The Law of Immigration - Part 2 - Family Immigration

Many people assume that if a foreign citizen marries an American citizen, that the foreign citizen is automatically granted full privileges to enter and live in the US as a legal resident.

However, sadly to say, this just is not the case. I learned this the extremely hard way!

As a little bit of background, my wife is a Japanese/Latino lady who was born and raised in a Japanese colony just outside of Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Her father is Japanese, living in Nagasaki, Japan, and her mother is Bolivian, living in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Her father returned to Japan about 15 years ago to live in a retirement/nursing home due to health issues, and her mom stayed in Bolivia due to not wanting to live in Japan ;)

Anyways, I met my wife while I was in the US Navy, stationed in Japan, and we married shortly after I was discharged from the Navy and my return to Japan, where I worked for an extremely large multi-national financial institution. About a year into our marriage, our first child, a daughter who is now 11 (wow, 12 years old this week) was born. A few months after our daughters birth, I was offered, and accepted a significant promotion to relocate to the bank's global headquarters in New York City.

Due to paperwork issues, I went to NYC and started working, while my wife travelled to Bolivia in the heart of South America to get some original and certified copies of specific documents required for her Visa. Once she obtained those documents, I flew to Bolivia, we travelled to the US Embassy in La Paz, where we submitted her application for entry into the US.

Though we were told that the process would take from 3-4 months, suffice it to say that after nearly 2.5 YEARS, I resigned my NYC position, and emigrated to Bolivia to be with my family. When the Bolivian economy crashed in late 1999/early 2000, I was forced by economic necessity to come back to the US, where finally, after getting Senator Phil Gramm involved, the US Embassy in Bolivia FINALLY issued my wife her Visa. Total time to obtain the Visa was 6.5 years. (btw... Senator Brownback told my parents from Kansas that there was nothing he could do since I, who was born and raised in Kansas, was not living here currently, even though he was the chairman of the US Senate Committee on Immigrations at the time.)

The major excuse that was provided to us by the Embassy personnel for the delay? The excuse was that an extremely large number of people trying to immigrate ILLEGALLY to the US were purchasing people's documents in an attempt to obtain legitimate Visas, and thus, even though I myself, a US Citizen, presented the documents IN PERSON, they needed more verification.

In and of itself, this is one of the reasons why I SOOOOO detest illegal immigrants more than any other reason.

So please, the things I ask of people on this topic are simple...

1. Please do not assume that illegal immigrants do not cause harm to other people. They do!
2. Please do not assume that if they are latino and don't speak English, that they are illegal!
3. Please do not assist illegals in continuing the harm that they cause. Do not provide jobs to them of any sort.