The Angel on my Shoulder
My personal journey of immigrating to the United States
I’m one of the lucky ones. When you visualise an ‘immigrant’ in your mind the picture that forms probably looks brown. Someone from the sub-continent, maybe someone who speaks Spanish; and that thinking wouldn’t be irrational. Over a million immigrants arrive in the United States every year with the largest contributions coming from China, India and Mexico, in that order. I’m a white, English speaking, university educated male. You would have no idea I was an immigrant.
Very few immigrants come from New Zealand. Less than 0.1 percent. Yet here I am, in the great state of Ohio, living with my in-laws, beautiful wife and two dogs. It’s been a long journey to get here, and it still isn’t close to over. If you want to move here and marry your soulmate the hurdles the United States Customs and Immigrations Services (USCIS) requires you jump over are high and plenty. There is paperwork, fees, waiting, more paperwork, more fees, more waiting, a medical, more paperwork, more fees, more….
The first step is to file a petition. This is expensive and long but the petitions sole purpose is to filter out the fakes. Along with basic heights, weights and names, the petition also asks for evidence of a relationship. Photos, plane tickets, call logs, message threads — those sorts of things. It’s at this initial stage where most journeys die. Estimates online predict a response between 4 to 8 months. The $535 filing fee is not refundable.
I met my wife while studying my Masters at The Ohio State University. It was my second time in the country — first was a university exchange a couple years earlier — and second time leaving my own. Every time I told someone I had only left New Zealand to see Indiana and Ohio I couldn’t help but chuckle. A particular phone app ignited our first date and it was your traditional romantic progression: first date coffee, second date dinner, third date meet the dog, fourth date Netflix. Five months into my study I ran into financial trouble and left for New Zealand. She followed me a couple months later for a faux-honey moon, travelling the country, meeting the family. Several months later I returned the favour and several months after that she returned for good; well, six months, but in our journey of back-and-fourth what was the difference?
We had known each other for a year and decided it was about time we filed our petition. After days of combing through the paperwork, moving money around, and sealing the envelope tight, my wife delivered our hopes and dreams to the post office in tears. There is extreme anxiety placing your happiness in the hands of strangers, but so is immigration.
When — if — your petition is accepted, it is moved to another department appropriately named the ‘National Visa Centre’ where God-knows-what happens. Next, your case is sent to the US embassy of your home country.
I’ll say it again, I’m one of the lucky ones. My wife could visit me and vice-versa because we were — well, our families were — in a financially beneficial position to do so. We worked, but our work was temporary and not important. Going from Christchurch to Columbus isn’t cheap or convenient — not exactly suitable for a weekend trip — so family support was necessary. Those trips across the Pacific produced evidence: photos, tickets, and now that she lived and worked in New Zealand, payslips and bank statements. Combined with our youth’s collateral benefits — no previous marriages, no criminal convictions, no children — our case was, from our perspective, pretty sure. Almost four months later, on American Valentines Day, we got an answer.
I had just dropped her off at work, a food market in the centre of town where she was a barista. The place was empty as it was early morning and after finishing my cappuccino I went to the bathroom. When I returned she was standing in the middle of the plaza smiling with tears in her eyes. We hugged and jumped and cried and hugged some more. Those tears represented the months of video calls, the crushing good-byes at airport departure lounges and the 28 hour journeys which followed. But now we had hope. We had passed the first step.
Once your home country obtains your case you have some additional tasks to complete. There could be extra documents to file. Everyone, however, has to complete a medical exam at an embassy-approved practitioner. This exam includes x-rays, vaccinations, a urine test, blood work, a psychological screening and for you to strip to your underwear to have your arms and legs bent in weird angles. Your results, which you don’t see, are sent to the embassy. The price of the medical varies with vaccination needs, but mine cost $600.
My wife is a daughter of the process. Her father is from Tunisia and met his wife while working in a Columbus kitchen. They too went back-and-fourth between continents but while they faced obstacles of language and religion and distance, they had the benefit of time. With no internet and immigration numbers lower, the process was more straight-forward. But they get it. The struggle, the uncertainty, the constant frustration.
