LOS ANGELES (AP) - Maria Santamaria[1] made sure to follow the U.S. immigration rules.
She obtained a green card through her husband, came to the country on an immigrant visa and became an American citizen. When her sister came on a travel visa fleeing violence and civil war in her native El Salvador[2], she helped her get a green card to stay in the U.S.
That process took 16 years.
“If we had not been of the middle class, we never could have come here legally,” Santamaria[3] said. “They would never give a visa to the poor.”
At a time when President Donald Trump and other conservatives are repeatedly calling on people to come here legally, most immigrants have few options to do so under the country’s complex immigration system. Visas are hard to come by, especially for immigrants struggling with poverty and joblessness in Central America. The other main option for legal immigration - getting a family member who is an American citizen or green card holder to sponsor them - can take more than a decade.
Trump has again endorsed the legal immigration route in recent weeks amid the furor over his administration’s policy of separating children from parents at the border, saying the immigrants should be sent home and they can try to come back with legal papers in hand.
“I have a solution: tell people not to come to our country illegally,” Trump said recently. “Don’t come to our country illegally. Come like other people do. Come legally.”
The realities of legal immigration in the U.S. aren’t quite that simple.
Getting a visitor’s visa - known as a B-2 visa - requires proving a certain amount of wealth that most in developing countries like El Salvador[4], Guatemala and Honduras don’t have. That’s because the visa application requires them to show income, properties or other assets to prove they will likely return to their countries. Other visas require specialized skills, a corporate sponsor or an American relative who will sponsor them in a process that can take years due to a complex quota system....
Those fleeing violence or persecution can seek asylum legally at designated points along the country’s southwest border or upon arriving at the airport. But tens of thousands of Central Americans are caught trying to enter the country illegally each year, which experts conceded may be their only way to come unless they have a strong asylum claim or money.“The main way - if they don’t have a relative who sponsored them years ago in a family-based category so they may be current now - to come is they are going to have to apply for a B-2 non-immigrant visa, and they’re likely to be denied,” said Daniel Sharp, legal director for the Central American Resource Center in Los Angeles.The near impossibility of getting a visa may lead some migrants to