In a national survey conducted last month by Marist Poll for National Public Radio and PBS News, 44 percent of registered voters said immigration was a deciding factor in whom they support for president. Another 43 percent said it was an important factor. In this series, we examine what drew recent immigrants to the Highlands, the process they undergo to stay and the effect on local schools.
Growing up in Cold Spring, Will Biavati looked and sounded like most of his friends. His skin was white like most of his Haldane classmates. His English was perfect with no trace of an accent.
“I fit in with the local demographic,” said Biavati, who graduated in 2010. “No one could ever tell me apart.”
But Biavati had a secret that did set him apart: He was undocumented.
He is Brazilian, smuggled across the Tijuana border at age 11, hiding in a van with his mother. That was his second immigration violation. The first came 10 years earlier when he overstayed a tourist visa with his parents.
Living in the shadows, Biavati said, the family code was to keep quiet, hoping that “as long as we don’t draw attention to ourselves, we can spare ourselves harassment.”
So Biavati was known at Haldane as a “quiet kid” who kept to himself and attended few parties. He never let on that he didn’t drive or work because undocumented immigrants at the time couldn’t get driver’s licenses or Social Security numbers.
And forget about dating. “You can’t impress someone if you can’t pick them up in your car or don’t have money to take them out to dinner,” said Biavati. “It was a lonely experience.”
Everything changed on July 15, 2012, when President Barack Obama announced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. His executive order allowed undocumented people who came to the country as children to obtain work permits under certain conditions, such as being enrolled in school, earning a high school or General Educational Development (GED) diploma and having no criminal record.
For Biavati, DACA opened a path to his first job: stocking shelves and working the register at Foodtown in Cold Spring. There he met Ashley Bassett, who graduated from Haldane two years before he did. They married in 2018 in a rooftop wedding in Long Island City and now have a 2-year-old son, Nathan, and live in an apartment in Wappingers Falls.
Biavati, who is a film location scout, is one of 530,000 DACA “dreamers.” But it’s a tenuous existence. “It could be erased at any moment,” he noted. DACA has been repeatedly challenged and its legality is under review by a federal appeals court. As president, Donald Trump tried to end the program and has pledged mass deportations if re-elected.
Finding a path to legal status is challenging for immigrants working and living in the Highlands and lower Hudson Valley. Besides DACA, federal law provides several methods to getting documents, such as a work permit or green card, which allows residency and often leads to citizenship. Those paths include marrying a citizen, receiving asylum from persecution in your native country and hardship exemptions.
It’s unclear how many undocumented immigrants live in the Highlands, although there are about 850,000 in New York state, with most in New York City, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C. If immigration court data and census data is indicative, the numbers have risen dramatically over the past two decades in Putnam and Dutchess counties. Most come from Central and South America. About 13 percent of Latinos are undocumented, according to the federal government.
Paths to Legal Status
If you were not born in the U.S. or its territories, you must be naturalized to become a citizen. To do that, you must be a lawful permanent resident (i.e., have a green card) for at least five years, three years if married to a citizen or at basic training if serving in the Armed Forces. You also must pass tests in English language and civics. When a parent is naturalized, their minor children living with them usually become citizens automatically.
In 2023, about 1.2 million people became lawful permanent residents. Fifty-two percent were already living in the U.S.
Family-based
If you have a close relative who is a citizen or has a green card, they can sponsor your application for a green card. The preference is a citizen’s unmarried, adult children and their families; a lawful permanent resident’s spouse and unmarried children; a citizen’s married children and families; and a citizen’s adult siblings and families.
The limit is adjusted each year, but the minimum is 226,000. In 2023, there were 756,000 green cards issued to close family members, or 64 percent.
Employment-based
A U.S. employer can request green cards for individuals with extraordinary skills or achievements, professionals with advanced degrees and skilled workers. Some are given in other categories, such as religious workers, employees of the U.S. government abroad and investors in new companies that create at least 10 full-time jobs. In 2023, there were 197,000 employment-based green cards issued, or 17 percent.
Refugees
Refugees are immigrants persecuted or who fear persecution in their native countries because of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. The president sets the annual limit, which for 2024 was 125,000. In 2023, about 59,000 refugees received green cards, or 5 percent. In addition, there is a program that allows for “temporary protected status” for residents of 16 countries: Afghanistan, Burma, Cameroon, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Ukraine, Venezuela and Yemen.
Diversity
The government holds a lottery to issue green cards to people from countries that have lower rates of immigration. In 2023, it provided 67,000 green cards through the program, or about 5.7 percent.
Others
There are other categories, such as the 26,430 Iraqis and Afghans employed by U.S., and their family members, who received green cards in 2023 (2.3 percent), and 19,720 crime victims, such as battered spouses (1.7 percent).
Undocumented
This refers to an immigrant who enters the U.S. “without inspection” by a border agent or overstays a visa. It does not include the 530,000 people in the DACA program, which is considered a temporary fix.
