Sunayana Dumala is the surviving wife of Indian national Srinivas Kuchibhotla. If you do not recall the name, he was the man who was gunned down in a crowded Kansas bar by a racist man earlier this year. Dumala has lived in the United States for ten years, and attended college here. Sunayana Dumala lost her US resident status after she lost her husband and was facing deportation. The Kansas City Star reports that Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-KS) has worked to get Dumala a one-year visa in order for her to be able to stay in the country.
“We are not going to deport the widow of the victim of a hate crime,” Yoder said in an interview Thursday.
Dumala, also a native Indian, has lived in the United States since she enrolled in a Minnesota college 10 years ago. She married Kuchibhotla, a technical engineer, in 2012, and soon they applied for a green card on his H-1B visa, issued to workers in specialized fields.
On her Facebook, Dumala posted her hopes for more humane and comprehensive immigration legislation.
Rep. Yoder is doing the right thing here, but considering his unwavering Trump support, the reality that he’s not a particularly good guy, and the fact that his district went to Hillary Clinton in November, makes it hard to believe that Rep. Yoder is doing the right thing for the right reasons.