The process for returning US citizens and their former ‘green card’ holding spouses should be streamlined. When you have a ‘no-brainer’ case, there’s no need to turn it into a full blown, mind sapping, financially draining exercise just because the agency in charge has the authority to do just that. When this happens, you separate US families for no reason other than - you have the power and authority to do it. Wouldn’t it be great to use this power and authority to facilitate the return home of US citizens to be reunited with their families instead of using it to crush people and keep US families separated?
Exhibit 1: Our ‘no-brainer’ case
I’m a US citizen, a US taxpayer and an 11 year US air force veteran. My wife is a former USA permanent resident, a US taxpayer - we file a joint US tax return and have since we got married in 1990, and she is the mother of our 2 US born (Ohio) daughters. We own a home in Citrus Springs Florida where our daughters have lived since Feb 2022. We filled out paperwork to get my wife’s green card ‘renewed’ in Mar 2022 figuring it would be a snap. We’re almost 3 years into the mind numbing bureaucratic process and they tell us it’ll be another 28 months for them to make a ‘decision.’ We’re waiting on a ‘vaccine waiver’ to be approved. So, I don’t need any vaccines to return home; our daughters don’t need any but my wife does? How does that make sense? Certainly not a health issue. The only issue here is a human rights issue, where our US family is separated by mindless never ending red tape. They’re grinding us into a fine powder. And the bonus is, my wife and I pay taxes on our worldwide income to pay for it. This needs to end. If a US citizen is returning home, he/she should be welcomed and the agency in charge of the process should be in the facilitating business, looking for ways to make it happen - especially in no-brainer cases like ours - instead of the current system where the agency is actively looking for ways to make the process more and more frustrating, time consuming and financially draining. Almost as if they want to make it so difficult that you give up. And then I can almost hear them celebrating, ‘Yeah, another successful outcome.’ For more details about our ‘bone-crushing’ green card saga, read chapter 10 of my book, ‘Lockdown Australia: Pandemic of Madness.’