Some couples opt to hire immigration lawyers to help navigate the unpredictable nature of the process, which often results in thousands of dollars in legal fees. Would photos of our wedding be convincing evidence that our marriage was real? How about our joint bank accounts or a copy of our co-signed lease? We had to guess, hope, and submit. Sometimes there would be a request for a specific document, and sometimes it would feel completely arbitrary. The trickiest part was the fluctuating rigidity of the requirements. It was a tedious, though mostly doable, process that involved answering hundreds of questions and tracking down family documents. The Applicationįrom start to finish, our application process lasted about a year. But we had no other options and had to work within an immigration system that processes and accepts about 1 million people per year as legal residents. The next step was submitting our LPR petition with the hope it would be accepted, despite rumors about pandemic federal staff shortages leading to green card delays. After two years of dating, we got engaged and then married in 2021. Thankfully for my partner and me, it didn’t take long to know that we wanted our relationship to last for life. One of the quickest ways to obtain LPR is through a family or marriage sponsorship. Immigrants can earn it in a variety of ways, many of which can take years. It offers the most secure legal status, second only to citizenship. Having a green card, or legal permanent resident (LPR) status, means that as long as one has not been convicted for specific criminal offenses, one can live in the U.S. Education, work experience, abiding by governing rules-none of these things offers true security. Insecurity, I was learning, is the norm for immigrants. It was a sobering reminder that, while my partner was thankfully still employed, we were entirely dependent upon his employment status not only as a steady source of income, but also for his legal resident status in the country that we both called home. If he were to lose his job too, his H-1B would quickly become invalid, requiring him to return to India. But the start of the COVID-19 pandemic quickly shattered our illusion of safety when all his department co-workers, except for him, were suddenly laid off. We were thrilled and relieved when he was granted the visa a few months later, offering some security to our growing relationship. He also shared his anxieties with me over the news of his H-1B application, the work-petitioned visa he needed to legally remain in the U.S. for a master’s degree that eventually led him to the job and city where we met. He was in his 20s when he moved to the U.S. I spent much of our early get-to-know-you months learning about the beauty and diversity of India, the country where he grew up. My husband and I met on a dating app in 2019. The reality of marriage to an immigrant partner is far different from what films depict, and for some couples, nearly impossible. The fact that this movie stands as one of America’s cultural touchstones for immigration is unquestionably problematic, largely because of the implication that “green card” and “marriage” are only paired in fraudulent relationships. Twelve years after the film’s release, when my husband and I were navigating the challenges of his green card application, many of my friends brought it up, joking that it was their only reference for legal immigration via marriage. The term is a colloquial reference to marriage between a citizen and non-citizen for the purpose of conferring legal residency status, and the movie depicts it through an enemies-to-lovers trope between a domineering Canadian boss who convinces her ambitious American assistant to help her obtain a green card via a phony marriage. “Green card marriage” is a term I only learned from watching the 2009 rom-com The Proposal. As a child born and raised in middle-class white America, I never expected I would know much about emigrating to the United States.
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