Guest Blogger Alena Shautsova: Bringing Your Family to Safety After You Have Received Asyum

I am pleased to welcome Alena Shautsova as a guest blogger on the That Lawyer Dude Blog. Alena is quite a good young lawyer. She is a leader among young lawyers in the NYS Bar Association and is the liaison from our state bar (Young Lawyers Section)YLS to the ABA's YLD(Young Lawyers Division) and she is also very active in our State bar's Special Committee on Immigration Representation Reform. She is Of Counsel to our Law Firm concentrating on International Law, Immigration and Civil Rights/Employment litigation. She is a rising star in our bar. I commend her work to you.

Can I Bring my Family to the US After I Received an Asylum Status?

A person granted asylum in the United States may bring his spouse and children (unmarried and under 21 at the time the USCIS receives the application for asylum) to the USA.

Such an application (FORM I-730) has to be filed within the two years after the grant of asylum. Failure to file within 2 years however, can be excused for humanitarian purposes.

SPOUSES WHO LIVE ABROAD:

If an asylee would like to bring his or her spouse to the US, the following conditions must be met:
An asylee must be the principle applicant: that means that he or she was the person who applied for asylum and was granted asylum. Received the asylum status though a relative does not make one eligible to bring over other family members as a Principle Applicant ;
An asylee must remain in asylee status or become a permanent resident;
An asylee was married to the spouse he or she is petitioning for before the asylee was granted asylum.

The same rules apply to spouses who live in the US, and who were not included in the application but became married to the asylum applicant before he or she received the asylum status.

CHILDREN WHO LIVE ABROAD:

If an asylee would like to bring his or her child to the US, the following conditions must be met:
An asylee must be the principle applicant: it means that he or she was the person who applied for asylum and was granted asylum, and that he or she did not received the status though a relative;
An asylee remains in asylee status or has become a permanent resident;
The child was conceived prior to the grant of asylum: (Note from That Lawyer Dude: in a rather cruel twist, the mother of the child, if not married to the asylee prior to the grant of asylum is not eligible for these benefits,she must allow the child to leave and continue to face the torture of her original nation-state. Further any children not of the aslylee must also be left behind. Maybe noone in Homeland Security has ever watched the movie "Sophie's Choice") ;
on the basis of an employment-based petition; or
A child was under 21 on the date the USCIS received application for asylum. (True for I-589 filed on or after August 6, 2002);
A child is unmarried.

And now for the Good News:

SPOUSES and CHILDREN Who Live in the United States and Were Included in the Application for Asylum:

Spouses and children who are with the applicant in the United States and were included in the applicant’s Asylum application will receive status automatically as derivatives of the main applicant.


Once again I want to thank Ms. Shautsova for her contribution and look forward to her next one. Also I encourage you to check out her blog at: http://www.shautsova.com/law-publications/law-cases-articles.html