“All my friends excitedly talk about turning 21 — hitting the bars, all of that…but it’s just something that I dread,” she says.
The day she turns 21, Parvathinathan will no longer be protected by the work visa that allowed her parents to immigrate to the United States from India. And she may face deportation.
It’s known as “aging out,” and experts estimate that about 200,000 people like Parvathinathan are living in a similar limbo. Brought legally to the United States as children, many are scrambling to find ways to stay in the country they love. Some are forced to leave the US when they run out of options.
They’ve dubbed themselves “documented Dreamers,” and they say their plight shows how broken the US immigration system is.
