Today Tomo and I went to the USCIS offices in Santa Anna to interview for her green card, and she was approved! It’s been a pretty time consuming process (to put it lightly), however we were somewhat amazed that throughout the entire process everything went as smoothly as it could. We are really praising God for this, as we have heard many stories of people with nightmare experiences trying to navigate the maze of immigration documents and procedures you have to go through.
We started applying for a visa for Tomo last summer, and after getting married and moving to the U.S. we then had to apply for an adjustment of status to permanent resident (Green Card). All in all it took just over a year or mailing forms back and forth from here to Japan or to the U.S. offices. But again, every interview went smoothly, we made all the application deadlines, and the government somehow managed to do things even a little ahead of schedule.
One of the “fun” things we had to do in all this was constantly prove that Tomo was not paying me to marry her so that she could get a green card. We had to submit emails, letters, photos of us at various stages in our relationship, and anything else to prove we really wanted to marry each other.
Things got off to a rough start this morning; we arrive a half hour ealry, but as we approached the Federal building in Santa Anna there was a huge line, and no one was being allowed inside, not even employees. As we waited in line I nervously watched the security guards placing caution tape around the building, effectively locking all of us on the inside of the danger zone, all the while hearing whispers about chemicals and gas. After waiting an hour for HazMat to come check everything out, watching news photographers walk around while helicopters circled overhead, and two guys being led out of the building in hand cuffs, we were finally allowed to go in. Still not sure exactly what happened. But after this slightly nerve wracking delay, everything turned out ok.
This last interview was one last check up to make sure we had a real marriage before granting her a (conditional) green card. We had to show pictures of the wedding (with all the guests that witnessed it), and that we opened up a joint bank account (Apparently this is what the government sees as the ultimate sign of trust). After a nice twenty minute chat the interviewer was satisfied that there wasn’t anything fishy going on and she approved Tomo’s application for a green card.
It almost seems like a waste that we’re going to be going back to Japan next year, after putting so much effort into getting the green card, but as far as we could tell there wasn’t any other type of Visa we could get that would allow Tomo to stay in the U.S. for a year. This is a huge answer to prayer, as this has been a constant struggle to do everything exactly right. God has been so faithful to provide for us recently and we are trusting and relying on Him to continue to do so as we raise support to go serve Him in Japan.