My Visa Story: Getting a Green Card in the US

For many internationals living and working in New York City, the most difficult part of moving to the U.S.  is securing the ever-elusive visa. Though there are many types of visas with different application procedures, one thing unites them all: They can be tricky to get. (New York International has its own visa guide and the USCIS website provides all the forms and technical help you’ll need.)I currently live in the U.S. on a spouse visa; my green card is courtesy of the fact I’m married to an American citizen. That’s the happy ending. But to see how we got here, you have to go back to March 2010.At that time, my (then) girlfriend and I were living in Japan, she in Tokyo, and I just a little further north. We met at a Christmas party two years before, and though I’d never imagined moving to Japan would mean falling in love with an American, that’s exactly what happened. I proposed on top of the Cosmo Big Wheel overlooking Yokohama Bay, sunset over Fuji. It was dead romantic.  She said yes, and we were set.Except that we were both living in Japan. I was British. And before us lay the long and complicated path for getting a visa.By chance, one of my friends had married an American just a few months before, and my first thought was to turn to her for advice.Her suggestion? Apply early.“Now, in fact,” she said. “It’ll take more than a year. Maybe a lot more. You can’t apply early enough.”It sounded daunting. More than a year to get a visa just to allow me into the U.S., nevermind being able to work there? How could that work with my fiancé and I planning a wedding at the same time?My friend was stoic. “Did I say a year? Maybe make it two.”The fact is, getting a visa is both time-consuming and expensive. The incredibly helpful website Visa Journeys is an online community for U.S. visa applicants, and its forums are full of terrifying stories: A tick box accidentally crossed on a form that led to a complete re-evaluation and a year’s delay; a misunderstanding about the meaning of “sponsor” that led to a rejection; a surprise approval that meant planning an entire wedding in a single month.It’s a complicated business, international love.With the Internet as our guide, my fiancée and I began. To apply for a fiancée visa (which allows you entry into the U.S. within 90 days of the visa’s approval, providing you plan to marry within 90 days of entry) we had to provide a surprising amount of paperwork.The most surprising thing of all? “Proof of relationship,” which is exactly what it sounds like. The U.S. government is understandably suspicious of green cards granted through marriage. With the automatic right to residence and work, they’re an obvious target for less than genuine applications. The Government want to make sure you really are marrying for love.But how do you prove love to the government? You send it everything. Cards from your families. Photos of you together in summer. Photos of you together in winter. Receipts for engagements rings. E-mails between you (with minimal blacking-out allowed, to save too many personal details from being shared). Valentine’s Day cards. Plane tickets to prove you’ve met your future parents-in-law. In short, anything you can think of that proves how genuine you are.It’s a weird experience, jumping through the hoops of a “love test.” It’s the kind of thing you find in romance novels (and bad ones at that). But still …It also needed criminal background checks from the UK and Japanese authorities, a complete medial history of vaccinations (with missing ones to be administered by an embassy-approved doctor), a complete employment and educational history, and, most importantly, a U.S.-based sponsor. A sponsor, in this case, is an individual willing to undersign the petition for the visa and promises that they will support me financially should I become unable to work. Social welfare is off-limits to fiancée and spouse visa holders.The sponsor would be my future father-in-law, and I can promise you it’s a little awkward having to ask your fiancée’s parents to divulge their complete financial history, income, tax status, savings, and assets. The visa system can be brutal at times. And every form you submit costs you a fee.To America!Fast-forwarding to March 2011. My entry visa was approved, following a lot more forms filled out, a couple of visits to the embassy, and one mildly painful round of vaccinations at the doctors. We could proceed!And now we had a timeline. An entry visa will expire if it’s not used within three months – and if we weren’t married within three months of its use, I would become an illegal alien overnight.We never worried about being caught trying to cheat the system because weweren’t trying to cheat the system. What we did worry about, however, was the possibility of an accidental error or perhaps accidental perjury. With so many forms – pages and pages of tedious but vital information  - the worry of many applicants is that they’ll make an honest mistake. Tick the wrong box, write the wrong date, or sign the wrong place and you could scupper the entire effort. Constant vigilance and scrupulous double-checking is required.The wedding, I’m happy to report, went ahead as planned. The visa paperwork, however, was not finished yet.We spent our honeymoon in the U.S. Virgin Islands. A wonderful quirk of the visa system is that once you enter the U.S., you can’t leave until your next visa stage is complete. Therefore, any honeymoon must be on U.S. soil. Though the British Virgin Islands were close enough for a day trip, that trip would have meant my wife would return to the U.S. without a hitch, while I would have been refused re-entry. Thus is life.Soon the next stage began: the green card application. More forms.,fees, and promises not to take welfare or run away. More proof that we were married (though in this case, our marriage license made this simple enough). And my biometrics (finger prints and a retinal scan) were taken.In addition, we found that I still didn’t have enough vaccinations (in a strange twist of irony, many international visa applicants end up far better-vaccinated than any U.S. citizen). And getting the additional vaccinations was expensive: Without a green card, I couldn’t work, and without work, I had no insurance. But I needed to go to the doctor’s to get the green card to get a job to get insurance.Once more, we sent off application forms and further promises from my sponsors (now my father-in-law and my wife) that I would not become a burden of the state.And finally, it arrived: my green card.I know that having a green card is a privilege. I don’t have any particular issues with the system, and certainly no suggestions for its improvement. What I do have is advice ,advice I myself was given years ago, for anyone who’s just applying now: Do it as soon as you can. It’s going to take years to be finished.And be patient. Although I do have my green card, it’s only valid for two years. The process begins all over again next year.