The Nitty, the Gritty, the Agony and the Affidavit

I know.  I know it is September. Most of you likely thought I had lost either my ability to type or my hands altogether, because this is the first post in months and a conscientious person like myself would never leave a blog languishing that long.  You’re all very sweet. But, inexplicably, without a job, nor kids, nor daily routines, I simply haven’t chiseled out time to sit and write. I’m terribly sorry. But I hope this post will clarify what does haunt me when I let it (which is far too often) and takes up much of that “non-job” time.

Superhusband and I are often asked “So, how’s immigration going? Where are you in the process?” Let me tell you that there is no easy way (nor fast way) to answer those questions.  And sometimes I’m even tempted to reply, “Why? What have you heard??  TELL ME!” And then there are those who follow this up with “But aren’t you married? Doesn’t that make a difference?” Sure, it makes a difference: to God, to mankind, to us personally….but to governing bodies which oversee our right to gainful employment? Nope. Still illegal to be a two-income family wherever we go. Lame.

But in order to shed some light on the serpentine lives we’ve been leading, and to just fill you in on what it takes to immigrate if you’d ever consider it (and, really, to get some over-milked sympathy, as if I don’t get enough) I’m going to try to outline the process we’ve taken so far to get Superhusband to the USA to stay. Please note, there are other ways of going about the process, but we have chosen our best option at each juncture (so we thought) and have navigated honestly through the choices given, though we often acted in ignorance of the big picture.  And THAT is mainly what burns me up about this limbo we’re in—if we had known clearly the paths we needed to take when we started, we could have been done by now. And I often feel cheated out of these months by deadlocked bureaucratic nonsense and the absence of a clearly outlined process. But as my father says, “No education is ever wasted.” and boy, has this ever been an education. Ergo, I would also like to present this as “Exhibit A” for mine and Superhusband’s application for “Champions of Immigration Reform” and advisors to the US Senate.

 

And away we go…..

 

Superhusband (then only SuperAussieBoyfriend) proposed to me in Red Lobster in Florence, Alabama on Friday, March 25^th 2011. At that point he and I had already discussed the pros and cons and financial burdens of moving to one continent or the other, and decided that we would try the US first. About two weeks later, after asking for references from those “in the know,” I sought the advice of an immigration lawyer in Jackson, Tennessee on how to start the locomotive of paperwork and legality down the track.  Now, I should have been tipped off when, as I explained my engagement and hopes for the future, the lawyer quipped confusedly “Oh…so you want to do it the right way?” I should have flung myself right back out into the soggy West Tennessee afternoon. But I stayed. And I listened. And it has cost me two years of my life.

 

This lawyer suggested that since we were engaged, we should begin by filing a Fiancée Visa application.  As I was hoping to have the wedding in November, I asked if eight months should be enough time, to which she replied, “Probably.” Then she said that if I was to require her services I would need to lay down a $2,000 retainer, and that would last until she had worked a grand ten hours on my case, at which point I would be required to keep making a $200/hr payment.  Now those of you who are lawyers may be thinking that this was a reasonable fee, and it very well might be.  But to me, in my first job at a private university, only guaranteed one semester of gainful employment, that kind of money was not a practical expenditure. I am literate, college-educated, not a total dweeb….I thought I could surely, as the VBS song says, “Read and study and then obey.” So I embarked on the process with only my wits.

 

The first thing I found out was that I could not directly apply for my fiancée to come to the United States. I had to petition to apply with the I-129F. That cost $340, took a few hours to fill out, and needed to be accompanied by the G-1145 form to allow internet correspondence, and a G-325A including biographic information on both of us, including but not limited to every address at which either of us had lived in the last ten years (Do you know me? That’s a herculean task.)  two color passport photos taken in the last six months, a full-color copy front and back of my original birth certificate, and a statement certifying that our engagement is not a product of  international marriage broker services. I rushed, and got papers from Paul (mind you, each time documents went back and forth at break-neck speed between Australia and the US you’re looking at $30-50 each way) and filed our first papers on April 17, 2011. We then received “Notice of Action,” and then………nothing.  Not a peep. We didn’t know this was normal, because no one told us that it normally takes five months to approve the first step.  FIVE months of just sitting there. And by sitting there, I mean teaching university, directing Shakespeare and early modern theatre, finishing two thesis projects, wedding-planning, and house-sitting while SuperAussieFiancee was working full time and preparing to sell his house.

