New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
On immigration, we did everything by the book, and it still didn’t matter
This month, I will give birth to my first child. When the contractions start, I will grab my go bag, jump in the car and head to the hospital. After what I hope is an easy labor, I will bring a beautiful new life into the world. But my fiance Isaac — father of my child and love of my life — won’t be there to support me. He’ll be thousands of miles away in Kenya, unable to see his child enter the world. All because of a broken immigration system that punishes everyone involved, even when you try to do things “the right way.”
Topics like DACA and family separations at the border have captured the hearts and pricked the consciousness of many Americans, and rightly so. But lost among the headlines are thousands of stories like mine — people stuck in an administrative and bureaucratic nightmare. These stories are quieter, but still painful for those involved: families who haven’t seen each other for years; well-educated and skilled spouses who are here legally but can’t earn an income; people stuck in a decades-long green card backlog; employers in nearly every industry who can’t secure the workers they need. The list goes on.
American immigration policy hasn’t been widely updated since the Clinton era in the 1990s. But the last four years made an already troubled system worse. President Trump oversaw approximately 1,064 separate immigration-related changes, which dismantled crucial immigration infrastructure, forced many people with employment-based visas to leave the country and halted visa processing at U.S. posts worldwide. U.S. embassies and consulates fired or furloughed workers, and processing still hasn’t recovered despite a phased reopening. Isaac’s visa application has been sitting in a stack of papers in the National Visa Center in New Hampshire since being approved last October. No progress has been made since then.
But we are more than a casualty of the system. We are partners who simply want to raise our child and create a life together. I met Isaac in 2017, as a volunteer with the Africa Yoga Project, a nonprofit that empowers youths from the slums to become yoga teachers.
Isaac had gone through the program himself. The practice gave him a newfound sense of belonging and community in the slums of Mathare where he taught primary school. We started dating the following year when Isaac came to the United States to teach with the Africa Yoga Project and study on a tourist visa. After a relationship forged despite the distance apart, we got engaged on Oct. 26, 2019.
Over a year ago, Isaac and I filed the documents required to support our fiance visa application. Proving the validity of our relationship meant compiling close to 100 pages of photocopied text messages, communication and photos of us together over the last three years. Every one of my family members wrote letters of support. We assumed it would be the estimated five to seven months (as stated on the USCIS website) before Isaac would be able to move to America to begin the next step of our relationship and immigration process. It is over a year later and we are still waiting.
I was visiting Isaac in Kenya last spring as the pandemic took hold. Suddenly, flights were canceled and I was unable to return home. Even though it was an unstable and scary time, we were blessed with seven months together on his family’s farm, and in August 2020 I learned that I was pregnant. In September 2020, the Kenyan government issued a warning: tourists whose visas had been extended due to COVID-19 travel bans had to leave within two weeks or face fines or jail. With flights running again, I had no choice but to come home. Since then, the process to obtain Isaac’s fiance visa hasn’t moved forward, but the pregnancy has.
Ironically, we’re in this mess because we did things the “right way” and formally requested a fiance visa. In theory, Isaac could be here right now on his tourist visa, but our lawyer says that could be considered fraud, since we’ve already filed our intent to marry. The only other option is to abandon the $5,000-plus we’ve spent on legal and government fees over the past year, throwing away over 14 months of work on the visa application. But that would prevent us from applying for a fiance visa and path to citizenship again. We’d at least be together temporarily but we’d be stuck in a logistical and legal purgatory: unable to get married or for him to move forward with legal status or rights in the US. Would that be worth it for Isaac to be here for the birth of our child?
I’ve considered the alternative — moving to Kenya and trying to get citizenship there after the baby arrives. But that would mean raising our child in an unfamiliar and less reliable medical system, without potable water and intermittent electricity, and more importantly with far fewer employment options for both of us . If we stay here in the U.S., we hope to provide the best life for our baby and help support Isaac’s family back in Kenya. We’ve decided it’s the best option. For now, I have to accept that, barring a miracle, I will soon be a single mom, without Isaac by my side to help navigate those early months together or to help and support our baby. As a selfemployed yoga teacher I don’t have formal maternity leave, so will return to work full time soon after having the baby. Fortunately I have the love and support of so many friends and my parents, with whom I am living at the moment. But I have no idea when I’ll see Isaac again, when we’ll be able to move forward with our lives together as a family. There’s no timeline.
I’ve tried everything I can think of to unite our family, including calling elected officials and contacting the State Department. Nothing has sped up the process. That’s why I’m sharing our story. Immigration reform isn’t an abstract political thing. It would make a tangible difference in the lives of everyday people like me. It would allow our family to experience the birth of our baby as a joyful union, without the undertone of separation and grief that persists. While we wait for visa processing and interviews to resume, our family’s life moves forward, yet apart.
The next time you head to the voting booth or consider calling your elected officials, I hope you’ll remember our story and the difference that a compassionate and pragmatic immigration system would make. Our family’s immigration challenges are much less acute than others. But that doesn’t make me feel much better as I lie awake staring at the empty space in bed beside me, feeling the kicks of someone who is growing quickly and ready to make their arrival, with or without Dad.
Immigration reform isn’t an abstract political thing. It would make a tangible difference in the lives of everyday people like me.