What happens if someone comes to the US on a J visa (J1 or J2) and gets pregnant while here – are they kicked out? is the baby a US citizen?
What happens if someone is granted a J1 or J2 visa, gets pregnant at home, and then comes to the US to start school/be with the spouse who started school? Can they be denied entry to the US on the basis of the pregnancy?
I’ve looked through 8 CFR 214, and some of 8 USC 1101 (and then I got bored); I also tried to navigate the whatever-they’re-calling-themselves-now INS website (and found it to be arguably the least helpful website ever). None of them say anything about pregnancy, which, of course, leads me to suspect that there aren’t limitations on being pregnant on a J visa. But then immigration has always seemed to me to be one of those areas of the law best left to the professionals.
Any ideas, oh those of you who do immigration law?
IANAL, but:
(1) Being pregnant and/or giving birth are not grounds for deportation regardless of what visa you are on, or if you are on a visa waiver.
(2) Unless you are a diplomatic or consular official, or in the family of one (e.g., wife or daughter), the baby would be a US citizen because born in the US. It might be a dual citizen, if it inherited the mother or father’s citizenship under the citizenship law of the relevant country.
I went to the US for graduate school. Two of the students who were already there were a Mexican couple: he had a grant from the Universidad Autónoma de México, they were paying for his PhD and giving him a Professorship. She’d applied and been accepted to the same program. Both worked as TAs.
She got pregnant while there (the university’s doctors had refused to refill her prescription, they weren’t doing any “what anti-baby is best for you” studies until March… one day they got frisky and only had one condom and, well, they got friskier than that…), the kid was a cutie and there were no legal problems at all. I know they had problems with the insurance (the uni made us change programs every year, the new program wanted to claim that the pregnancy was a “preexisting condition” and thus not covered), but not with INS.
If they’d intended to stay in the US, the kid could have “sponsored” the rest of the family; they were going back, which was the plan from the start.
A US citizen has to be over 21 years of age to be able to sponsor a relative, so your colleagues would have had to have waited a looooong time. This is why most of the anti-immigrationists’ rantings about “anchor babies” is BS; it only works as a very long-range strategy.
Certainly there are pregnant women who immigrate illegally (or legally, then overstay their visa), then have a baby (which is a US citizen by jus soli, and eligible for welfare, education, etc), but that doesn’t change the parents’ immigration status for another 21 years plus sponsorship processing time. Such sponsorship doesn’t guarantee a positive result by any means, and the USCIS (former INS) is taking an increasingly harsh view of people who have ever been in illegal status.
Back to the OP: I’ll add an anecdotal data point that pregnancy or childbirth do not affect J-visa status or eligibility. Cite: friends of mine about 10 years ago.
I don’t do immigration law, but I’ve had it done to me.
I don’t know what sort of visas were involved but years ago, I knew a woman who accompanied her husband who was on a job-exchange program in the US (they were French). She was pregnant at the time. As I understand it, they had to delay their arrival in the US because of the pregnancy, because of visa-related issues.
So they came to the US on the 2-year program after the baby was born. And a few months later, she got pregnant again. There were no issues whatsoever with her staying in the US (the worst part was they had to travel to give birth in Bethesda MD, from Fairfax VA, due to the nature of the medical coverage they had). Theoretically I supposed in 12ish years their son could sponsor them as immigrants to the US should they wish to return (they went back to France when he was 6 months and yes, he does have US citizenship).
My wife was a J1, I was a J2 dependent (even though I earned more money once I got my work permit). 18 months after we arrived in New York we had a daughter, who is a full-fledged American citizen (and a Canuck too, since we are).
No hassles, no worries, nobody cares. Welcome to geographic-based citizenship.
The alternative is much different in other countries (read: Germany) that care about the ethnic makeup of their citizens, but the U.S. and Canada don’t give a rat’s ass where you’re from, as long as you’re here now.
Howdy! Seems everyone beat me to it - pregnancy is not a barrier to being on a J visa (and obviously, vice versa).
Also, all children born in the U.S. who, when born, are subject to U.S. jurisdiction (which excludes children born to diplomats) are U.S. citizens at birth, and therefore don’t have to leave when their non-U.S. citizen parents do, and can come and go as they please. But they can’t sponsor their parents until they turn 21, which is a rather long-term immigration strategy, to say the least.
Eva Luna, Immigration Paralegal
Thanks, everyone! Like I said, I saw nothing in the rules or regs, but I firmly believe that immigration (like family law) has a hidden set of rules (the “how things are done” rules) that may not precisely follow the law as written. Or that there may be some unwritten rules that practitioners know but the rest of us don’t.
Sort of - 2 of the main issues to keep in mind with a J visa are a) it is one that does not allow for immigrant intent, which I imagine can interact with pregnancy in all sorts of ways; and b) sometimes J visas require the holder and any dependents to return to their home country for 2 years before they can change to (almost) any other nonimmigrant or immigrant status, a requirement which is very difficult to get waived.
I don’t know whether the 2-year home residency requirement applies to your (hypothetical?) family, but it’s typically in cases where the visa holders have, or are coming to the U.S. to acquire, skills that are in shortage in their home country. It also applies in cases where they received either home country or U.S. government funding for their program. It’s a diplomacy thing - keeps the U.S. from being accused of brain drain. Anyway, here’s some more info on J visa waivers.
Eva Luna, thanks. There’s no immigrant intent here – their intent purely is to get the training and then return home. Their only concern is that she may be turned away at the border because she’s already pregnant. I didn’t find anything to permit that, nor anything to bar J visas from getting pregnant (and giving birth) while here, but it wouldn’t generally surprise me if the government split hairs to say that you can bring in already born children, and you can get pregnant here, but you can’t bring in unborn children. It’s a nonsensical position, but then, it’s the government.
Thanks, and my (hypothetical) family thanks you as well.
