Wedding

Chinese Wedding Dresses

As a Texan I do understand very much the problems that are caused by illegal immigration. I know that the laws for entering the United States must be strict for the protection of the country. However I am starting to think that it might be going a little too far. I would like to voice a bit of my opinion on this issue.

My wife and I are legally married. We were married in front of a judge first, and then we had our church wedding. We have documents and everything to prove it. However I can't take my wife back to the States to live even if I wanted to! Why? Because of some very annoying immigration laws that have been put in place. As a matter of fact, simply visiting the U.S. is a task that doesn't even seem worth trying anymore. I took my wife to see about getting her a resident visa to the States a few months ago. We were told that to even have a shot at getting it we would need to be married for at least two years. I guess I can understand that. For me it isn't too big of a problem because I like living here. However I have a friend who is an older man married to an Asian woman. They have been married for several years and have children. It's obvious that the woman is not using him to get into the United States; but the U.S. government still won't give her a visa! They say that he isn't earning enough money to bring her back. My response to that would be, "How can he earn enough money to support his family if the U.S. government won't let them in?" I think that this is going a little bit overboard. Here in Panama he could never earn enough to live in the States. Even high powered government officials only make about $800 a month here. Imagine what middle class people make.

One day I am going to want to return to the States with my wife to visit. The problem is that when I see how difficult it is I don't even want to even bother with it. The last time my wife and I went for a visa we were accepted. However it was so much trouble that I can only imagine how it will be when the kids come along.

I will say that I do understand that there are a lot of immigrants who marry just to enter to U.S. I really do understand that. The problem though is that because of the people who do, those who really love each other are also barred from seeing their families. I personally met a man in Turkey who was looking for a North American woman. He wanted to pay her a large sum of money so that she would marry him and take him back to the U.S. They were never going to live together or anything. He simply wanted to hire someone to go through the motions for a free ticket inside. Fortunately I never heard of him finding anyone.

The difficult thing to deal with is the generalization of the people from the U.S. government. As complicated as things are I wish that they could come up with some form of truly taking each case as something individual. Instead everyone is treated the same. My wife never did anything against the United States but she was treated rudely when she applied for the visa. It is sad that innocent people must suffer because of those who take advantage of certain laws.

To finish I do want to thank the government of the United States for doing what they believe is the right thing. I really don't have any hard feelings against them; I just wish that things could be different. I hope that one day our borders will have some more freedom. For now things are hard, but I still give my thanks to those who work on the border trying to separate the wheat from the chaff. Thank you again and keep up the good work!