QUOTE
Will Love Overcome Immigration Hurdles?
May 5, 2006
HANNA INGBER
My sister has brought a date to Passover every year for as long as I can remember. This year, once again, I went alone. My fiance is not allowed into the country.
He is from Rangoon, Burma, where we met. Aung Moe is now living in Thailand, working as a graphic designer. Last October, we got engaged. We were eating dinner at Riverside, a candle-lit restaurant with palm trees and outdoor tables a few feet from the Ping River in northern Thailand.
Probably like most newly engaged people, the images of our future together started flooding my brain: raising children, decorating a home, growing old as we traveled the world, him taking photographs, me writing stories. I imagined Aung Moe coming to America and finally seeing the New York skyline. I can't look at the skyline without thinking of him, without waiting, hoping for the day he sees it too.
One day he'll be with me in New York, close to my family and friends, available for Passover Seders and summer barbeques.
Or so I hope. With immigration policies becoming stricter, you never know. He was refused entry into America before. After I spent a year in Burma, working for a newspaper and falling for Aung Moe, he wanted to visit my family in New York. He applied for a tourist visa, but the U.S. Embassy denied him. They said he failed to prove he was not intending to immigrate to this land of opportunities. Now, two years later, we're ready to get married. This time Aung Moe wants to immigrate. But will they let him?
continued...
May 5, 2006
HANNA INGBER
My sister has brought a date to Passover every year for as long as I can remember. This year, once again, I went alone. My fiance is not allowed into the country.
He is from Rangoon, Burma, where we met. Aung Moe is now living in Thailand, working as a graphic designer. Last October, we got engaged. We were eating dinner at Riverside, a candle-lit restaurant with palm trees and outdoor tables a few feet from the Ping River in northern Thailand.
Probably like most newly engaged people, the images of our future together started flooding my brain: raising children, decorating a home, growing old as we traveled the world, him taking photographs, me writing stories. I imagined Aung Moe coming to America and finally seeing the New York skyline. I can't look at the skyline without thinking of him, without waiting, hoping for the day he sees it too.
One day he'll be with me in New York, close to my family and friends, available for Passover Seders and summer barbeques.
Or so I hope. With immigration policies becoming stricter, you never know. He was refused entry into America before. After I spent a year in Burma, working for a newspaper and falling for Aung Moe, he wanted to visit my family in New York. He applied for a tourist visa, but the U.S. Embassy denied him. They said he failed to prove he was not intending to immigrate to this land of opportunities. Now, two years later, we're ready to get married. This time Aung Moe wants to immigrate. But will they let him?
continued...
M.
