I met the love of my life in March of 2008 at what became our favorite restaurant in the Turks and Caicos Islands. She was born and raised in the Dominican Republic but moved to the Turks and Caicos Islands at the age of 17 to work. She is so beautiful and I love the way that she makes me feel. Immediately we shared a bond that could never be broken and I knew that she would be my wife one day. A few months later she became pregnant with out son and went to the D.R. to have him. After she came back we began planning our future together and decided that it would be best for us to get married and move to the U.S. (where I was born) with our son. I started getting all of what I thought was the right information about visas and how to get my son his US citizenship together. Realizing that because her and our son were both from the D.R. , we decided that to start the process we would have to move to D.R. Once in D.R. we started paying for everything to for the wedding and finding out what we needed for the marriage license. We even went to the place where we had to pay for the license and everything and got a list of everything that we needed for the license and how much it would cost. So I proposed to my fiance on April 21, 2011 and we set our wedding date for April 23, 2011 and started getting everything we needed. We bought everything for the wedding and paid for a place to have the ceremony. A few days before the wedding we went to pay for the license and give them all of our papers when they tell us they we were missing something. On the list it says that I need my original birth certificate with an apostille seal on it and they said that they my original birth certificate didn't have it. After everything I started calling everyone who I knew in the US to see what an apostille seal is because I have never heard of that before and neither did most of the people I knew. Finally my mother found a lawyer who told me that I would have to come to Miami and request it from the government myself and it was not a big deal. At this point I was very frustrated and my fiance was disappointed. We spent a lot of money getting ready for our big day and had a lot of my family fly in to be there for our big day and it looked like it wasn't going to happen. We decided that after everything we went through that we were going to have the ceremony anyway and get the license after that. The ceremony was beautiful and everyone had a great time. We were glad that we decided to do it anyway and my fiance was very very happy. After all the fun and everyone went home we had to rethink our plans. We decided to start working on our son's papers before I left to go to Miami so that they would be done by the time I got back with the RIGHT birth certificate. We found a someone to fill out all of our son's papers and get us an interview date which was a month away. That was great because it gave me enough time to go and get everything that I needed for the license and come back to D.R. After I got to Miami I found out that it would take more than a month for me to get the birth certificate that I needed and of course you know that I was PISSED but I did it anyway... At that point I decided that we were just going to have to figure out how to get my fiance to the US without us getting married in D.R. because I was way too frustrated. When I got back to the D.R. for our son's interview the people at the embassy told me that I didn't have to come to the first interview because the first one was just to pay the fees and turn in all the papers. After that we sat down and I told my fiance that we had to do things differently because I could keep flying back and forth because I was trying to find a job and we were running out of the money we had saved to get everything we needed. The embassy gave us the second interview for our son for a month after the first one and I decided that I would talk to some lawyers in Miami about what to do about getting my fiance to Miami. After returning to Miami I found a guy who did immigration work for a lot of people in my family and they all said that he was very good and extremely fast. When I spoke with him he told me about the fiance visa and he told me that we could have my fiance in the US within 3 to 4 months. I wrote him a check immediately and we began the paper work. When I went back to the DR I told me fiance what I did and she was really excited. We also went to our son's interview and the lady who filed the papers made a mistake saying that I was out of the country for about 10 years and that wasn't true. It was crazy because the consular officer was asking me all kinds of crazy questions but lucky my passport did not agree with the papers we filed. He told us that my son was approved but I had to send proof to my wife for her to bring to him that I was in the US for 5 consecutive years before the age of 14... We were extremely happy about this and we left to celebrate. After I sent all the information the man requested, my son received his American passport about 3 months later and I was crazy happy. Now 6 months after filing for my fiance's papers and my son getting his passport, we are now 23 days away from my fiance's interview. This has been a long and crazy journey but I thank God that everything seems to be working out. My fiance and I have been through our ups and downs but through it all I just can't see myself with no one else but her. I love her and my son with all of me and I can't until we are together again as a family.
