Finding Love Abroad, Then Support Online for Visa Quest

[Asante Maroon 0]

This is what love has done to Wendy Brown: She's lost weight, resumed smoking and all but decided to move to the Balkans to be with her Albanian fiance. And each night, she spends hours in her cozy Baltimore apartment mingling online with strangers who are equally fixated on the same topic: getting their soul mates through the U.S. immigration system.

"We are both devastated," Brown, 38, wrote last spring on VisaJourney.com, reporting that the U.S. Embassy in Albania had denied her fiance a visa. She also posted a list of the questions the fiance was asked at his interview. "I'm going to keep fighting and fighting until we get what we both want more than anything in the world. . . . and that is to be together." Many people are frustrated with the immigration process and its long lines and opaque applications that, if misinterpreted, can send a case back to square one. Perhaps none are more ardent than the growing ranks of U.S. citizens applying for fiance and spouse visas, who say their passion is driven by a sense that their own government is fighting them and by the fear that delays or denials might spell the end of a romance.

In recent years, these American petitioners have channeled their despair into a few Web sites featuring the odd pairing of love stories and red-tape navigation for those fed up with the federal immigration agency's help line, whose representatives are trained in immigration regulations and provide scripted advice that critics say is often wrong.

VisaJourney, a site whose 35,000 members are mostly Americans with foreign fiances and spouses, is at once a celebration of love and a condemnation of bureaucracy. Members, who call themselves VJ'ers, describe meeting their beloveds in Kenyan bars, Jamaican churches, online video games. They have posted thousands of photos of smiling couples in foreign lands. Their profile pages are adorned with beating hearts, clocks counting the hours since their last meetings and such statements as "feels like eternity . . . without him."

Rest of the article ---> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...ews⊂=new

I read the article...pretty interesting. Wish they would have highlighted varying situations. Don't know if this article will elicit positive or negative results. We shall see.

[Fandango 1,439]

There's prejudice anywhere you go. I suspect if I moved to another country, I'd find some anti American people pretty quickly too.

I've lived in three countries and I can assure you Americans have not cornered the market on xenophopia (or racism). I used to live in Poland and most of my friends there were Latin American expats with Polish spouses. My best friend in Warsaw is a Polish woman with a Peruvian husband. Among our circle of friends was a North Korean family who defected to Poland. The neighbors were quite puzzled at the notion that people born on 4 different continents could get along. #######? I'm not saying these folks were representative of all Poles (in fact, I know they were NOT), but the point is there are ignorant twits in any country.

For the record, like Jundp, no one in my family has questioned my decision to marry a Canadian/Brit, nor did they question any of my past relationships with men born in Mexico, Poland, and Switzerland (and yes, I have also dated Americans, by the way). Neither has (or did) anyone else I know.

My family didn't balk at the decision as they really love D, but they were befuddled in the beginning. I guess it was something they weren't expecting! My dad saw this show on HBO about strange shows from all over the world and there was a cooking show from the UK where someone cooked a placenta Then when I told them about D, my dad was all 'some of them eat placentas over there!' LOLZ

My mom always says 'my daughter dances to her own drummer' heheheheheh.

My friends/family initially thought I was losing my mind, tbh....I had gone through quite a rough few years....bad car accident/life threatening surgery and multi-year recovery, my grandmother (like another mother to me) had a horrible and long illness that claimed her in the end and my family and I had a horrible adjustment to that, my parents moved from S FL to Orlando, and then I left my husband. So when I told everyone D & how about I was moving to the UK, everyone was all :blink: :blink:

Everyone loves D and there's absolutely no issues anywhere with his 'foreign' status....but that's not to say there wasn't some '#######?' on everyone's minds to start with

[derekkj 0]

Actually when I told my Mom about Derek she said that she always thought I would end up with a foreigner.

She was a little confused about the Canadian part though - she always thought I would end up with a Brit!

