Family Immigration: My Experience Filing for a Fiancee Visa

With so much attention on illegal immigration, it's easy to forget about the thousands of law-abiding citizens struggling through the legal process to reunite with their non-American family members. Many people assume when you marry a U.S. citizen, Uncle Sam welcomes you with open arms and a green card. Even my Canadian friends believed marrying an American is no big deal; you just get married and cross the border with your U-Haul, right? Not surprisingly, most people aren't aware of the time, money and effort required to bring a foreign family member to the United States. My husband and I recently had a real-world education in family immigration and it wasn't as simple as "just getting married".

A born and bred Canadian, I fell in love with a National Guardsman finishing up his tour in Iraq. Soon after he returned home, he traveled from Seattle to visit me in Vancouver, Canada ,and the rest, as they say, is history. After many months of border-hopping, he popped the question and we were engaged. Now came the real life-altering decision: Canada or the U.S.? With four years to go until military retirement for him and my mobile writing career, the logical choice was for me to move to the U.S.