Aug 25 2007
Governmental stupidity
My friend Pete is an American living, working, raising his kids and paying taxes in England. He and his second wife, who is Polish, wanted to come to Michigan to vist Pete’s family and give his parents a chance to see their new granddaughter. It turns out that Poles must obtain a tourist visa to visit the US, so Pete’s wife made the four-hour trip from their home in central England to London to apply for one at the US embassy there. Everything was going along swimmingly until the embassy person found out that Pete is still a US citizen. At that point, they told her that she needed to apply for an immigrant visa under the theory that she and Pete planned to move the US permanently. It didn’t matter to the embassy how much documentation they produced showing that they own a house in England, that Pete has a full-time job there, that their kids are enrolled in school there, they insisted that she get a immigrant visa and they would not budge.
They considered doing just that, but were afraid that if they got one, and then returned to England when their trip was over, it would count against them if they decide in the future to move to the US and needed an immigrant visa for her for real.
Pete’s family even got Senator Levin’s office involved, but they were unable to anything.
She wound up getting a tourist visa to Canada, so she is staying at a motel in Windsor, and Pete and rotating family members drive back and forth across the bridge every day to visit her. She and Pete, as planned, are returning to England today.
This idiotic policy has done nothing to protect whatever interests the US government thinks it is protecting, but instead has generated a great deal of ill-will toward the government on the part of Pete and his wife, and their friends and relatves here and in England and Poland.