[Duckhunter 0]

Dear Person of this post : I am trying to reach a WENDY BROWN to get THE QUESTIONS ASKED HER FINACE AT HIS INTERVIEW FOR A K-1 . Please tell me where I can read them. I read a newspaper story on her in the WASHINGTON POST that said "SHE LISTED THE QUESTIONS ASKED HER FINANCE AT HIS INTERVIEW " in a story posted at VisaJourney.com . I cant find her post or QUESTIONS ASKED HIM anywhere a VisaJourney.com. Can you help me ? Sin. Keith EMAIL ADDRESS IS : Duck@mynewroads.com

[Krikit 1,164]

Dear Person of this post : I am trying to reach a WENDY BROWN to get THE QUESTIONS ASKED HER FINACE AT HIS INTERVIEW FOR A K-1 . Please tell me where I can read them. I read a newspaper story on her in the WASHINGTON POST that said "SHE LISTED THE QUESTIONS ASKED HER FINANCE AT HIS INTERVIEW " in a story posted at VisaJourney.com . I cant find her post or QUESTIONS ASKED HIM anywhere a VisaJourney.com. Can you help me ? Sin. Keith EMAIL ADDRESS IS : Duck@mynewroads.com

Check this link.

[sarahaziz 0]

[SnowyTater 0]

Actually when I told my Mom about Derek she said that she always thought I would end up with a foreigner.

Man...my mom asked if I was SURE I wasn't a lesbian.

Dead serious.

Not even funny.

Anyway xD Really shocked by the increase of fiance visas going out since 2005, geez, I had no idea!

Truly getting crazy globalized these days...wonder what things will be like in another two or three + decades...

[Alex+R 0]

I'm glad to see this bumped, because I missed it the first time around and never saw the article! Wow. VJ on the front page of WaPo, eh? I have to say, I detected undertones of judgment from the reporter. I know you need to find the dramatic tension to make a story, but the person she chose to feature, Wendy, really made the reader suspicious of her relationship. It fed into the prejudices. To be more balanced, she should have also told the story of someone more representative of the rest of VJ, someone the reader could more easily identify with, regardless of whether Wendy's fiance truly loves her (as I'm sure he does) or not.

The reporter's job isn't to be good PR for VJ, but the choices she made show me that she had some bias against women like Wendy. Which is understandable.

[Pinocchio Liberal 268]

I'm glad to see this bumped, because I missed it the first time around and never saw the article! Wow. VJ on the front page of WaPo, eh? I have to say, I detected undertones of judgment from the reporter. I know you need to find the dramatic tension to make a story, but the person she chose to feature, Wendy, really made the reader suspicious of her relationship. It fed into the prejudices. To be more balanced, she should have also told the story of someone more representative of the rest of VJ, someone the reader could more easily identify with, regardless of whether Wendy's fiance truly loves her (as I'm sure he does) or not.

The reporter's job isn't to be good PR for VJ, but the choices she made show me that she had some bias against women like Wendy. Which is understandable.

Whats truly funny is your selective judgement of BIAS. Its there when you want and invisible when you don't!

[Alex+R 0]

PS I read the comments and I didn't think they were that hate-filled. I thought they were a reasonable response to what really looked like a woman who was getting played. Especially if you have no knowledge of how the system works, you would probably be inclined to see things that way. The ones about "why don't they move to where their spouses are?" were mostly just...dumb.

[garya505 2]

35000 members? Holy #######!

[Fandango 1,439]

Oh I remember this!

[john & jean 37]

Indeed, I am glad the article wasn't bad as the "article that won't be mentioned" was, but the comments once more are bad.

It amazes me how much I hear that people who marry americans are green card whores. Ok, some people are indeed just after a GC, but generalizing is awful!

Iwill not make threats, only promises; If anyone ever calls my beautiful wife a green card ####### to my face I vow to send them searching for an oral surgeon and a facial reconstruction. PROMISE.. John&Jean

[garya505 2]

Indeed, I am glad the article wasn't bad as the "article that won't be mentioned" was, but the comments once more are bad.

It amazes me how much I hear that people who marry americans are green card whores. Ok, some people are indeed just after a GC, but generalizing is awful!

Iwill not make threats, only promises; If anyone ever calls my beautiful wife a green card ####### to my face I vow to send them searching for an oral surgeon and a facial reconstruction. PROMISE.. John&Jean

I always tell people to watch out because my wife worked in a butcher shop and knows how to cut up a pig!

Edited February 14, 2008 by garya505

[Sinergy 3]

Somehow i feel this article was an embarrasment to VJer's, especially the way we were painted in the article. And then the normal daily flaming on here went to the washington post comments section. I think bringing up the immigration process to the press, sure ok, throwing VJ into the article, couldve been left out. We all look like lonely desperate losers with nothing better to do than cry and complain on a forum. We of corse are not losers, but wow, if i had never been on here before and read that article, i would have assumed just that.