Expand Immigration Services to Neighbor Islands Now

Like me, your life is likely tied to a story of immigration to Hawaii. Our families know that Hawaii is a place of dreams and difficulty. This difficulty is exponentially increased for immigrants who live outside of Oahu.

Right now the situation is desperate. Thousands of immigrants on neighbor islands do not have access to critical immigration services because they are only offered in Honolulu, Oahu.

Immigrants need Oahu-only services to maintain or acquire legal status, but the expense of airfare, childcare, missed work, and ground transportation once in Honolulu makes travel to Oahu extremely burdensome, if not impossible. In the case of undocumented immigrants who are eligible for temporary protection from deportation, the added risk of immigration surveillance at airports makes the journey almost unthinkable.

The most urgent immigration service needed is biometric intake. At least 6,500 young immigrants were brought to Hawaii as children. They now qualify for a special program that grants temporary protection from deportation. But because biometric background checks are required and biometric intake services are not available on neighbor islands, these hundreds of eligible young people must continue to live with the constant fear of deportation.

Without temporary relief, they cannot obtain work permits or social security numbers, apply for credit cards, or seek out higher paying jobs. Hawaii will see cumulative gains of millions of dollars in GDP and income increases if these eligible immigrants are able to obtain temporary relief. On the other hand, Hawaii will lose an annual $2 billion in annual economic activity and $900.3 million in gross state product if all undocumented immigrants are removed from the state.

Hawaii is a state committed to inclusive and humane immigration reform. This past June, we passed a historic law extending driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants. Yet we are failing thousands of immigrants on our islands by housing biometric intake exclusively in Honolulu.

By signing, you urge the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to bring mobile biometric intake services to neighbor islands as soon as possible.