Immigration system must undergo complete overhaul

This has been a long, strange trip indeed. I married a Kenyan guy back in 2009, believing in my naive American way that I had a right to love whom I pleased, and live a life with them. It took a long time to get him into the U.S., but back then, before Donald Trump, the system worked, albeit slowly.

Still, I remember the day at the consulate when I expected to get a visa for him and left crying. The security guard comforted me, telling me that “everyone cries here.”

Now we’ve been fighting our way through the U.S. immigration system for four years, trying to bring my twin stepsons to the United States. Jamil and Jamal were 12 when their mom, their dad, and I decided it was time for them to enter the American school system. The boys are bright and full of questions, and we wanted them to thrive in an educational system that rewards bright kids who think outside the box.

They’re 15 now. Four years, thousands of dollars, and boatloads of grief later, we’re still trying. The financial stress has been rough but bearable. The toll on the marriage has nearly broken us. What has the disappointment done to the kids? We won’t know until years later.

Now their mom has been diagnosed with glaucoma and she’s having increasing difficulty dealing with the back and forth to their boarding school, and the other responsibilities she bears alone, as a single mom with a third son incapacitated by cerebral palsy.

And I feel helpless, stripped

of the rights I took for granted.

The boys can’t even visit. Once you’ve applied for a visa to immigrate, the authorities suspect you’ll overstay your visa if they let you come to the U.S. You’re guilty until proven innocent in the U.S. immigration system.

That needs to change. I’ve come to believe that everyone who works for the U.S. Department of State is morally culpable for keeping families apart. The Department of Homeland Security is worse. These agencies need to do more than recover from Trump. A single consular official determined the course of our boys’ lives when he turned down my application to sponsor them in 2016. He (or she) separated them from their father, diminished their educational opportunities, and acted as a gatekeeper, enforcing structural racism.

My husband became a citizen in June. He first applied to sponsor the boys as a green card holder two years ago. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is still sitting on his application.

I’m still a patriotic American, but there is nothing American about our immigration

system. The inhumanity that has marked America’s treatment of refugees and asylum-seekers is present in a milder form throughout the legal immigration system. Accountability needs to be built into the system at every weak point. A single consular official should not have the power to decide the fate of people’s children. Neither should a single U.S. Customs and Border Protection official.

There should be strict time limits for decision-making, both at the State Department and the USCIS, and an appeals process that requires the agency to respond in a reasonable amount of time.

I’ve become radicalized on the subject of immigration. The culture of the State Department needs to change. Lose the arrogance. Make the visa process transparent. I believe the entire DHS should be abolished, not just ICE. Homeland Security was a half-assed, misbegotten idea from the start, hastily assembled by the Bush administration as a knee-jerk response to 9/11. Take it apart and start again.

My husband proudly voted this November for Joe Biden. This was the first time in his life that he voted. Kenya is riddled with corruption and he never felt there was a candidate worthy of his vote.

I hope the Biden administration doesn’t disappoint him. Or the kids.