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As I had decided previously, we applied for a U.S. tourist visa again. Twice in the last five months, actually. After all, I think we have a compelling case:
Why Victor will not overstay a tourist visa and will return to Mexico:
I am a U.S. citizen. Victor and I have been in a long-distance relationship since 1993. I come to Yucatán multiple times every year to be with Victor.
If Victor wanted to stay in the U.S., we would apply for a K-1 fiancé visa and get married.
But his mother and other family are still in Yucatán, and he is not yet ready to retire, so he does not yet want to move to the U.S.
Victor’s salary is irrelevant. I pay for our trips together, within México and internationally (Costa Rica, Canada, Argentina, Netherlands, South Africa, Guatemala). If Victor receives a tourist visa, I will pay for his travels to and within the U.S., including his room and board. I paid for his visa application. I give Victor additional money when I visit.
Victor's hoped-for trips to the U.S. will be brief, 2-3 weeks, each devoted to visiting and sightseeing. No work.
All we want is to be able to exchange visits, instead of my always coming to Yucatán, as I've been doing now for more than 22 years.
Despite the visa application being many pages long and asking about all kinds of things, there is no place to insert the above information. For our first 2015 application, I sent the note as an email to the consulate. I received a rote non-response, including "... your daughter-in-law must demonstrate to the interviewing consular officer... " WTF?!
When we arrived for Victor's interview, I asked whether I could join him, and was told no, only a potential employer could go. Victor answered questions, but was not assertive about saying more. He was told his salary was insufficient and he would not get a visa.
For our next attempt (yesterday), I gave Victor multiple signed copies of the above note, with firm instructions to insist that the interviewer read it, and if they did not, to insist again after the next question and hand over another copy. He did that, repeatedly, and the woman refused to look at it! Grrrr.
Of course, all other information being the same, Victor was again refused a visa.
So let me recap the stupid parts of the U.S. visa process:
- They wrongly assume all married couples must live together.
- They wrongly assume their lengthy visa application captures all relevant information.
- There is no space on the visa application for additional information.
- They won't let another relevant party join the interview.
- They won't accept additional information by email or on paper.
If you know someone in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) who will actually hear me out, please let me know!
Update, August 2016: As commenters below and others suggested, I contacted my political representatives. No luck.
It's past time for me to update "Why Victor can't visit the U.S."
Last June, the day after the Supreme Court overturned the "Defense of Marriage Act", I heard for the first time about K-1 fiancé visas. It was immediately clear to me that Victor would be able to use this to enter the U.S.
But I had questions. I wasn't sure how to show that Victor would not become a financial burden to U.S. taxpayers. If Victor once entered the U.S. illegally more than 20 years ago (hypothetically speaking!), would that be a problem? What would Victor's citizenship status be, in both Mexico and the U.S. after we married? If he returned to live in Mexico after we're married, could he then easily visit me repeatedly at length for years afterwards? Do I need a prenuptial agreement? And more along these lines.
I eventually did speak with a gay immigration attorney and got some answers. The biggest problem is that the U.S. State Department has a stunted idea of married living arrangements. They make no provision for a married couple who do not want to live permanently together in the U.S.
Victor is not quite ready to retire, and is not ready to move here permanently. We envision some years, maybe many years, of exchanging weeks- and months-long visits in one another's countries.
But if Victor used a K-1 visa to come to Los Angeles and we got married, in the eyes of the State Department, he is immediately an applicant for permanent residency, and could not leave the U.S. for more than six months at a time. We could probably work with that, but it's not ideal.
So we have decided not to pursue the K-1 visa at this time.
Instead, many years after we gave up on it in the past, we might try a simple tourist visa again. Maybe next year, or maybe when Victor retires. And, if that fails again, maybe then we will pursue the K-1 visa.
So there are more possibilities, but there's not yet a perfect solution.
[2015 update]
During my summer of traveling around Western Europe (1975), I felt free and totally unknown, and I played with being gay. I had accepted privately that I was gay, I avidly followed gay news, I had been a spectator at the Hollywood gay pride parade, but I hadn't told anyone or done anything.
On this trip, for the first time, I knowingly set foot in gay bars, I went to an all-gay porn shop, and I tried cruising. I never actually hooked up with anyone. Especially with cruising, I was frequently paralyzed by not knowing the "rules" (as well as not knowing the language!). I scoured Amsterdam's red light district twice looking for a male prostitute in a window, but I never saw one.
I kept notes on my gay-related activities on separate pages in my trip journal, and I ripped those out after the trip so I could show the rest to everyone. The gay pages went into my permanent personal diary, and I reviewed them for this note.
That's all the travel postings until I get a chance to scan even older photos. (Click the "Travel" label at the bottom of this post to see what's here.)
But in keeping with my blog title, there's an outrage subtext to many of my trips.
In the mid-90s, I was naive about some aspects of immigration.
I knew all about the homophobia of our immigration laws: how citizens can bring a spouse into the U.S., but not a same-sex partner.
Living my whole life in south Texas and southern California, I also knew about all the issues around undocumented Mexicans in the U.S.
But I also knew that plenty of Mexicans came to visit with proper papers, so I thought that was easy, just a tourist visa. I had a lot to learn about tourist visas!
I was shocked when Victor's first application for a tourist visa was denied. The vague denial information from the State Department didn't help.
A staffer in my Congressman's office explained it to me more thoroughly. The U.S. needs to be convinced that a visa applicant will return to Mexico. How are they convinced? If you have a good job to return to in Mexico, that helps. If you have money in the bank in Mexico, a spouse and children well-established in Mexico, if you own a home in Mexico, if you have a non-refundable return ticket, if you've traveled outside of Mexico in the past and returned -- these sorts of things help convince the U.S. State Department that you will return to Mexico.
If, on the other hand, like Victor in the 90s, you're prime working age, your job in Mexico pays near minimum wage (Mexico minimum wage!), you have no wife or kids (!), you own no property, you have no savings, .... Well, forget it!
And there's nothing I could do to promise that Victor would return to Mexico, since, as the Congressman's aide put it, "Kidnapping is illegal." That is, short of locking someone in chains, there's no way to guarantee that they'll get back to Mexico.
On our second application, I wrote offering to post a monetary bond, but the application was denied again.
We tried once more. This time, I went with Victor to speak to the U.S. consul. He bluntly told us to stop wasting our time and money; Victor would not be getting a tourist visa.
We got the message. We gave up, and decided to travel outside of the U.S. (So far, Costa Rica, British Columbia, Argentina and, of course, all over Yucatán.)
At the time, I had hopes that maybe the politics of immigration would improve in the future. Ha! With Dubya's election, 9/11, vigilante border militias, things just kept getting worse.
Please support the Uniting American Families Act, and comprehensive immigration reform that includes it. Thanks!
[
2014 update]
