From: fester@island.COM (Mike Fester)
Subject: Re: Immigration procedures
Organization: /usr/local/rn/organization
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1992 19:05:17 GMT

In article <6182@bigbird.hri.com.hri.com> blamb@sparc1.hri.com (Bill Lambert) writes:
>
>I have to admit that I probably didn't have much of an opinion
>about this subject until I witnessed my True Love crying while
>being fingerprinted by the Boston version of the INS. We
>were treated rudely, as idoits, who were somehow inconveniencing

I don't believe INS has a monopoly on bureaucratic morons, as a visit to
most DMVs will show.

>(At our final interview before being 'granted' permanent residency
>status, the agent made a thinly veiled threat not to 'allow' my
>Love PR status because she entered the U.S. on a tourist visa before
>we were officially married in the U.S. He claimed she should have
>stated her intentions to be married to the immigration agent at
>O'Hare airport and "He would decide whether to allow her to enter
>or not." He asked my Love, "What did you tell the agent?" She said,
>"I didn't tell him anything. I didn't know I had too." He asked me,
>"What did you say?" I replied, "Nothing. I had to go through a
>different line, and anyway, please show me on the I-94 the 'Intending
>to marry a US citizen' check box." This, to me, was just terrorism
>on his part, or at best, a gratuitous display of bureaucratic pee-pee
>pulling.)

Not quite. When we got married in Japan, we went to the emabassy (American)
to ask what we needed to do to make everything legal. We were asked where
we intended to get married, etc. We answered all questions and at the end of
the interview, I had a couple of general questions myself. It turns out that
there is a special visa for fiances of US citizens who wish to marry their
intended in the US. This is quite separate from a tourist visa. Also, in the
standard tourist visa application, there is a space that reads roughly "Why
are you going to the US?" Had she answered "To get married" chances are she
would have been directed to the proper visa department, saving her, and
yourself, considerable discomfort. She would have been required to present those
same documents to the embassy staff that she most likely was eventually 
required to submit to immigration (birth certificate, police record, etc). As
it has become a problem in the US (and recently Japan), quite a few foreigners
will marry US citizens to gain permanent resident status. While this obviously
does NOT apply in your situation, it is a situation the INS deals with on a 
daily basis. So, to those of you with fiances overseas, my advice is to jump
through the required hoops over there, as it will make your transition a bit
smoother.

Now, if you want to say that many of these INS agents attend a special school
to get their humanity beaten out of them, I won't argue. I have not 
seen my wife mistreated, but I have witnessed some of them ridicule, bully,
embarass, etc, other immigrants.

Mike
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