 

I admit, this is hard for me to write.  I am finding it hard to remember all the twists and turns and I’m feeling a flood of the anxiety which has defined months of my life.  I’ll try a list, but with explanations at certain points.

 

·         We discovered we could call my local congressman or senator for guidance, but we had to sign a privacy agreement first and mail the hard-copy to Birmingham, and then wait for them to contact us. Which I did in June, and had a lovely conversation with Lyndsay. She was skeptical about the timing, since we had already planned the date for our wedding, but she was encouraging.

·         After teaching one semester and graduating with my MFA in May, I flew to Australia to see SuperAussieFiancee’s hometown and help him sell the house from June-Sept 2010.

·         After not hearing anything from any government agency for a while, we tried to call for information. We discovered we cannot call the USCIS directly (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services), nor was any government official in Australia able to take a call for help—which, if they could, costs $12 per conversation. Lyndsay checked on this “no information” thing and discovered that whoever had put our case number in the system had failed to register it properly, so we weren’t getting updates.

·         SuperAussieFiancee’s house sold at the end of August, 2010.

·         I flew back to the States September 16, 2010 alone, to prepare for the wedding. I had 7 weeks.

·         SuperAussieFiancee flew to the States on October 3, 2010 to help with the wedding and get acclimated, all the while wondering IF he could actually get into the country with a pending-but-not-approved visa. He called when he was “through security,” and we cheered and wept.

·         On October 6, 2010 we drove to Birmingham to pick up Fudge the dog from his cross-planetary flight. He was happy to see us, and he now barks with a more Alabamian accent.

·         Around October 15, we were FINALLY approved to make our official application for Fiancee Immigration. I, however, knew that once we filled in those papers, the interview (which would take place in Sydney) could be scheduled at any time.  Widespread panic.  What if they scheduled the interview on the day of the wedding? What if all of SuperAussieFiancee’s family showed up in FLORENCE, stinkin’ ALABAMA, and we were back in Australia getting permission to marry? What if we postponed the wedding, and his WHOLE family lost THOUSANDS of dollars in travel cancellations, and THAT was their first impression of me as a person? We ended up cancelling our dream-honeymoon-cabin-by-the-river in Chattanooga because we didn’t know if we’d be in the country to use it. We opted for the much cheaper duplex-cabin-by-the-lake in Iuka, MS.

·         I somehow convinced myself that it would be okay. We would get married, and then just finish the paperwork for Fiancee Visa in Australia, have an interview, and then “declare” our marriage on documents after that.  This was likely my most delusional phase in the whole process.

·         Superhusband planned a surprise layover in Brisbane to see my cousin. That eased the not-being-home-for-Thanksgiving feelings. It was dreamy (EXCEPT for the moment in the Annerly Motor Inn in Brisbane where the hard-of-hearing cleaning woman decided to start her work 30 minutes before check-out, and did not hear our plaintive screams to shut the door and NOT uncover our nakedness—you know, two weeks into marriage when mutual nakedness is still a really big deal. Scarring.)

·         About a week after arriving back in Perth, my father had a massive heart attack in Alabama. I did not get a phone call, I got emails with headings like “Dad.” Which nearly caused ME to have a heart attack, and on top of wondering if I’d ever get back to the US, I now worried whether I would ever see my father alive again.

·         We bought a caravan on Dec. 16^th so we could finally get some much-needed privacy and use it later to travel to Sydney and see the country. After an inaugural trip before Christmas, we also bought a bigger car to haul the thing, and made sure this one was an automatic so I could share in the driving.

·         With dad sufficiently healing in the hospital, we gathered more papers to submit to gain an interview, including an Affidavit of Support secured from one of my relatives, for which we had to wait six weeks because the postal service sent it to WA-Washington state instead of WA-Western Australia. This form, for those of you who are interested, is a form stating that the immigrant in question will not be allowed to become a “public ward,” and requires the sponsor to prove they have lived above the poverty line for the past three years AND that they will support the immigrant for no fewer than ten years barring death of either the sponsor or immigrant. Of course, we had to invite a family member into the equation because I had been in graduate school for the last three years, and we all know that MFA and “poverty” go hand in hand. Humbling. Terrifying. I never imagined that my education and economic standing could keep my husband from living in my country.

·         Before I sent more paperwork, I asked the US Embassy in Sydney if we needed any special marriage documentation to complete the forms. On December 4^th, 2010, I received word that since we were married and no longer engaged, we could not use any of our former paperwork and we had to start over. START OVER. New request for permission to apply, new $400 filing fee, new postage fees, new pictures, new everything. And this time, some of the forms were different. My “six-week” stay was now to be much, much longer. And then there was the unbelievable guilt of having not seen this coming.

