Dear Mrs Walker-Huntington;

My daughter is 17 years old and went to New Jersey in June 2009 on a visitor's visa. We decided to let her remain and attend school. She is presently a senior in high school and in the process of applying to college as well as applying for scholarship. My questions today are:

1. Can my sister, who presently has a power of attorney, do the filing for her?

2. Would we be able to get an immigration lawyer to assist in securing a social security number for her?

What would be the best approach for us? She is doing extremely well in school and is very involved.

- N.B.

Dear N.B.,

Your daughter is illegally attending school. A visitor's visa permits a person to go to the US, visit and return home. She has abused her visitor's visa by attending school.

Public school districts will enrol undocumented children through high school level but once they graduate they are in a legal nightmare - they cannot work or go to college.

Sixteen is the cut off age for adoption by a US citizen to lead to a green card.

Your daughter is 17 which makes her too old to have that US citizen petition for her to live there legally.

Additionally, for an adoption to lead to a green card, the child has to live with the adoptive US citizen parents for two years either before or after the adoption.

Options available

You have a couple options for your daughter:

1. Apply to a private high school. Once accepted, your daughter can petition to change her visitor's visa to a student visa to attend high school legally. Attendance at a private high school has to be paid for and a student visa cannot be used to attend public high school. The downside to this is that the process of applying to school and petitioning to change status is going to take several months. Your daughter has already been in the US for four months. I assume she was given six months upon arrival. She cannot petition to change her status if her original status has expired.

Your daughter's chance of extending her six months is slim. It is doubtful that USCIS would extend her visitor's status to continue illegally attending school. If she applies to extend her stay and it is denied, she will be deemed to have accrued unlawful presence from the end of the lawful stay and while the extension request was pending.

It may be in your daughter's best interest to return to Jamaica to finish her final-year of high school and concurrently apply to a US college. Upon graduating from high school in Jamaica and acceptance into college in the States, your daughter can apply to the US Embassy in Kingston for a student visa.

2. If you opt to keep your daughter in the US, she is going to overstay the time given to her to remain in the country at the time of entry.

Her only other option then will be to marry a US citizen and have her husband petition to change her status from an expired visitor to that of a permanent resident.

Currently, she can apply for a social security or a tax identification number to be used for banking purposes.

Social security number

A tax identification or social security number by itself does confer any immigration status. If she is able to obtain a social security card, it will say valid for work only with Immigration authorisation. 'Work' in this case applies to anything other than being a visitor, so it would not permit her to apply for college or a scholarship.

Since your daughter is obviously quite intelligent, please do not keep her illegally in the US and jeopardise her future.

Dahlia A. Walker-Huntington is a Jamaican-American attorney who practises law in Florida in the areas of immigration, family, corporate and personal injury law. She is a mediator, arbitrator and special magistrate in Broward County, Florida. Email her at info@walkerhuntington.com or editor@gleanerjm.com.