T VISA FOR VICTIMS HUMAN TRAFFICKING

If the victim of Human Trafficking has complied with any reasonable request from law enforcement for assistance in the detection, investigation, or prosecution of human trafficking, or meets the requirements for an exemption or exception, certain victims of a severe form of human trafficking may be granted temporary immigration benefits that allow them to remain in the United States for an initial period of up to 4 years. 

Certain eligible family members of victims of human trafficking may also be eligible for nonimmigrant status.

The practice of forcing people to perform labor or offer services, including commercial sex, is called human trafficking. It is a contemporary kind of slavery. Traffickers frequently prey on weak people, including those without legal immigration status. T visas protect victims and improve law enforcement organizations’ capacity to identify, investigate, and prosecute human trafficking.

Under federal law, a “severe form of trafficking in persons” is:

• Sex trafficking: When a person solicits, patronizes, or obtains another person to engage in a commercial sex act, and the commercial sex act is either induced by coercion, deception, or force, or the person being induced to engage in the Act is under the age of 18, or
• Labor trafficking: Involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery occurs when someone is hired, harbored, transported, provided with, or obtained for work or services via coercion, deception, or violence.

You may be eligible for T nonimmigrant status if:

• You either are or were a victim of a serious kind of human trafficking as described above
• Due to your involvement in trafficking, you are physically present in the United States, American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, or at a port of entry.
• You have complied with any law enforcement agencies’ reasonable requests for your help in the investigation or prosecution of human trafficking (unless you were under the age of 18 at the time at least one of the acts of trafficking occurred or you are unable to cooperate due to physical or psychological trauma; if either case applies, you may not need to show that you complied with reasonable requests from law enforcement).
• You can demonstrate that leaving the United States would put you through extraordinary hardship and cause you severe harm.

The T nonimmigrant status may be available to some qualifying family members. Regardless of your age, you may petition for the following family members if they are currently in danger of being punished because of your assistance with law enforcement or escape from trafficking:

• Your parents;
• Your unmarried siblings under 18 years of age; and

The children of any age or marital status of your qualifying family members who have been granted derivative T nonimmigrant status.

We help guide clients through the immigration process.  Call us today for an appointment with our immigration attorneys.