Survivors still awaiting visas for crime victims four years after Walmart shooting

After four years and 50 applications for U-visas for survivors of the Walmart mass shooting, Las Americas Immigration Advocacy Center in El Paso has only heard back about one: A child was granted status, but the parents were not.

U-visas are nonimmigrant visas extended to crime victims and their families who suffered significant mental or physical abuse in the United States. The visas, often granted to those willing to assist law enforcement in investigations, protect crime victims from deportation.

All 50 applications were for survivors of the Aug. 3, 2019, white supremacist attack at an El Paso Walmart. The gunman told authorities he targeted Hispanics in El Paso.

Las Americas Immigration Advocacy Center bemoaned the lag in U-visa responses from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services during a call last week to shed light on the difficulties immigrants and international victims continue to face, as well as the impact "nativist narratives" continue to have on immigrant communities.

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Las Americas Deputy Director Christina Garcia said there is currently a 20-year wait for a U-visa. Only 10,000 are distributed each year and, currently, there are more than 200,000 still waiting to be processed.

"The goal is to obtain a visa for those 50 that were submitted," Garcia said. "The issue here is the wait."

Per Texas law, asylum-seekers and migrants are ineligible for public assistance, such as food stamps and other benefits, without a work visa. Waiting on work authorization and a U-visa often leaves applicants, who have already suffered an unimaginable tragedy, with no way to provide for their families.

"The issues our clients are seeing is, without a work permit in the state of Texas, they can't access federal benefits," Garcia said.

And eligibility is not the issue, Garcia said, as U-visa rules detail some 30 crimes, such as assault, hate crimes and gun violence, for which applicants are eligible for a visa.

"So, there is a lot of eligibility for people who were present during the Walmart shooting," she added.

Additionally, survivors in Mexico face another set of hurdles, including the physical border, which prevents those in rural areas from accessing physical therapy, mental health support and other resources.

"There's a plethora of different issues and challenges our clients have faced," Garcia said.

Rhetoric of Walmart shooter is 'not new and was not new then'

Las Americas was joined by America's Voice, a national organization advocating for immigration reform, including legal status for 11 million undocumented immigrants already in the country.

America's Voice Campaigns Manager Mario Carrillo, who was raised in El Paso, turned his eye toward the impact that racist language and ideologies continue to have on immigrant communities.

Carrillo stated that such rhetoric is on the rise, with "invasion" language being used more than 90 times in the current Congress and replacement theory, a far-right conspiracy theory that holds that white people are actively being replaced by non-whites, being amplified at the highest levels more than 500 times over the last year.

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"Now, this is happening every day," he said. "We know that this rhetoric leads to further dehumanizing of immigrants ... the situation is just dire."

Carrillo recalled how Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, in the wake of the Aug. 3, 2019 attack, urged elected leaders to be more careful with their speech — that moment of reflection must have fallen by the wayside, he surmised, as now Abbott has enacted some of the nation's cruelest policies to stem migration.

He noted that Aug. 3 continues to be deeply personal to him and his family and offered his thanks to El Paso for its efforts in being a safe haven for migrants.

"El Paso welcomed me and my family as immigrants more than 30 years ago," he said, "and it continues to be a welcoming place for immigrants."

U.S. Customs and Immigration Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the El Paso Times regarding the backlog of U-visa applications and efforts being made to expedite the process.

This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: Shooting survivors still awaiting U-visas years after Walmart attack