Last night Rachel Maddow of The Rachel Maddow Show discussed the immigration process as it currently exists in the United States.
She ably described the interminable time it can take, with pitfalls, and costs around every corner.
She described the process as "broken". Not just a bit bent, or damaged, but broken well beyond the hope of salvation, and called for complete reform
She suggested that you go find someone who has experienced these procedures, and ask them, politely, for their description. Well I have been through it, and thought I might share that experience with a few close friends.
This immigration flowchart is supposed to make it easy to find which path you might have, if any, to permanent residence and Citizenship in the US. To come here to live you need a reason. It is no more open to foreigners to come and live here because ... freedom, than it is for Americans who don't like Obama, or gun control, to go take up residence in another country. We, and they, all have laws about that kind of thing.
The one oddity is that America will let rich people in, even if they do not fulfill any of the other criteria. Rich people are, apparently, created more equal than the poor. There is some justification for this, but in the end it is just another case of to those who have shall be given.
If you looked at the chart, the path I took was the blue one, the easiest, if truth be known.
It was never the case that I ever wanted to live in, or even visit, the United States of America. It is complete chance that I ended up here and it happened because people meet people and they want to be together. One thing the internet has managed to do is bring people together who live in different countries, nay different continents, like never before. Governments have yet to either acknowledge that, let alone make law, and design procedures that can cope.
So it was that I met a woman from Oklahoma. We will have been married for eight years in July.
Even having met there was no immediate suggestion that it should be me that moved. I had a decent home and job doing something I liked, and a comfortable lifestyle with the attendant benefits of living in a Socialist Paradise! Jodie had no job, three kids and she lived in Oklahoma. If she came to live in the UK we would be comfortable, and it isn't Oklahoma. If I seem "down" on Oklahoma, that is because I am.
Family considerations guided our decision. Jodie had three very young children, one was still in diapers and only eighteen months old. They had only recently been deprived of their Dad through separation, and Jodie's own Dad was quite ill. My own kids were older and had not lived with me for several years. So we decided that I would come here. Jodie was almost through alternative certification as a teacher, and that would have to do for now.
One thing that is important in this process is that not only do you, as an immigrant, have to deal with the paperwork, there are significant issues around separation, loss, a new country, culture and family to work through too. For many there is the additional handicap of having a language to learn. Indeed, I found out quite quickly that I was not fluent in American.
Once the decision was made we had to make the process work in our favour, but in a manner acceptable to the USCIS. There are two routes for a fiancee. The first is to apply at an embassy abroad and wait until a visa is granted before traveling here. Then you have to get married within ninety days or your leave to remain expires. That process can mean waiting in your own country for many months, even years, Unacceptable.
The second was to arrive on a non-immigrant visa, and then apply for a change of visa status while here. This is perfectly permissible and was the way we chose. You cannot enter the US on the Visa Waiver Program and apply for a change of status, it is not allowed. I am not eligible for Visa Waiver, and so have never used it. What I did have was a travel visa that allowed multiple entry, and a 180 day leave to remain rather than the 90 for the visa waiver. So I could get here legally and stay for up to six months. If we married in that time Jodie could apply to have my status changed.
We were a bit lucky here. When I applied for that tourist visa i had no intention of remaining here. I applied for it because I wanted to visit friends in Maryland, and also visit Tulsa to see Jodie and try to decide if we had a future together. It was only when we decided that we wanted to be together that I could then use the visa I already had, to return. Others trying this route have to get lucky, or they have to convince a consular official in an embassy abroad that they intend to go home after their visit. If that official decides that you are likely to not leave the US, he/she will deny the application.
We knew all this because we researched it well ahead of time. It is very easy to see that many wouldn't, or couldn't do that and find themselves outstaying their welcome before they even understood the process. That causes enormous difficulties, because if you find yourself "undocumented" you are in a heap of shit with the USCIS. It is not easy to do this research ... try it sometime.
So I arrived on April 15th 2005. I had spent quite a bit of the previous three months here, but had to return home. When I arrived we had the remaining balance of my visa to marry ... mid-July (We probably had 180 days from April 15th, but I didn't want to push it). So we planned a wedding and hoped Jodie's divorce would be final in time. It was, it became final three weeks before our wedding was due to happen. We were grateful for that because my family had already booked their flights and hotels! Because this is Oklahoma we could not get married in-State, we had to go to Arkansas.
On a gorgeous July 1st we all drove to Bentonville, and were married in a pergola in the public park just down the road from the courthouse. We filed the paperwork and went home to a party.
This being the swiftest way to a green card (which, btw, is just a visa), it is also the route of the majority of fraudulent applications, so it is the most heavily scrutinized. We filed the paperwork in a timely manner and sat back and waited, and waited, and waited. It was forever before the paperwork was returned for re-filing. We had sent it to the processing center instructed on the form, and it was the wrong one. Rather than stick it in the internal mail to the correct one, we were told it had to be re0filed, but that I was in good standing because the original postdate counted. This was our first introduction to a system that really doesn't work very well. Neither USCIS website nor paperwork was current.
So we re-filed, and waited. About now would be the time to tell you that the fee for filing was around $700, plus another $80 for biometrics. Eventually I was given an application number and could track the application online. So I did. Wait times were running six months. Don't call us! Wait times for other categories were much longer. Indeed, in some categories they were currently processing applications from the late eighties. If you had filed since then they hadn't even opened the envelope!
Time marched on and we duly were notified of an immigration interview, one hundred miles away in Oklahoma City, and if you are late, or miss the appointment, you have abandoned your application. Case closed, go home. We took advice and prepared very thoroughly for that interview with photos, letters from family, old Christmas and Birthday cards, joint bank account details etc, etc. They are looking to demonstrate that your marriage is fake, but I think they can probably tell just by chatting ... evidence doesn't hurt.
Sometime later the letter arrived ... Rejected.
This was explained in the letter. Because of an ancient conviction I was permanently ineligible for a visa to travel to, or reside in, the United States. However, I was entitled to apply for a waiver of permanent ineligibility, which is commonly the back-asswards way that US authorities conducts its business. To do this was another form, another large fee and required testimony from family as to why sending me on my way would cause harm to US citizens. My wife was apopleptic at that ... "you are my fucking husband" was her reply ... "Let's send their fucking husbands five thousand miles, and see how much distress that causes". She gets like that when her family is threatened.
We did what we had to do and sometime in 2007 I was granted conditional leave to remain, and a two year green card. Two years because the marriage was less than two years old when the card was granted. The condition is that you apply to have the condition removed in a tight window around the second anniversary of the card issue date. Fail to apply in that window and, you guessed it, your application is abandoned. Case closed.
We applied, paid another $700 fee, had another interview, jumped through some more hoops and I got the card for ten years.
I would estimate that we spent maybe three thousand dollars on a process that took the best part of two to three years and involved lots of legwork, research and quite a bit of traveling. And we were very lucky. I am white, from the UK. Jodie is white. We are both literate and decently intelligent, and we could just about scrape the fees together. With the slight wrinkle of the conviction it was probably the smoothest that the process ever gets. The forms are a complete nightmare and make the IRS1040 seem like a children's reading book by comparison.
During the procedure I met a number of professionals who work in various parts of immigration. They tell of it taking many years, and estimates of $25 0000 to even $50 000 are not unheard of if attorneys get involved, or appeals have to be launched.
So we count our blessings, and prepare to do it all again when I apply for naturalization. That too will be torturous, expensive and I might get it in time to vote for Sasha or Malia Obama for President.
As best I can I have simply tried to describe the process as we experienced it. An American citizen asking her government to allow her husband to stay. It should be simple and straightforward. It isn't.
Just as an addendum:
When my Mother wanted her Australian granddaughter to be given residence in England it took a $900 fee. a single trip to an office in London, and her passport was stamped the same afternoon with a residence permit. Done. One day.