Why the Government Has My Wedding Photos

A lot of things have been said recently about immigration. I hear people complaining about a lack of thoroughness in the vetting process and asking why illegal immigrants don’t just go through the process to become legal. I can’t speak for everyone else, their reasons for doing or thinking what they do. All I can tell you is what happened to me. What it was like ten years ago when I married a Spanish man living in California on a student visa.

A few days into our honeymoon, my new husband fished a stack of papers from his suitcase and handed them to me.

“What’s this?” The pile was at least a hundred pages thick. Each was single-spaced and looked suspiciously like a tax form.

“My immigration application. My student visa is expiring soon, so I need you to fill those out so the government doesn’t deport me.”

My eyebrows rose. “Say what?”

Like most Americans, I’d seen those movies where the immigrant marries someone and presto! Instant citizenship. Nowhere in Hollywood’s version of immigration was there a dead forest worth of paperwork.

Ruymán looked apologetic. “I tried to fill them out myself, but I didn’t understand most of them.” He had learned English when he was fifteen, mostly from watching the Disney channel. Reading comprehension wasn’t his strongest suit.

"Oh, okay." I gave him a reassuring smile. “No problem.” 

I figured I’d swoop in, read a few things, fill in a few forms, and save the day. I was college educated and an English major for crying out loud. No sweat. He’d be a citizen in no time.

Except I didn’t understand the forms either. I spent hours pouring over those things. While other new brides penned letters that read “Dear Aunty Vi, Thank you for the toaster,” I crammed the seventeen-word name of Ruymán’s great grandmother into a three-inch space on a government form. My mother was mortified but I didn’t send out a single thank you note. I told her I was too busy trying to keep my husband in the country.
The first batch of forms finished and sent with accompanying checks, I thought we could relax. Not so. The government then requested a new set of paperwork: letters from our friends and family assuring that we were actually married, a copy of all our jointly-paid bills, my tax returns from the last three years, a letter from my employer promising that I could afford to keep my husband, and copies of our wedding pictures. Plus, they wanted another $1000 and we had to show up in person at an appointment in L.A. to deliver it all. Or else.

At the time I was working at a school in the San Fernando Valley and the other teachers were from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds. When I started whining in the lunchroom about the endless immigration hoops we had to jump through, nearly everyone had something to add.

“Your appointment is scheduled in three months?” asked Raquel, whose husband was from Mexico. “That’s really fast. When Miguel and I did his citizenship stuff, it took him over a year to get an interview just because he had the same name as some serial killer in Guadalajara. He’s not even related to the guy and from a completely different part of Mexico, but still, they had to do like twenty extra background checks on him.”

“That’s nothing,” chimed in Evelina, an Armenian immigrant who married a man from her hometown. “My husband’s friend Aghasi had to wait three years before he even heard back from immigration. He’d call and if he ever got to talk to a real person, they said they still hadn’t received his documentation. Turns out the stupid official accidentally dropped his paperwork behind the copy machine. They didn’t even find it until the department was redecorating the office.”

When everyone’s cries of outrage subsided, Tara spoke up. Though a Valley girl born and bred, she’d spent her summers running a Jewish summer camp in Israel and was friends with quite a few immigrants. “I have an even worse story,” said Tara. “This happened to someone I met at camp a couple summers ago. So this guy, his family saved up their money, moved to the US, and hired an immigration lawyer to handle the whole process – paperwork, fingerprints, everything. They didn’t speak or read English, so they gave the lawyer the checks to send to the government and he’d tell them how it was going. They knew immigration costs a ton, so they didn’t question the lawyer when he said they needed more. One day, the lawyer just up and disappears. No forwarding address, no paperwork, no green cards. Nothing. It turns out the guy was a con man. DHS never got one single thing and the family had to go back where they came from because they ran out of money.”

Discouraged and terrified by such stories of cruelty and incompetence, Ruyman and I faced our appointment with growing trepidation. We spent hours at the local Kinko’s, making sure we had every document requested in triplicate just in case. When the day arrived, we wore our best clothes, made the long drive downtown, and then sat in a decaying office building for three hours while we waited for our number to be called. Anxious groups of people in exotic dress spoke unrecognizable languages and sat in hard plastic chairs that were bolted to the floor in rows. An armed guard stood by the door and gum-chewing clerks pushed paper behind bulletproof glass. The message of the place was unmistakable: “We don’t want you here and we sure as hell don’t trust you.”