·         On December 29^th the USCIS lockbox facility in Chicago (as we had to send papers to a different spot this time) received our new paperwork. We had started over. Had we known we would have to start over, we could have STAYED in the States married, and filed from there, skipping the Sydney interview. But now, having filed from Australia, we set ourselves on a different path of Consular Processing. And we’re paying $33 per night to park our own house in a caravan park (trailer park) and eat our own food.  It has now been three months since Superhusband has worked, and seven months for me. But none of this constitutes a “special circumstance” to the government.

·         We then had to notify our Congressman’s office again and send a new privacy release form before they could continue to work on our behalf. Lyndsay was not so chatty this time around.

·         And then we waited, hemorrhaging money until such time as we got clearance for an interview.  We were hopeful that this would be more economical than two more international flights and it would enable us to take off at a moment’s notice to Sydney. Of course, we had to purchase a $267 e-Visa for me to stay in the country for a total of six months.

·         By April we knew we would not have time to be approved AND schedule an interview before my visa ran out.  So, we decided to see some of the country anyway: this was likely the best part of our stay. We spent our last month travelling north and east through Western Australia, knowing we’d have to come back.

·         Got an email from a beautiful cousin letting me know about a children’s theatre directing position in Florence, AL.  Started an auspicious email conversation.

·         On May 21, 2012, we were approved for filing an official application.  That’s exactly FOUR days before flying back to the States for a family reunion.

·         Back in the States, the family reunion was amazing, and the first couple of weeks tumultuous while we were both fighting culture shock. Within three weeks Superhusband couldn’t stand the boredom anymore and we were off on another cross-continental trip up the US East Coast and into Canada, seeing many beautiful people along the way. It was a mixed bag, and quite unforgettable.

·         While on this trip I got a call from our local university about a job for which I had applied months ago.  Over the moon! I finally had an interview in my field.

·         Then back to the paperwork for me—we filed the application, and received instructions for the “Choice of Agent” which declared me as the “official” person for the government to converse with.

·         After  that we received instructions (and this is how it goes these days—not until after you complete one step do you get instructions and fee information for the next step) on the Affadavit of Support.  Same name, but completely different document from before.  We thought we needed the same things from our sponsor, but we did not, so we had to humble ourselves again and grovel for new paperwork. This document also required a list of all assets (property, vehicles, etc) with tax information and valuation for all, a hard-copy print out of account history for EVERY bank account we owned spanning the last twelve months, and my tax records for the last three years. This took days to complete.

 

·         Next we were informed that our application showed a gap of more than 6 months in our residence history. I had to re-type and re-submit a four-page form detailing every address Superhusband had had since the age of 16. Did it, mailed it, spent $27 to get it there.

 

 

·         Next we were given instructions on “supporting documents.” This required Superhusband’s original birth certificate (fortunately we HAD this), copies of his passport, and police clearance checks for all countries in which he had resided for 6 months or more since the age of 16. As fate would have it, he had spent exactly 6 months in England at the age of 16. Another document needed.

 

·         Upon researching what was required for police clearance checks in Australia and England we found that both had to be paid for in local currency, and the US required the checks to be completed with fingerprint scans as well. To even HAVE your fingerprints taken in Australia takes three months and is ridiculously expensive. However, Australia does accept fingerprints from the US and Canada. AND you can apply online, but if you do, you must pay online, and seemingly you can’t pay online if you’re mailing fingerprints separately.

 

After trying to find a digital-body-scan operation in Alabama (or TN, GA, or MS) and failing, I called the Australian Federal Police one night on Skype.  This had to be at 11pm because of the 16-hour time difference. I have never been so astounded as when I heard the automated answering machine say, “You are caller number One-hundred and two.  Your approximate wait time is One-hundred and eighty minutes.” When I picked my chin up off the floor, I asked Superhusband if we even HAD enough Skpe credit to wait that long—he didn’t know, so while we were on hold in one window, we opened a second window to buy more credit, and hope we didn’t have to refresh the page to get it.  It worked.  We waited just under two hours to speak to a representative, and they were no help this time. But we tried again a couple of days later, and by an act of God Himself I was connected to Phillip in Melbourne.  I explained my situation, and after some negotiation he came back with “Here’s what you’re going to do: Pay online, print out the consent form, send it with the fingerprints, and we’ll match them up when they get here.” I sprinted into the other room where Superhusband was making a cabinet and began to leap about exclaiming “We can do it! We can do it!”  He laughed at first, and then remarked that I hadn’t been that excited about anything he had done for months.

