Advocating for Immigrant Youth: Addressing Ongoing Barriers to Special Immigrant Juvenile Status in the One-Parent Context

Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS) is a pathway to legal status for young people under the age of twenty-one who, among other requirements, have been “abused, abandoned, or neglected” by “1 or both” of their parents. A uniquely bifurcated statute, youth must first receive “special findings” from their respective state court under the SIJS statute before they can apply for SIJS with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. Unfortunately, state courts do not follow uniform rules for issuing these findings. For children who reside with one parent, the lack of uniformity means that youth in one state may successfully receive these prerequisite special findings, while youth in another may not. Today, barriers to one-parent SIJS appear, for instance, when a petitioner seeks special findings alongside a dependency petition or to name the parent they reside with as their custodian. This Comment provides examples of current and recent barriers to one-parent SIJS for young people in Pennsylvania and Florida, comparing these states’ approaches to those taken in New York and Minnesota, two states that take a more welcoming approach to special findings in the one-parent context. Analyzing state court decisions, relevant state statutes, and scholarly arguments, this Comment identifies that barriers to one-parent SIJS include disagreements about what the SIJS statute actually requires, judicial hesitance to make custody, dependency, and/or guardianship determinations for immigrant youth with one parent, and simply put, judicial reluctance and discomfort with immigrant youth in the courtroom. Yet the family-law principles state judges rely on in determining whether a child has met all of the criteria to apply for SIJS, putting aside broader considerations of federal immigration relief, are substantially similar across states. In turn, this Comment proposes potential solutions including interpretations from states with strong support for one-parent SIJS, creative lawyering catering to judicial preferences, and state legislative advocacy.