Their life has the makings of a classic American success story: immigrants who earned college scholarships and became A students. One has graduated and is in the work force; the other will receive her degree this May. They found each other and fell in love.
But instead of celebrating, they’re making plans to leave the country. Their legal status in the United States depends on two programs — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, known as DACA, and Temporary Protected Status, or TPS — that face at best an unclear future in the Trump era. A year of challenges to their status, missed legislative deadlines, broken promises, and anti-immigrant rhetoric have taken a toll. Now, as Senate efforts to reach a last-ditch compromise appear to have broken down, the couple’s future in the country seems less secure than ever.
Life in the U.S., says Sadhana Singh, has become “so toxic.”
Singh, now 31, has lived in the States for nearly two decades. Her parents brought her to the country on tourist visas from Guyana; the family never left. The Singhs eventually settled in Georgia, where they had relatives. And Sadhana — whose family traces its roots to India, a country she has never visited — set about making a new nation her home.
As a student she excelled: She graduated 11th in her high-school class. But her undocumented status was a closely guarded secret. Her friends assumed that she’d enroll at a prestigious college, but in Georgia, students in the country illegally were barred from entering the state’s most competitive institutions. Instead she stayed at home, and off the radar.
“It was a miserable existence for me, being in my young 20s,” she says. “I worked and I came home, that’s all I did, and there was no one around me who could relate.”
Her parents had wanted a better life for their children, but she wished they’d had a clearer plan. Her only real path to citizenship, she was told, was to marry a U.S. citizen. “When we were in Guyana, you were revered if you could travel to America, and when they saw you moving to America, they were like, Wow, you’re like a big thing now.”
When DACA was established, in 2012, Singh immediately saw the policy as her “salvation.” The Obama program protected nearly 800,000 immigrants brought to the U.S. as children — so-called Dreamers who, like Singh, had played no role in the decisions that led to their unauthorized presence in the country. Suddenly Singh didn’t have to stay underground. For the first time, she could legally work and drive. She could, at last, contemplate college.
If DACA gave her license to dream, TheDream.US scholarship program — established to serve “highly motivated Dreamers who want to get a college education but cannot afford it” — allowed her to realize it. In 2014 she received a scholarship and entered Trinity Washington University, a Roman Catholic institution that emphasizes social justice. She is set to graduate this spring.
Moved by her own experience, she sought to help others. She became president of Trinity’s Dreamers Alliance, a student group that seeks to “change the narrative about immigrants and advocate for justice and reform,” according to its website. She hopes eventually to work for a nonprofit group with a social-justice mission or an organization focusing on women’s rights.
“I am communication-oriented,” she says. “I don’t go to rallies or occupy offices. I don’t feel like that’s effective. For me, I feel good when I can talk to a person and change someone’s mind.”
The unexpected election of Donald Trump, which put Republicans in control of both the White House and Congress, gave Singh an urgent reason to do that. Dreamers immediately saw Trump’s election, which came after a campaign marked by anti-immigration rhetoric, as a serious threat to their fragile legal status. Many recipients of TheDream.US scholarships joined a Facebook group where they asked questions about what was to come and how to prepare.
Among the members of that Facebook group was a man named My Ford Noel.
Noel had followed a path to the States far different from Singh’s. In 1994, when the U.S. began an effort to restore Jean-Bertrand Aristide as president of Haiti, Noel was a grade-school-age orphan, living with his aunt.
“I was just a wanderer,” he recalls. His peregrinations often took him to an American military post. “I would get caught and they would kick me out,” he says, but they would also give him food to bring to his family.
He came to see the U.S. military as a benevolent force. “They gave me access to the base,” he recalls. “I would ride on the Humvees into the city.” When the armed intervention concluded, and the forces left, Noel was placed in an orphanage. He was a “rebel” who never got a high-school degree, but eventually he found himself on a stable path.
He was 22 years old in 2010, working in a call center, when the earthquake hit.
In the disaster’s aftermath, he made his way to the country whose soldiers had once helped feed his family. The federal government had extended Temporary Protected Status to Haitian citizens, allowing them to live and work in the United States. Noel landed in Florida and was granted that status, along with nearly 60,000 other Haitians. Right away he enrolled in a GED program and plotted a path to college. At first he was paying his own way. Then he learned about TheDream.US scholarship.
The land of opportunity seemed to be living up to its promise. He graduated in 2016 from Broward College with a bachelor’s degree in supply-chain management and associate degrees in global-trade logistics, business administration, and arts. “I can say it would have taken me a lifetime in Haiti to accomplish what I have accomplished,” he says.
