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The indelible effects of legal liminality among Colombian migrant professionals in the United States

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So you get anxious, you feel that your life is on standby. It’s difficult to plan anything. It’s difficult to say: let’s buy this house, let’s move here because you don’t want to move out. You don’t want your papers to get lost in the mail. When we moved, we officially switched our paperwork to a new assigned immigration office and it was traumatic, they couldn’t find our paperwork after a while. This affects your well-being, because you fear that you will have to start all over again. You want to make sure that everything is safe and correct, because you are afraid things are going to get lost. Your life is on standby because of this. Your personal life has to wait because of this paperwork craziness.

—Felipe

Abstract

Building on Menjívar's (Am J Sociol 111(4):999–1037, 2006) concept of legal liminality, this article examines the negative effects of the transition from a temporary to a permanent legal status for Colombian migrant professionals. Drawing from thirty-one in-depth interviews with Colombian computer engineers who migrated in the 1990s, this study reveals how legal status adjustment stipulations invalidate the credentials and professional experience of these migrants, delay their economic and professional advancement and deeply affect their life-course decisions. I demonstrate that Colombian migrant professionals tolerate these repercussions in order to avoid returning to the political violence and economic crises of their home country. By comparing these findings with the experiences of Central American migrants, I argue that, regardless of their migration motivations and educational backgrounds, immigration law negatively affects the incorporation of different Latino/a migrants in similar ways.

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Notes

  1. Except for two interviewees who had LPR status when they migrated.

  2. Data precedes changes made in H4 visas in 2015 that allow spouses of high-skilled migrants to work.

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Acknowledgements

The author thanks the anonymous reviewers, the Latino Studies editor Lourdes Torres for her encouragement, and Dan White for his support reviewing multiple versions of this manuscript.

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  1. Framingham State University, MA, USA

    Lina Rincón

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  1. Lina Rincón
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Correspondence to Lina Rincón.

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Rincón, L. The indelible effects of legal liminality among Colombian migrant professionals in the United States. Lat Stud 15, 323–340 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-017-0068-9

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