In February, Sunayana Dumala lost her husband to a man who shouted “Get out of my country!” and unloaded a semiautomatic pistol in a Kansas bar.

Ms. Dumala’s immigration status was tied to that of her husband, Srinivas Kuchibhotla, one of two Indian-born engineers shot that day. So along with dealing with the horror of his sudden death, she also had to face the fact that the man who shot him may have managed to put her at risk of deportation.

Mr. Kuchibhotla was in the United States on an H-1B visa. Upon his death, Ms. Dumala’s residency status was terminated. And when she went to India to attend his funeral, she feared that she might not be able to re-enter the United States.

It was also unclear whether she would want to. In an emotional Facebook post shortly after the shooting, she posed a question that she said “is in every immigrant’s mind: Do we belong here?”