Still, he felt the pull of his birthplace. “I don’t see myself being American,” says Noel. “My heart has always been back to my country.” As a child, he was fascinated by how goods came to Haiti; he believes that unfair trade agreements have hurt his homeland. A vision formed in his mind: to gain work experience, earn a master’s degree in supply-chain management, and eventually return home to run for public office.
Now, though, as he was checking in on the Facebook group, he took notice of a high-spirited Dreamer who seemed to be helping others sort through their confusion. He began “stalking” Singh before working up the nerve to send her a friend request. She accepted; he looked “handsome.”
Soon they were chatting regularly. After corresponding for a month, he went to Washington on a May weekend to meet her. The chemistry, they say, was undeniable. Two weeks later, he moved in.
As their relationship was blossoming, their legal status was being cast into doubt.
In September the Trump administration announced that it would end DACA after a six-month delay, ostensibly to give Congress that time to devise a legislative solution. In November the administration declared that it would soon stop extending protected status to Haitian immigrants. By July 2019, they will be expected to leave the country or face deportation.
The policy changes left Singh and Noel stunned. The president’s rhetoric was equally upsetting. In January, during an Oval Office meeting on immigration, Trump questioned the value of immigrants from “shithole” countries, according to several people present at the meeting. “Why do we need more Haitians?” he said. “Take them out.”
In one sense, Noel says, the announcement that protected status for Haitians would end provided a sense of closure. “I’m not against the ending of TPS,” he says. “I am against when and how they ended it. I’m against false assessments and biased judgments.”
“It’s hard to not let the politics bother me,” says Singh. Trump’s DACA declaration has set off months of wrangling over legislation to protect Dreamers; so far, nothing has resulted. The president, meanwhile, has sent conflicting signals about what legislation he would support. Singh faults both Republicans and Democrats for failing to move forward on immigration reform.
“I’ve been waiting for so long, my patience has run out,” she says. “Whatever they put into law — OK, tell me when that happens. But other than that, I don’t get my hopes up on deadlines, because it’s always a disappointment.”
Singh has channeled some of her frustration into activism, embracing a new role as a spokesperson for a generation of Dreamers who fear being displaced. “We are not bargaining chips,” she wrote in an essay for The American Prospect. She has been interviewed by The Chronicle and The New York Times. Her message to readers is simple, she says: “I want them to say, Oh, that’s a real person, in a real situation.”
She and Noel don’t spend as much time together as they’d like. Because of his two-hour commute to work — he is an inventory manager for Avis Budget — and her studies, they have to cram a lot into their weekends. But Singh credits her boyfriend with keeping her calm during a time of upheaval. “He doesn’t panic,” she says. “He doesn’t freak out. That’s kind of how we temper each other. I will freak out and react to things in the moment, and he’s already moving on to, What are we doing next?”
What are they doing next? In the short term, they’re contemplating a move to Northern Virginia. Cutting down on Noel’s commute would be nice. They’d like to hit “pause,” Singh says — to just work for a while, to take stock of things before deciding whether to pursue graduate degrees.
In the longer term, though, their dreams are changing, as is their perception of the country that once seemed to nurture those dreams. “With this administration,” Noel says, “there’s no trust.” Neither he nor Singh has much faith in one of the fixes proposed in the wake of DACA’s termination — a deal that could put many undocumented immigrants on a 10-year path to citizenship. Ten years is a long time, they say. Why would they put their faith in a nation that changed course so quickly on DACA?
Haiti, the country to which Noel has longed to return, is still in dire straits, he says. He’d like to go back eventually, but now isn’t the right time. Singh has no strong roots in Guyana.
Instead the couple is looking northward. Canada’s Express Entry immigration program offers high-priority positions to skilled workers. Singh and Noel hope that the college degrees they earn in the United States will help them move up in the queue in Canada.
“I never considered Canada or any other country prior to the Trump presidency,” says Noel. Now, though, “we’re thinking as soon as we can legally travel out of the country, we will take our chance and we’ll go.”
Their future is cloudy, but they’re trying to keep events in perspective. “When I came here,” Noel says, “I knew that there was a big possibility I would get sent back. I knew they could take everything away from me. But they cannot take my education away.”
“Yes, it is a land of opportunity,” he says. “I wasn’t disappointed.” He smiles at Singh. “And I met her.”
Clarification (2/20/2018, 10:39 a.m.): An earlier version of this article said My Ford Noel worked at a logistics call center for a truck-rental company. He is in fact an inventory manager for Avis Budget. The article has been updated to reflect that.
Julia Schmalz is a senior multimedia producer. She tells stories with photos, audio, and video. Follow her on Twitter @jschmalz09, or email her at julia.schmalz@chronicle.com
