-7907 to schedule a case evaluation.
We are based in New York
and we work with immigration clients all over the United States.
So what is a T visa and how can someone qualify to get approved?
The T visa stands for T for trafficking, but it is not exactly
what you might consider to be trafficking in the traditional sense.
When it comes to immigration, “trafficking” stands
for when a person is forced to provide labor or services
through the use of force, fraud, or coercion.
And this can mean false promises, this can be threats to physical safety,
or threats of getting deported, or being reported to the police
if an immigrant doesn't do what the employer says.
But here is a special twist.
The T visa can also apply to situations where
you may not be paid through work because you are not employed,
but rather your domestic partner boyfriend or your husband or wife or girlfriend
is the one instead that gets this labor or service out of you.
The T visa is also possible for persons who have been forced into prostitution
or into providing other commercialized sex acts.
But I will focus a little bit more on what is actually a little bit
more common and less well known, which is labor trafficking.
Some examples of labor trafficking include If your partner tells you
that comes the united states and tells you that you'll have a good life together.
But instead, when you get here, you end up serving them day and night,
hand and foot to cook their meals, clean the house, and provide
all other sorts of domestic chores.
The T Visa can also be possible if you take a job with an employer
who promises you a certain pay rate and to have a good job and possibly
even a work visa.
But when you get here, you essentially become servant,
almost treated like a slave,
and you end up doing a lot of work for which you are not paid properly.
And are exploited instead.
Also, if you came to the United States and you took a job as a domestic worker
or a nanny and you end up providing a lot more service
to that family than what you expected or what you were promised,
then this may also ends up being a trafficking situation.
Sometimes your partner or an employer
might tell you that you owe them money for a debt,
either for being brought into the country or for working in that job.
If you end up working to pay off
that debt, that may also be a trafficking situation.
And lastly, another situation that is much more common
that people don't even realize is if the person that you work with threatens
to report you to immigration or tells you that you will get in trouble with the IRS
or that they will blacklist you so that you can't get another job in town,
believe it or not, these can also give rise
to a trafficking situation and help you get a green card.
These are just some examples of what situations
may end up helping you qualify for a T visa.
And doubtless there are a lot more.
So if you think that you have been in a situation like this,
please give some serious consideration to the T visa.
There are some other
additional requirements for the T visa and one of them is the requirement
of reporting what you have gone through to law enforcement agencies.
But even though this sounds scary, in reality, what it usually requires
is that you inform either the police or the Department of Labor or some other
law enforcement agency that may be able to investigate with this situation.
And even if the law enforcement agency itself does not find that
you were the victim of human trafficking and even if they do not give you
a signed certification, that still does not prevent you from getting
approved by USCIS for a T visa,
which is fabulous and wonderful news
for anyone who has ever been a victim of human trafficking.
The third requirement is that you must show that you are still inside
the United States on account of human trafficking.
This means either that you were brought into the United States
as a result of your human trafficking, or that you are still inside
the United States as a result of what you have suffered.
Really what happens for a lot of people is that the human trafficking
situation arises well after they arrived in the United States.
So how can you actually show that you are still inside
the United States on account of trafficking if your trafficking
situation happens ten or 20 years after you get to the U.S.
or even if you were brought into the United States
as a result of trafficking and your entry into the U.S.
happened that many years ago as well?
Some of the ways that we can help show this is to show if you are still suffering
psychological or physical problems as a result of the trafficking,
you still require access to the legal systems in the United States in order
to get justice from your traffickers, or you are still cooperating
with law enforcement regarding your trafficking situations.
And lastly, you must show that you would suffer
extreme hardship if you were removed from the U.S.
and forced to return to your home country.
And again, this can be shown through a variety of ways.
So even if you think you can't show extreme hardship or show
why you are still in the U.S., don't worry, this is actually a job
for your attorneys to figure out to make that legal argument.
What I recommend is always to get in touch with an experienced immigration attorney
to help you prove your trafficking case, because when there is one requirement
that is met, we work together to make sure that all of the other requirements
can also be proven.
Now that we know how to qualify for a T Visa case, how do you apply?
Normally, the T Visa cases require the Form I-914,
which is the application for T nonimmigrant status.
And along with this case, just like with VAWA applications, one of
the most important components of the T Visa case is your personal affidavit.
Your personal affidavit must be crafted in a specific way to highlight
the instances of human trafficking, which really needs to focus
on the exchange of labor and services underneath a threat
or compulsion by your domestic partner or by your employer.
Also, you do have to include proof that you have reported
your trafficking situation
to the law enforcement authorities, and you have to provide proof
that you would suffer extreme hardship if you were removed.
And lastly, every person most likely is inadmissible to the united states,
so along with your T visa application, another really important form to include
is the I-192 permission to enter as a nonimmigrant.
And if the law enforcement agency happens to give you a certification,
it would be on the form I-914 B and you can also include that
with your application,
although like I mentioned earlier, it is not required for you
to get a certification in order to be approved for your case.
While there is no fee for the form I-914,
there is a fee currently at $930 for the form I-192 advance permission
to enter as a nonimmigrant and this is definitely something you need to file
if you are out of state as your visa expired or if you have other issues
that might make you ineligible in general to get a green card.
Lastly, one of the most important things for you to note is that you cannot apply
for the T Visa if you are not inside the United States.
You must still be in the United States.
And if you have left the U.S.
after your trafficking situation arose and you came back to the United States,
you may no longer be eligible to apply for the T Visa
unless you have also suffered as a result
of more trafficking or a new trafficking situation.
As of right now, T Visa applications are to be
mailed to the Vermont Service Center, and I'll include a link
to the filing instruction pages right here in this video.
So once your application is filed, USCIS will send you a receipt
and may also ask you to appear for biometrics.
As of the date of this recording, the average processing time for a
T visa is approximately 18 months or a year and a half,
which is actually really, really fast
these days compared to other immigration applications.
Once USCIS does make a decision and they approve your case,
you will receive a work permit for the T visa status
and you will be on your way to starting to qualify for the green card.
So what happens after you get approved for your T visa?
Well, you are now legally allowed to be inside the United States.
You are now legally allowed to work and you will also get a Social Security card.
You will become eligible to apply for a green card and legal permanent residency
after a period of three years has elapsed, unless the Department of Justice
gives you a special authorization to file for residency even sooner.
Please understand that there is no automatic right to travel internationally
with the approval of the T visa, so if you do need to travel, please
contact your attorney to make plans and to understand the ramifications.
So why do I work on T Visa cases?
I really believe that working on the T visa case will give immigrants
some form of power back and help them understand that
what they have gone through as an immigrant does not define them
and that there is hope ahead to get their lives back on the track
that they wanted to be on when they first came to the United States.
If you feel that this has been your situation,
please do give us a call at 212-248-7907 so that we can take a look at your case
and let you know if you might possibly qualify
and help you move forward with your immigration journey.
And if you would like to learn more
about trafficking situations, watch this video next about a nanny
who worked for her family for 30 years without ever leaving the country.
In this video, I react to the story of Elena, an immigrant from the Philippines,
who worked as a domestic worker for one family for over 30 years.
I'll include a link to that video here, and I'll see you there.