This was during my stress eating without extra insulin period, so I’d loaded up on chocolate chip bagels for breakfast. My blood sugar was through the roof. I paced the stained linoleum, hoping the physical movement would bring it down, but my marching back and forth made Ruyman even more nervous. Instead, I tried to fill up my water bottle at the fountain by the door.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said the guard.

“Do what?” I asked. As far I knew, I hadn’t broken any of the many rules posted on the wall next to me.

“Drink the water,” he said. He pointed to the rust-colored fluid that half-filled my bottle. “I don’t think these pipes have been used since the fifties.”

“Ick.” I poured the water down the drain and went back to pacing. Occasionally a bored-sounding voice would announce a number over a crackly loudspeaker, and an anxious group of people would move toward the desk clutching a ream of papers. Without making eye contact, the clerk would motion them through a door to the right or mutter a few words and send the people back to their seats.

When our number was announced, it was immediately clear why our appointment was scheduled so quickly. Two groups of people stood up: Ruyman and I and a Korean family with an interpreter. We all shuffled to the window and stood there until the clerk looked up. In a tone as dry as my tongue, he said, “I’m guessing not all of you are here for Eunhee Kim, am I right?”

“No, the number you called is ours, too. Here.” Ruyman handed the man our summons.

The man scanned the paper. “Ah, f—not again. Stupid automated letter system. Look, sir, you were called here today by mistake. Normally, it takes at least six months to get your appointment. The automatic system messed up and assigned you the same appointment time as someone else.”

“Well, we’re here and all our stuff is ready. Can’t we just do the interview?” asked Ruyman.

The clerk scanned the crowd seated in the bolted-down chairs. He sighed, and then picked up the phone. “I’ll ask the guy that was supposed to interview you, but no promises, okay? If he says come back a different day, that’s how it’s gotta be. You understand?”

“Of course,” replied Ruyman, all outward politeness but his grip on my hand was so tight I could hear my metacarpals grinding together. We both knew there could be no second trip because we were moving to Utah in two days. It had to be then.

The clerk hung up. “He says come on back. He’ll squeeze you in. Go through the door on the right and then take a right and two lefts. It’s interview room number seven.”

Mumbling our gratitude, we followed his instructions and found ourselves facing a grey-skinned man with a vicious comb-over and eyewear from 1985. “Please come in,” he said, looking through his considerable eyebrows as he thumbed through some paperwork.

We came in. We sat. We handed him our documents. We gritted our teeth and waited for the questions to come. When they did, I was flummoxed by their utter stupidity.

“Are you or have you ever been a member of a terrorist group?” asked Eyebrow Man, making a tic on his form.

“No,” said Ruyman.

“What about the communist party? Are you in anyway affiliated with them?”

Ruyman shook his head. “No.”

“Have you ever killed anyone? Worked as a prostitute? Hired a prostitute?”

My mouth dropped open. What kind of asinine questions were these? No person in his right mind would ever answer yes. Plus, they were asked and answered on at least three of the forms Eyebrow Man had in front of him.

After a tense fifteen minutes, Eyebrow Man rubber-stamped our forms. Ruyman and I started packing up our documents, but when we reached for the purple polka-dotted album containing our photos, Eyebrow Man put up a hand. “Hang on there. I’ll keep those.”

“Seriously?” I’d barely said two words during the whole process, but the question popped out before I had a chance to self-censor.

“Absolutely,” said Eyebrow Man. He palmed the album and slid it into a desk drawer. “That’s why we had you make copies.”

            A month later, Ruyman’s green card arrived in the mail. He got a job and we got on with the business of being normal people living in the U.S. Except every six months to a year, the government stuck its hand out again, asking for this form or a translation of that document or another set of fingerprints or another interview. And each request came with a price tag.

Whenever someone talks about the ease of citizenship or the lack of thoroughness in vetting immigrants, I think about those photos. Ten years and thousands of dollars later, the government still has pictures of me feeding cake to my husband and throwing a bouquet. Something that was private and special and important to me is either in a filing cabinet somewhere or part of some ICE employee version of Awkward Family Photos. 

So I ask you, how’s that for thorough?