An immigrant can obtain a green card through marriage or having a close relative who is a citizen or green-card holder sponsor the application. (It’s unusual for an undocumented immigrant to get an employment-based green card.) But lawful entry may be required; a person who overstayed a visa will have a far easier time than someone who crossed the border clandestinely.
People who enter without being interviewed at a border crossing generally will be forced to leave the U.S. to apply for a green card through a foreign consulate. If they have lived illegally in the U.S. for at least six months, they could be barred from re-entry for three to 10 years. However, they can apply for an exception to the ban if they demonstrate that their absence will create “extreme hardship” for a citizen or lawful permanent resident, such as their spouse or parent.
Since 2013, the government has issued “waivers of inadmissibility for unlawful presence” so that undocumented applicants will have assurances that, if they leave the U.S. for a consular interview, they will be able to return to their families.
Sources: Office of Homeland Security Statistics, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
Renata Saldaña lived seven years without documents before getting her green card earlier this year. She came to the U.S. in 2017, at age 17, on a tourist visa. She and her younger sister flew from Ecuador to Florida to visit Universal Studios and tour The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. But they overstayed and eventually moved to Garrison, where her father lived. He had entered the U.S. illegally in 2009.
Why did they come? “For the American dream,” she said. “We were living in poverty.”
Saldaña and her sister enrolled at Haldane High School. While she spoke no English when she arrived, she graduated two years later as a member of the National Honor Society. After high school, she earned an associate degree in business administration at Westchester Community College in Valhalla and became the director of operations for a company that provides uniforms to charter schools.
“Everything I’ve achieved is as an undocumented person,” said Saldaña, who marched on Albany in 2019 advocating for the Green Light Law, which was enacted that December and allows undocumented immigrants to get driver’s licenses. She has launched a nonprofit, Raíces y Alas (Roots and Wings), to help undocumented people begin their lives in the U.S.
Even though she and her sister came as teenagers, DACA wasn’t an option because they arrived after enrollment was closed. Saldaña got a green card because she married a U.S. citizen.
Although that is a common way for foreign nationals to obtain lawful permanent residency, “it’s not as easy as saying ‘I do,’” noted Joseph Lavetsky, an immigration lawyer based in Beacon.
To get permanent residency through marriage, you must show that you don’t have a criminal record, that your spouse can support you and that you’ve paid income taxes, Lavetsky said. If the immigration authorities suspect a scam, your relationship could be probed with interviews in which the couple is questioned separately, sometimes for hours.
How you entered the country can complicate things. Biavati is protected by DACA but his marriage hasn’t helped him get a green card because he has two entry violations that could otherwise require him to leave the country for up to a decade.
Saldaña only had one violation, and that was a legal entry on a tourist visa. She did have to demonstrate that her marriage was authentic with a joint lease, joint insurance and lots of photographs. She met her husband, William Antunes, at a nightclub in Stamford, Connecticut, and the couple now lives in Norwalk. “It was true love,” she said. “Even if I couldn’t get my documents, I would have married him anyway.”
Like many immigrant families, the Saldañas are a mix of legal statuses. Renata’s parents and sister remain undocumented, with no clear path to lawful residency. Renata’s three youngest siblings are U.S. citizens by birth.
Could Renata’s parents leverage their U.S.-born children to get documents? Maybe, said Lavetsky, “but it’s not as simple as just having an ‘anchor baby.’ ” At age 21, a child can sponsor a parent’s petition for documentation. But even then, Lavetsky said, the rules are complex and might require the parent to return to his or her home country for 10 years and apply for re-entry. An exception is where deportation would constitute, in the judgment of immigration authorities, “extreme hardship” to the child who is a citizen.
That’s what enabled Will Biavati’s father, Joseph, to emerge. In 2014, Joseph Biavati was at a barbecue when a friend noticed that his son, David, a U.S. citizen by birth, had autism. The friend told Biavati that the autism might help him get documents.
But it was risky. Joseph would have to turn himself in and claim that deportation would be an “extreme hardship” for David. But that’s what he did. His attorney argued that deportation would “turn David’s life completely to hell.”
Biavati also had to show that he had no criminal record and had paid income taxes. “Every immigrant knows, if you one day want to become legal, they’re going to have to prove that they’ve been paying taxes,” said Joseph Biavati, who received a work permit while his case was pending.
Joseph Biavati received his green card in September 2017 and took the citizenship test in Albany on Nov. 5 of last year. On Dec. 5, he took the oath of citizenship at the Bardavon Theater in Poughkeepsie.
Biavati chokes up as he tells the story. “If somebody asks me, isn’t it a good thing to have an autistic son — no, it’s not,” he said, wiping away tears. “But in some ways, it became a blessing for us.”
Meanwhile, Will Biavati remains in legal limbo. “I dream of peace of mind,” he said. “Not just for me — now I have a family. I have a son who depends on me.”
