Green Card
Themes in this story: Communicating with a partner about pursuing a green card, managing the application process timeline, coping with delays and uncertainty, submitting evidence, preparing for the interview, staying motivated.
Fernando: I've always thought that what’s most important is finding the right partner, and that was my first aim. I'm pretty open about being undocumented, so it probably came up early on in our relationship. But I waited until we realized we wanted to be together—to move in, to be partners. That’s when we started to talk more about wanting kids, wanting to travel, and what our future might look like.
Liz: I knew that he had DACA at the very beginning of our relationship, so it wasn't a surprise. I also knew I wanted us to travel together before having kids so I was ready to get the process going. I'm the type of person who approaches things like, This is just a task I need to complete so we can move forward. I think because of that, I was the one trying to push it along. It was an item on my checklist. Honestly, if I had known how long it was going to take, I probably would have done it even sooner.
Liz: We got engaged in December of 2023 and we decided to elope in May of 2024 just so we could get the process going while we planned our actual wedding. It ended up taking two months or so to get all the documents in order and submit our application. With the wedding planning, our jobs, and everything else, it took a little longer than expected.
Fernando: It’s amazing how many little steps there are. You almost have to choose a date that you want to aim to submit your application, and then try to jumpstart every part of the application at once so that as you hit roadblocks, you have plenty of time to deal with them.
Liz: I think of it like project management. As long as you follow your checklist and stay on top of it, get things in on time, it will be okay.
Liz: Thankfully, Fernando had thought ahead. He’d been saving up for the ring as well as the attorney fees and filing fees. It was just part of the budgeting process. He was also able to get a discount, which was a big help.
Fernando: Yea, I found out there was a discount for members of the immigrant rights organization that my sister is a part of. It was around $2,000 off, which was amazing. I know that cost can be a really big burden for people, so I would recommend looking around at different organizations for those sorts of discounts.
Fernando: Maybe it’s just me, but I had to double check every single form, and there ended up being two or three things that the attorney missed or put in the wrong place. So I recommend double checking the application and asking as many questions as you can. You hired them to do this, so do your due diligence, and once you're satisfied, have them submit it.
Fernando: When we applied our attorneys were telling us that there likely wouldn’t be an interview because ever since the pandemic they hadn’t been doing as many. We were regularly checking the USCIS website for updates and it was initially estimated to take nine months to process until suddenly the estimate changed to 36 months. We were really confused. My attorney explained that the administration was changing and they were asking everybody to do interviews again. He assured us that it was more like **nine months to get the interview, and then a few more months after that to get the green card.
Fernando: It was stressful. There were times when I freaked out about the fact that it was going to take so long, worrying about all the plans that we were trying to make. **I think it made a big difference being able to talk to an attorney who was seeing a lot of cases and knew what was actually happening versus what USCIS was telling us.
Liz: We submitted a lot of photos of us over the years, through every stage of our relationship; events he attended like my sister's wedding, and letters of support from friends and family.
Fernando: It was good to have a community willing to write letters of support. I think some people we knew wrote their own, and for others we came up with a template that we found online.
Liz: I remember there was a portion they wanted us to include in the letter responding to the question, What would happen if Fernando was not here? What would the burden be for Liz? It's not like it was going to be a financial burden and we don't have any children together, so we focused on the emotional toll. I was worried about whether that would be sufficient. If I had been a parent forced to cover bills on my own, that may have been a stronger argument but, since I don’t, I had to focus on the distress I’d feel if the person I love couldn’t be with me.
Fernando: Yes. They gave us a month's notice to let us collect all our documents. We had to get a certified birth certificate, a certified copy of the marriage certificate, all these little things. It was stressful because we had to move our honeymoon flight plans. You just have to build your life around this process.
Liz: We had a meeting with our attorney and he went over the potential tough questions that they could ask like, What side of the sink does she put her toothbrush on? or Which side of the bed does he sleep on? The hardest one was about favorite colors because I don't even know if I have a favorite color so I wouldn’t expect Fernando to know it. Our attorney told us they might separate us and ask us things like this individually, so that was good to prepare for in case that did happen, which thankfully it didn’t.
Liz: It was a lot less scary than I was expecting. The officer greeted us with a warm smile and we made some chit chat before he started the interview. I know Fernando was nervous but pretty quickly it became clear that the officer wasn't trying to trap us or ask any trick questions. It felt more like he was just following the necessary steps in the process. The interview only lasted for about twenty minutes and for some of that time we weren’t even talking, the officer was just entering information in the computer. We were told right then and there that Fernando had been approved and he just had to wait a few weeks for the card to arrive in the mail.
Fernando: The biggest surprise for me was the medical examination. You have to find a doctor, and drive there multiple times for shots and tests. My doctor was concerned that I tested positive for tuberculosis. Essentially he told me that if I wanted to ensure they’d accept me into the country as a legal permanent resident, I had to go through a process to eradicate all the TB from my body, which takes six months to a year. **I was shocked. I knew my wife didn't want to wait for something like that. I checked with my attorney about it and he told me not to worry, that it was common and they’d accept me even if the TB wasn’t fully out of my system.
Fernando: It’s really helpful to have a community where you can quickly reach out and say, Hey, here's what came up for me, has anybody gone through this? There's a lot of forums out there, but I just don't rely on them as much as I do networks like Immigrants Rising. Having a group of people that you can quickly check in with is really important to getting through this process.
Fernando: One of my best friends got married and we couldn’t make it to the wedding. I had these dreams of traveling outside of the country or I wanted to be at events for my friends and I couldn’t. It was hard, but it was also a nice motivator because it made me want to get off the couch and do something about it. My wife, she's a U.S. citizen. She's known and tasted that freedom and she has talked about it so highly, how amazing it is to be able to travel. She was willing to sponsor me so that we could enjoy those things together. It's nice to have somebody motivating you so that you can have the life that you've dreamed of.
I was also motivated by being able to help my parents. In fact, the very first time I met with my attorney, I asked him about sponsoring them. We had a conversation about how long that process was going to take—and it takes forever. After getting the green card, I’ll have to wait many years to become a citizen, then I can request for my mom, then she's got to become a citizen, then she can request for my dad. If you want to have that protection for your family, the sooner you start the sooner they're going to get it. It's better not to overthink it, just get it started.
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