My favourite place in New Zealand is the Abel Tasman. The golden sand, green bush and blue clear water are as foundational to my sense of self as the city of my birth. Every year my family vacationed there, so to satisfy nostalgia and the ‘holiday’ in my wife’s working-holiday visa, we went to eat burgers, drink coffee and lay in the sand. Overlooking the beach with the sunset twilight painting the sky, I proposed to my wife.
Originally, the plan was for my wife to be in New Zealand for 6 months. But as the Coronavirus overtook the planet, 6 months turned to 8, then 9, then 10… She had three different flights home cancelled. Everything was postponed, including my medical. After months of lockdown, I finally was able to fly to Auckland — which is in the North island, I lived in the South — to complete my medical. It took nearly four hours. On the bright side, I didn’t faint when my blood was drawn.
After your medical you wait to receive the time for the most important interview of your life. The embassy official who interviews you gives you the verdict then and there. Yes or no. If you get a yes, you receive your visa a week later along with a menacing brown envelope. Do not open the envelope!
Thank goodness I check my junk email. My interview request was buried among spam. I was to be summoned a week later. Another expensive flight north. The interview process is crazy: the office looks like a bank with multiple tellers lined up next to each other interviewing prospects with literally zero care for privacy. I heard the entirety of the interview before mine. He hadn’t seen his fiancee in over two years! Once I heard that, I knew I was going to be okay. They say prepare to be there for two hours. I was scheduled for 8:30. My interviewer asked me how I met my wife, where we would be living, were we financially stable? I was outside by 8:47. The answer was yes.
You have 6 months to enter the country. Once you do a border agent has the authority to deny entry. After all that, some guy in a booth could simply say no. Now you have 90 days to get married. It doesn’t have to be fancy, it could be at the courthouse, but it has to be official. After you’re married you apply for residency, more popularly know as a ‘green card’. The application, which has several supplemental applications within it, can be some 90 pages long including supporting material. The $1225 filing fee is not refundable.
The entire process is saturated in American exceptionalism. What the USCIS misinterprets is I don’t feel honoured to be here; I am not here to experience the virtuous ‘idea’ of America, or to bear witness to ‘freedom’. Perhaps if you come from a third-world country or an authoritarian regime, but for individuals like me, from functioning, democratic nations, I’m here exclusively for the person. Again, I’m one of the lucky ones. But this process sucks. It really, really sucks. The uncertainty, the continuous anxiety; the persistent fear of rejection. The process has a way of dehumanising the characters involved, reducing you to ‘A’ number — literally. You’re classified as an ‘Alien’, probed and stripped down; your blood tested for worthiness of this ‘great’ nation. Sometimes I forgot why I was doing this.
Then I remember: a life with the woman I love — the angel on my shoulder.
The journey from Christchurch to Columbus put my wife and I through five airports, on four planes, and took 32 hours to complete. Travelling during coronavirus, however, meant airports appeared abandoned and planes were near empty. I had no problems at the border. Two weeks later, and a week before my wife and I would celebrate the two year anniversary of our first date, we got married. It was at a public park. A family friend officiated and the ceremony was observed by close family and friends. My family couldn’t be there. They watched on Zoom.
Immediately afterward I submitted my green card application followed by my temporary work permit. This is where I am now. Currently I live with my in-laws, powerless to do anything. My wife works part-time. I’ve been looking for a job and even got one but had to reject the offer as I was unable to expedite my work permit. The USCIS required my ‘biometrics’. If I could’ve accepted the job my wife and I would’ve have moved out. We could start our lives together. Her, me and our dog living happily ever after. We are slaves to the process.
But I’m one of the lucky ones. Most people who approach this process do so with a lawyer. I didn’t solely because I didn’t know most people did. There is so much to understand: health insurance, understanding the marriage requirements of your particular county, social security, obtaining a work permit, the ‘National Benefits Centre’, the endless letter-number forms which all blend together, those forms extremely detailed instructions, vaccination requirements, proof of financial stability, a police background check — and this is without the variables of children, or previous marriages, or criminal convictions.
All of this to be with the one you love.
