The immigration official has 15 minutes to decide if you’re a fake couple or not, at which point he will decide if he will overturn your US Husband’s right to opening his hand of invitation to an alien. So why, after being given the handshake, and supposedly passing their gruelling interview did we feel such an anticlimax. Instead feeling elated that the department of homeland security had accepted me as a rightful resident of the US, we both left feeling like there was more to come.
My Husband, a successful, respectable, hard working (nearly 24/7 I might add) Angelonian, who’s clear spoken and mannered calmness obviously didn’t ease the investigation officer into any appeasement. The officer just stumbled along fractiously in the interview, picking holes in sideways manner we just didn’t anticipate.
We had met two years ago, I was a very different person then, although according to my husband the same sweet, loving kind person, who was still rather naive and in denial over a lot of stuff. In those two years I travelled around in escape from my suffering past, and we eventually started living together as I ventured back to the UK to try and tidy up a lot of the ‘bits’ I’d left behind.
Back to the interview; Officers are trained to find fault with any of your paperwork that looks suspicious, anything to suggest your marraige is not genuine. And he got stuck straight in -
“Why are our letters to your address being returned?” we looked at each other in disbelief as the officer held up three letters to our address which had been marked ‘not at this address’ and returned to sender – this was reason enough for them to deem we were living at a false address, therefore hiding something, and worthy of deportation! Luckily we had brought a packet of paperwork with us in a fedex envelope that had been clearly signed upon reciept by myself – So that question was pushed aside and he moved onto the next in the firing line, not happy!
To my husband:
“Why do your bank statements say ‘single’ not married” – “who is the beneficiary of your life insurance, let me see the proof” – gaaahhh! talk about flumoxed! the questions kept being fired with no thought that he was flitting through paperwork trying to pull up anything that would serve the officer with his inquiry.
“I forgot!” – was the only answer my husband could give in his perplexed state of mind, we were both now pretty jittery and it just about got worse…
To Me:
“Why are you saying you have children, when you answered no on the forms?” – then it hit me, the whole past thing was coming up to bite me…
-”they don’t live with me… I haven’t seen them for years” and I couldn’t help but tear up, because I knew that anyone who puts ‘no children’ when in actual fact they do, would be seen as a liar, and worse yet – how do I even begin to explain all this within the five minutes we had left. “… I just didn’t think that’s what you meant if they don’t live with me…” Obviously a pathetic answer, but it was the truth. I haven’t had a relationship with my kids for years on account their father has made it impossibly difficult.
Suddenly the point of the interview turned to the possiblity of my petitioning for the kids to become residents of the US, and both my husband and I felt that I was being doomed to deportation, since the US don’t want more dependents in the state than is already costing them.
The immigration officer tapped into his computer, poked more about my children, their father, our relationship, whether we plan to have kids etc etc. All in all it felt pretty awful by now, instead of a conversation using all the materials we had provided to show the foundation of our two year relationship, he was peeling open a hole in that sad part of my life.
He dissappeared out of the room for a minute, which gave us a moment to comfort each other on how badly this was going. Then out of the blue, he offered a handshake;
“congratulations” he said, “your application for US residency has been approved”
- We sat there in shock! and stayed like that pretty much the rest of the day, not knowing what he made the decision on, since he had three fairly formidable opportunities to turn me out of the country. 1./ being the address hiccup – that was worthy of investigation in itself had I been faking the whole living with husband thing, I mean it was luck we had a signed envelope showing the address did indeed work for other post! 2./ the casual paperwork error, dear husband forgetting to update basic bank statements with marital status, 3./ KIDS, I mean, seriously it is one thing for a US citizen to have his rights acknowledged by opening his hand of invitation to a foreigner, but in so doing it is not a chain invitation for an ensuing family – the broke state is really not wanting that!
It took us a while to work it out… it was me shoving my ass in my husband’s face that must have worked. The interview room was tiny, and with barely the room to move when the guy asked me to revoke my temporary ID card, it struggled to get it out my pocket, and unthinkingly just asked my husband to do the honour.
“I did NOT shove my ass in your face!” I exclaimed whilst on the way home surprised that he brought it up…
“yes you did
” he said, and reminded me how it must have looked in that small room with himself continuing to answer the interrogator whilst he had was unbuttoning the pockets on my new trousers bought especially for that interview.
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