 

So, we mailed that off, (as it had a minimum of a 25-day processing time) and started looking at the British police clearance.  That required another set of fingerprints, payment in Pounds Stirling (no online option) and a passport style photograph endorsed by an upstanding member of society (several occupations listed as options) who had known Superhusband for a minimum of two years, with a supporting document containing the signer’s name, address, and sworn statement. And having researched attempting to get a bank draft in a foreign currency before, we knew this one would have to be done in Australia. But the fingerprints had to be done before we left.  So, the Alabama Bureau of Investigation came through with fingerprinting done each day before 10am, completed on the day before we flew overseas.

 

·         Within this time I had the aforementioned interview at our local university.  I could not sign papers because things were still up in the air about our processing. I loved the interview, was offered the job, and the professor even sent an email to our congressman’s office to ask for our case to be expedited so I could be back in the States for this job. Unbeknownst to us, however, our advocate Lyndsay had quit the department, and our case had been sent to three different places.  It was now under the supervision of a girl named Shan. I called Shan to ask about how to allow a potential employer to send an email on my behalf.  Shan so astutely replied “Look, I don’t know anything about these immigration cases.” Just at the time when help could finally be valuable, we were left bereft. But it didn’t end there.  Shan proceeded to send an expedite request..to the WRONG embassy.  That’s right, folks.  We received a letter stating that as soon as our paperwork went through to the LONDON office, they would speed it along. So, immediately, we called Shan and asked for an explanation.  She, again astutely replied, “Well, it’s because he was born in London.” Now, as many of you may already know, “London” is city, not a country, and Paul was born on almost the opposite end of the island from said city. That being as it was, we simply asked her not to do anything else.  It was already clear that we could not make it back in time to start the job, and I had had to turn it down. And communicating with Sydney (the correct embassy) would be too much for our young friend. But still, she was not satisfied until she had ruined everything.  Shan proceeded to contact Sydney, against our wishes, and was met with a “No, we will not expedite this case” answer. It was at this point we called the head office of the congressman to get her forcibly removed from the case so no further damage could be done. As if we didn’t have enough to do.

 

·         Also during the fingerprinting/police check process, we began to get mixed signals from our family sponsor. After enduring some unsolicited advice from said family member, some constructive and some not, Superhusband and I decided to be the dumpers and not the dumpees.  From that point forward, we were determined to attempt an independent sponsorship.

 

·         That is, until we received an email on August 5, 2012 which stated that our income looked “too low” (that’s bureaucratese for “nonexistant”) and we might consider a joint sponsor.  Well, duh. So my wonderful parents stepped in and offered their limited income and a HOUSE as assets to aid us.  24-hours and 30-pages of documents later, I was back in the post office spending another $27 to send a tree’s worth of print to New Hampshire.

 

·         August 7, 2012 we fly back to Australia. After a birthday and holiday stop in Melbourne, we arrived back in Perth and again started the waiting process.

 

·         On August 20^th we received an email saying that one box in the 30-page Affidavit document did not match the materials sent subsequently, and therefore had to be amended and re-sent. So, I called the National Visa Center (on Skype, of course) to see if I could send this information at the same time as the police certificates.  The information was actually given by a person, I assume a live one, and was a helpful “Yes.”

 

·         The first police certificate arrived a few days later, and after completing the requirements for the British certificate and waiting nearly the maximum processing time (and being $126 poorer for the prize,) we received the final piece of the puzzle on Monday, September 17^th, 2012 at 11am. By 4pm that very day we had compiled the rest and mailed it to straight to the NVC.  It should be sitting in New Hampshire right now, and up for another 20-day review period.

 

So there we are, folks. After New Hampshire makes doubly-triply sure that we’ve dotted every i and crossed every t, they will talk to the US Embassy in Sydney and then notify us of an interview time. We hope.  If they find something else wrong, which I imagine they could, we will repeat our process of fixing, finding, sending. Then we’ll only have a medical exam and a cross-continental trip to make.

 

But I tell you this, if after this season changes Superhusband and I can have the life we have envisioned, then it will all be worth the battle.  We will not take each other, our home, or even our ability to work for granted. And eventually, our children will benefit from a really great book deal. Until then, THAT’S how immigration is going.