Sheltered No More: The U-Visa Revocation Statute Undermines Congressss Purpose of Victim Protection

Abstract

Created by Congress in 2000, the U-Visa is a life-saving nonimmigrant visa for victims of crime that occurred to them in the United States. Congress’s recognition that immigrant victims face insurmountable obstacles escaping an abuser led to their dual-prong purpose for the U-Visa to protect victims and prosecute criminals. However, with full discretion in the hands of local law enforcement to provide the mandatory law enforcement certification of a victim’s crime and her cooperativeness, police have the power to grant or deny certification at their will not matter if the victim has satisfied all criteria for the U-Visa application. While many legal scholars have discussed the overly broad discretion given to law enforcement over the U-Visa application process by the U-Visa regulations created in 2009, none have discussed the equally appalling parallel broad discretion granted to law enforcement to revoke a U-Visa based upon trivial, inconsequential, or nonexistent reasoning. This excessively broad power in the hands of law enforcement to revoke U-Visas not only violates Congress’s original dual-purpose for the U-Visa, but it also places victims right back into a state of vulnerability and into the hands of their abusers.Congress’s dual purpose for the U-Visa could be restored by several changes to the U-Visa regulations. Requiring mandatory notice of intention to revoke a U-Visa to be given to a petitioner’s advocate or lawyer, extending the thirty-day rebuttal process to sixty days for a victim to respond to a notice of revocation, and clarifying the revocation provision of U-Visa regulation statute to avoid ambiguity and consequential abuse of power all assuage the overly broad power in the hands of law enforcement. Making such changes will enable law enforcement to continue prosecuting criminals while realistically fulfilling Congress’s purpose of protecting victims by not only allowing adequate time for a victim to learn of a law enforcement agency’s intention to revoke a visa, but also permitting a realistic time frame for her to rebut her case to the USCIS.