Help Adi Achieve Permanent Residency!

Hi everyone! My name is Isa and I’m raising money to complete the green card application process for my wife, Adi, so that she can obtain permanent residency.

We met in Boston and currently live in Portland, Maine after happily getting married last year. Adi was born in Indonesia and immigrated to the United States with her parents and older sister in 1998, when she was only eighteen months old, so that her father could complete a physics Ph.D. program at North Carolina State University. Her parents never intended to permanently immigrate to the United States and planned on leaving upon completion of her father’s education, but those plans changed when her older sister was diagnosed with childhood leukemia in 2002 and her parents had to seek medical care for her here. Consequently, their visas expired in the early 2000s and her family did not have the wherewithal to extend their stay legally, especially since her parents were ineligible to work good-paying jobs due to their visa status barring them from doing so. She has since grown up in the United States, where she’s continuously lived her entire life.

Adi has been a DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipient since 2013, when she was 16 years old. Many people are aware of DACA’s existence, but are unaware that it does not serve as a pathway to citizenship. As a DACA recipient, she’s legally permitted to live, work, and study in the United States, but that’s the extent of it. Adi has consistently had to pay the US government about $500 every two years just for the privilege of being protected from deportation and is still not allowed to do many things, even though she pays taxes just as a citizen or permanent resident would.

For example, Adi was not able to receive federal grants and loans during college and was not eligible for the vast majority of scholarships, which made attendance very costly and would have been impossible without parental support. Going back to school or even just taking classes with the aid of federal funding to further her education would mean the world to her and provide more opportunities and a brighter future for both of us. A green card would also mean eligibility to obtain more affordable health insurance through the Marketplace, so she can finally receive more reliable care for health issues she was not able to address in the past.

My wife has lived in the United States for all of her conscious life and has worked since age 16, ever since she was legally allowed to do so. She’s never been able to go back to Indonesia since she was born, and neither have her parents. She has never met her extended family and hasn’t seen her older sister, who decided to return to Indonesia for college, for nearly a decade. She has never traveled outside of the United States but would like to be able to do so without being fearful that she would not be able to return to the only country she’s called home.

DACA was a temporary fix, but it is an untenable solution for the future. Unfortunately, as with many other aspects of immigration, these applications are extremely costly and time-consuming. Although Adi and I both work full-time, we are in the service industry and do not have the ability to save enough money to pay for the filing fees.

All of the filing fees are listed on USCIS’s website for additional clarification. Between the fee for Adi’s side of the application ($1,140), my side of the application ($535), a biometrics fee ($85), the civil surgeon’s medical exam fee (which is arbitrarily set by each doctor, and varies widely with no cost cap, but which we have seen range anywhere from $300-$600), as well as time for missing work in order to attend USCIS appointment dates (which are unpredictable and for which we must drop everything in order to be present), we are looking at a total of around $2,500.

We are incredibly fortunate to have a very straightforward and uncomplicated case in which Adi entered the country with documentation, as well as having maintained legal presence throughout her time in the United States. We are not retaining any legal services during the interview process, but have already consulted with professionals specializing in immigration and as long as we complete everything properly and provide proper documentation, they are confident in a positive outcome for us.

Adi receiving her permanent residency/green card will be life-changing for both of us. She doesn’t deserve to have doors closed in her face just because of where she was born. We are endlessly grateful to every community to which we belong, who have nurtured us in a world that tells us we are not meant to thrive. Thank you so much for considering our cause!