http://www.cmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/arti...=73247860543030



Legal glitch puts love in limbo
Marriages are delayed as visas don't arrive

By LARA JAKES JORDAN
The Associated Press
June 14. 2006 8:00AM

T
rue love waits for no one -except maybe the Homeland Security Department.

Red tape has put wedding bells on hold for about 10,000 U.S. citizens seeking visas for their foreign brides and grooms as the department works on new paperwork for their applications.

The form change was required as part of a law, enacted in March, to protect foreign mail-order brides from abusive American spouses. But Homeland Security missed its deadline three months ago, putting the visa applications of thousands of law-abiding spouses-to-be in limbo.

The department said yesterday it would send out additional forms to the visa seekers for more information that should satisfy the new law's protections.

But the bureaucratic entanglement has trashed wedding plans for many couples before they could get anywhere near the altar.
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"We were ready to get married this year, but I can't really make a date until we get the approval," said Bill Hall, 41, a construction foreman from Burlington, Vt. He applied two months ago for a visa for his fiancee, Debbie, to emigrate from Canada with her two sons. The couple said they have been dating for six years.

"We're just kind of here, in limbo," Hall said. "And it's kind of aggravating - it's a real simple thing they have to do, and they're making more of it than they need to."

He said his application, sent to Homeland Security in April, "never got approved. It's just sitting there."

The tale of these 10,000 belated nuptials illustrates a bureaucratic response to what all sides agree is a well-intentioned law to protect women.

Advocates estimate that as many as 15,000 foreign women annually meet their American husbands through for-profit marriage brokers. That number, provided by the Virginia-based Tahirih Justice Center, marks a sharp rise from a 1999 estimate by the former Immigration and Naturalization Services of 30,000 women who came to the United States through a marriage broker during the previous five years.

Spurred by stories of foreign women - largely from Eastern Europe and Asia - being abused or even murdered by their U.S. husbands, Congress in December approved new protections for mail-order brides. They included amending the application form for so-called fiancee visas with two new questions: Whether the romance was arranged by an international marriage broker, and had the U.S. citizen ever been accused of a violent crime or convicted of three or more alcohol- or drug-related crimes.

President Bush signed the law on Jan. 5, putting Homeland Security under order to draw up the new paperwork. But the forms weren't finished by March 6, when the law took effect - resulting in the department shelving all fiancee visa applications written on the old forms that were received after that date.

Chris Bentley, a Homeland Security spokesman, said about 10,000 applications are currently being held because they did not address the criminal or marriage broker issues.

"They did not have all of the information needed to determine whether someone qualified or not,"said Bentley, who works for the department's Citizenship and Immigration Services.

He added: "It's certainly an inconvenience brought about by the new requirements of the law."

Homeland Security said yesterday it would send additional forms to the estimated 10,000 couples in wedding purgatory to get answers to the questions about criminal pasts and marriage brokers. But it said it was still waiting for the White House Office of Management and Budget for approval of those forms and the new application.

OMB spokeswoman Andrea Wuebker did not have details immediately on the additional forms, but said the new applications were approved Monday in an emergency clearance process. It was not clear when the new applications would be distributed to the public.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington, rapped Homeland Security for getting cold feet about quickly processing the new regulations that she helped write.

"Security and safety should be their top consideration but their long visa process delays are putting a lot of people's lives on hold,"Cantwell said in a statement.

Hall, the lovelorn Vermonter, said he's frustrated with the visa delays for people trying to follow the law at a time the Bush administration is grappling with giving other benefits to immigrants who have slipped into the U.S. illegally.

"I thought it was ironic," Hall said. "And I find it unfair."

------ End of article

By LARA JAKES JORDAN

The Associated Press

hi,
that is not new, it was already posted weeks ago.
Greets Isabel

I thought it was March 6th and later?

yes you are right. March 6th and later.

@newhampshire why are you talking about bad news? Try reading the posts (especially K1 forum), since you just confuse people with such treads. IMBRA takes affect on March 6th and all applications after that date.

Greets Isabel

Sorry for any confusion. It IS March 6th and later. It's still a screw up on behalf of the befuddled Department of Homeland Security, and I honestly don't expect the requests for additional information to be out any time soon. I'll wager that it will take at least 2-3 months for forms to actually begin reaching those 10,000 couples! I've worked for the government, non-profits, and private for profit industry, and no one is as inefficient as the government. Which is okay - but people with money and/or connections get around all of this, while the working class and regular citizens have to put up with enormous amounts of BS. Sorry if I'm negative, but this whole process is absurd. There is little to no rhyme, reason, or plan to how they process these applications. They might as well be throwing darts. One application is approved in days, another in weeks, another is still waiting years after it is filed. No common thread or pattern that I can see. I think people tend to think that applications that take longer than theirs have problems - missing information - criminal history issues - but that's simply not true. It's the luck of the draw I suppose. I do believe that we ought be able to find out where our application is in the process and when we can expect it to move ahead - not the generic "processing dates" which are obviously incorrect. As far as I know, my application could have dropped behind a filing cabinet. And, if it has, why do I have to wait six months to find that out? I'm a citizen. I vote. I pay taxes. I'm politically active. I completed my application correctly and in a timely manner. I paid my money. Where's the service?

You are totally right (and there's another thread on the same topic). There is no service. There is no pattern. There is no rhyme or reason. There is no communication. There are no telephone numbers to call to reach informed people with a brain who can actually provide answers. They couldn't provide a simple one page email to all petitioners affected by IMBRA to give the basic information. They can't provide any information on whether or not the Nebraska petitions that were transferred to Califonia now are at the bottom of the pile. They haven't provided any real dates or information about the RFE process. They have no idea what constitutes customer service. If they were a private company, they would have been out of business eons ago. They suck and we have no other option.

Hi kitkat

Transfers from NSC and TSC to CSC is nothing new.....it has been happening for some time and is not just because of the IMBRA. They have never been put to the bottom of the pile in the past so I dont imagine they will be now. That is what the receipt/received dates are in aid of. They will take their rightful position in the cue regardless of whether they where originally filed elsewhere or with CSC.

All the best

Lorelle

I know I know and I just hope it's true. It's very discouraging to see Vermont May filers get their RFEs sent out while NSC/CSC March filers haven't gotten anything. And CSC's processing dates were behind NSCs, it seems we are doomed to be waiting and waiting for a while longer. I guess I just thought it would be nice if they included a one sentence note on the transfer notice that said why they were transferring. Or if they actually stated where "here" was on the transfer noticed that stated "your petition as received here".

Wishful thinking.

newhampshire, time for a beer, or a bubble bath, or both. It's an imperfect world and government bureaucracy is the most ridiculous and imperfect of all. Please take a deep breath, rent a mindless movie, and give yourself instant gratification some other way. A year from now, we'll see threads on how the waiting was really a blessing. It gave people time to save money, lose weight, get a job, find out their honey was a philanderer. This too shall pass. Like gas after a big plate of beans.

Jersey Girl,

Thanks for your post. I needed to read a response like yours. It's probably one of the most encouraging I've read since signing on to VJ. There are things all of us can do to be productive during this wait. The problem comes when we live only for the approval. That's what makes the wait so hard and long. Doesn't make sense to stress over it...just make the best of the time.

All the best on your journey.