When Nadia Habib left Bangladesh with her mother for the U.S, she was only 1 year old. She has been raised in Queens, and had the chance to attend to one of the best public high school of the city.
Now she is enrolled with Stony Brook University, majoring in psychology and attends Biology and Art classes.
Nadia’s mother, Nazmin Habib is married with a green card holder and is also the mother of three U.S citizen children.
This family has always lived united in the U.S territory, until the day while she was doing an administrative process for her school Nadia found out that she was undocumented.
Everything started to go really bad when she missed an appointment at the immigration court because she was ill.
After being denied a motion to have their case reopened because of the first absence, the Homeland Immigration Judge decided of their deportation on September 29th, a decision that would separate this family.
Yet, in regards to the DREAM ACT legislative proposal (which stands for Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors) introduced in May 2011 by the senate, Nadia is not event eligible to be deported.
Indeed, this Bill states that:
“Students illegal aliens who have proof of having arrived in the United States before age 16, proof of residence in the United States for at least five consecutive years since their date of arrival who have between the ages of 12 and 30 at the time of bill enactment, have graduated from an American high school, obtained a GED, or have been admitted to an institution of higher education and have “Good Moral character,” are eligible to stay on the stay on the U.S territory.
Even if Nadia was filling all these criteria, she was compelled by the law to leave the country.
Aware that she might be victim of a judiciary error and also of the dramatic consequences of this deportation on the family , the New York Youth Leadership Council seized this case.
It took two weeks to get thousands of online and phone petitions to stop this deportation.
On September 29th, people gathered at the Department of Homeland Security at 9h30 in order to halt the deportation initially scheduled for the same day at 11 am.
With more than 6,000 people who have signed the petition and the support of the community, the U.S Department of Homeland Security finally decided to review their case.
The Nabib family can now stay together but no one really know many times this will last.
Anyway, the public campaign led by the New York State Youth Leadership Council to stop this deportation had permitted to point out the fact that the whole immigration law in the U.S is to review.
“Last year, the federal government deported nearly 400,000 people, and in Nadia and Nazmin Habib we’re seeing the face of those deportations. Like thousands of other hardworking New Yorkers, the Habib’s are at risk of being taken from their home not because of anything that they did, but because of bad immigration policy. While they have been granted a temporary stay, their fight against deportation is far from over. I hope that the Habib’s case will help push the Obama administration to make critically needed reforms to immigration policies within this nation, starting with the DREAM Act” said NYC Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez.