The Lovelorn Visa
Oct 29th 2007, 4:35 pm
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The Lovelorn Visa
Sorry if someone's already posted this - see link for entire article ...
Finding Love Abroad, Then Support Online for Visa Quest
By Karin Brulliard
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 29, 2007; A01
This is what love has done to Wendy Brown: She's lost weight, resumed smoking and all but decided to move to the Balkans to be with her Albanian fiance. And each night, she spends hours in her cozy Baltimore apartment mingling online with strangers who are equally fixated on the same topic: getting their soul mates through the U.S. immigration system.
"We are both devastated," Brown, 38, wrote last spring on VisaJourney.com, reporting that the U.S. Embassy in Albania had denied her fiance a visa. She also posted a list of the questions the fiance was asked at his interview. "I'm going to keep fighting and fighting until we get what we both want more than anything in the world. . . . and that is to be together." Many people are frustrated with the immigration process and its long lines and opaque applications that, if misinterpreted, can send a case back to square one. Perhaps none are more ardent than the growing ranks of U.S. citizens applying for fiance and spouse visas, who say their passion is driven by a sense that their own government is fighting them and by the fear that delays or denials might spell the end of a romance.
In recent years, these American petitioners have channeled their despair into a few Web sites featuring the odd pairing of love stories and red-tape navigation for those fed up with the federal immigration agency's help line, whose representatives are trained in immigration regulations and provide scripted advice that critics say is often wrong.
VisaJourney, a site whose 35,000 members are mostly Americans with foreign fiances and spouses, is at once a celebration of love and a condemnation of bureaucracy. Members, who call themselves VJ'ers, describe meeting their beloveds in Kenyan bars, Jamaican churches, online video games. They have posted thousands of photos of smiling couples in foreign lands. Their profile pages are adorned with beating hearts, clocks counting the hours since their last meetings and such statements as "feels like eternity . . . without him."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...=moreheadlines
Finding Love Abroad, Then Support Online for Visa Quest
By Karin Brulliard
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 29, 2007; A01
This is what love has done to Wendy Brown: She's lost weight, resumed smoking and all but decided to move to the Balkans to be with her Albanian fiance. And each night, she spends hours in her cozy Baltimore apartment mingling online with strangers who are equally fixated on the same topic: getting their soul mates through the U.S. immigration system.
"We are both devastated," Brown, 38, wrote last spring on VisaJourney.com, reporting that the U.S. Embassy in Albania had denied her fiance a visa. She also posted a list of the questions the fiance was asked at his interview. "I'm going to keep fighting and fighting until we get what we both want more than anything in the world. . . . and that is to be together." Many people are frustrated with the immigration process and its long lines and opaque applications that, if misinterpreted, can send a case back to square one. Perhaps none are more ardent than the growing ranks of U.S. citizens applying for fiance and spouse visas, who say their passion is driven by a sense that their own government is fighting them and by the fear that delays or denials might spell the end of a romance.
In recent years, these American petitioners have channeled their despair into a few Web sites featuring the odd pairing of love stories and red-tape navigation for those fed up with the federal immigration agency's help line, whose representatives are trained in immigration regulations and provide scripted advice that critics say is often wrong.
VisaJourney, a site whose 35,000 members are mostly Americans with foreign fiances and spouses, is at once a celebration of love and a condemnation of bureaucracy. Members, who call themselves VJ'ers, describe meeting their beloveds in Kenyan bars, Jamaican churches, online video games. They have posted thousands of photos of smiling couples in foreign lands. Their profile pages are adorned with beating hearts, clocks counting the hours since their last meetings and such statements as "feels like eternity . . . without him."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...=moreheadlines
Oct 29th 2007, 6:15 pm
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Re: The Lovelorn Visa
She has since made four trips to visit Hasaj, whose family grows tobacco behind their Albanian home.
The interviewing consular officer has reason to believe that the engagement was entered into to evade immigration laws.
"People who aren't born-and-bred American citizens are taking precedence over American citizens.
Come next month, she said, she is moving to Albania.
"Not that I want to be a farmer's wife," ...
Ian
Oct 29th 2007, 7:16 pm
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Re: The Lovelorn Visa
Oct 29th 2007, 7:21 pm
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Re: The Lovelorn Visa
Ian, you missed the best part of one of the paragraphs you quoted:
Aside from four months being relatively NOTHING in the scheme of things in this process, a FINACE isn't technically FAMILY! There's the INTENT for that person to become family, but they're not yet.
"People who aren't born-and-bred American citizens are taking precedence over American citizens. . . . The government is talking about, 'Let's legalize the illegal aliens' when you're waiting for your loved ones to get here. What happened to family first?" said Faith Keenan, 43, of Ruther Glen, Va. She applied for a visa for her Egyptian fiance four months ago. She said she thinks about her pending application "all day long. It consumes you."
Oct 29th 2007, 9:14 pm
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Re: The Lovelorn Visa
OMG - LOL! Ian you STILL, *still* never fail to crack me up!
For all we know, the guy's a criminal.
Oh... tobacco... yah, sure!
Well... now the truth is starting to emerge.
By and large, US citizens have no need of immigration services except as it pertains to some non-US citizen.
Well, what the hell is she whining about then?
Ah well, now the truth comes out. I wonder what his reaction will be when he learns she's moving to Albania... and she probably expects that it'll be an easy peasy thing because, after all, she's an American.
Ian
Oh... tobacco... yah, sure!
Well... now the truth is starting to emerge.
By and large, US citizens have no need of immigration services except as it pertains to some non-US citizen.
Well, what the hell is she whining about then?
Ah well, now the truth comes out. I wonder what his reaction will be when he learns she's moving to Albania... and she probably expects that it'll be an easy peasy thing because, after all, she's an American.
Ian
Oct 29th 2007, 11:15 pm
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Re: The Lovelorn Visa
A K1 fiance(e) visa is a marriage-based visa. And marriage is about family. It's not about getting someone here just because they're an acquaintance of yours. Sheesh.
~ Jenney
Oct 29th 2007, 11:35 pm
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Re: The Lovelorn Visa
I challenge you to find three people who have been through or are currently going through the K1 visa process who did/do NOT consider their fiance(e)s as part of their families before marriage. I'm not talking in the legal sense of the word -- I'm talking in their hearts. I doubt you'll be able to find any, possibly and probably even including yourself.
~ Jenney
Oct 29th 2007, 11:44 pm
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Re: The Lovelorn Visa
Ian
Last edited by ian-mstm; Oct 29th 2007 at 11:47 pm.
Oct 30th 2007, 11:49 am
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Re: The Lovelorn Visa
Yah... but that doesn't much matter! In fact, honest to god, I just asked Sheila whether she considered me part of her family when we were engaged but not yet married... and she said "no". Quite emphatically, I might add! So, I'm 2/3 of the way there now... since I felt the same way! One more person to find...
Ian
Ian
~ Jenney
Oct 30th 2007, 12:45 pm
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Re: The Lovelorn Visa
Maybe it just means he's cleverly thinking ahead - if he can't get there straight away they might be more likely to be able to get into the US after living together a couple of years there.
Oct 30th 2007, 4:53 pm
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Re: The Lovelorn Visa
Here's the thing. I have friends who I consider to be more family to me than actual family. My husband has a best friend that I refer to as my brother-in-law because the two of them are closer than he is with his ACTUAL brother.
But - in a strictly bureaucratic sense, and in actual definition - a fiance is NOT YET family. As I said, there is the INTENT for that person to become family, but when they hit US soil, they are NOT YET family. And if they ARE, then they're using the wrong visa.
What we feel in our hearts doesn't necessarily make it fact. ESPECIALLY in the eyes of immigration.
