Elizabeth Olivas will be able to take the stage on Saturday to deliver the salutatorian speech at her high school graduation, she's returning home says the Indianapolis Star.
The 18-year-old, who lived in Indiana since the age of 4, was born in Mexico, and immigration laws required she return within 180 days of her 18th birthday to update her visa or get a green card.
Olivas did flew back on April 17 to address the problem, she was one day late and was banned from coming back to the U.S. for three years. Today she was finally granted a visa.
"JUST GOT OUT VISA IN MY HANDS. IM COMING HOME! THANK YOU SO MUCH, IM SO HAPPY!' Olivas wrote in an email to her attorney Sarah Moshe, said the Indianapolis Star
Her lawyer Sara Moshe said they had held off on sending Olivas back to Mexico for as long as possible so she wouldn't have to miss school, and that her law firm failed to calculate the extra day created by the leap year.
"She feels awful, terrible, devastated," Moshe said of Olivas an in interview with the Indianapolis Star prior to today's resolution. "The whole situation is crazy."
Meanwhile, 25 teachers at Frankfort High School, where Olivas was an honor student with a 3.9 grade point average, had written letters on her behalf pleading for her to be allowed to return. She had already missed prom and an academic awards ceremony.
"She feels like she did the right thing, exceeded expectations, and everything she worked for is being ripped right away from her," her science teacher Shelbi Fortner told the Star. "Everything she knows and loves."
Olivas' father is a naturalized U.S. citizen and had been traveling back and forth to Mexico since his daughter returned trying to get her back home. While her immigration ordeal was being sorted out, she had been living with her grandparents, Moshe told Indiana's WISH-TV.
Maria Elena-Upson, a Dallas-based spokeswoman for USCIS, said Olivas wouldn't get special treatment.
"We can't take people out of line and bring them to the front," she told the Star. "There are a lot of people seeking waivers, and it is first come, first served."
Finally, after six weeks of being stranded, Olivasis done with her ordeal - she walked triumphantly out pf a waiver hearing at 8 a.m. this morning at the U.S. Consulate in Juarez addressing her situation.
"The visa is in hand and she can come back as soon as she can make arrangements," Susan Brouillette, director of constituent services in U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar's office told the Indianapolis Star.
Olivas' travel arrangements are not known, but has not lost hope she will be back in time to stand with her fellow classmates.
"I have already begun to prepare my salutation speech," she wrote in an email to her lawyer Sara Moshe on May 21, according to the Star. "I'm praying and hoping that I will not miss this IMPORTANT even(t) in my life."
