September 3, 2012
Equality FTW: Immigration Equality Story
Before I get to the main point of my blog today, I just wanted to say how incredibly exciting and incredible this fandom is. As of yesterday, around 6 PM EDT, we reached and surpassed our funding goal for Equality FTW! I am so inspired by our community. When we set our minds to something, we can make anything happen. With 5 days left in our Indiegogo campaign, we are still looking to raise as much money as we can to make this campaign as amazing and wonderful as you all are. To check out the status of the campaign, go to equalityftw.org.
That being said, I want to take the time out to talk to you all about my family’s experience with immigration. My mum’s side of the family moved to Canada when my mum was young. Her younger sister was 4 when they moved, but even so, she has duel citizenship. Her husband Peter is an American, from California, and they were not married when my cousin Jamie was born. Until this summer, Canada had not recognized Peter’s divorce in California as legal for reasons I don’t know myself.
Peter got a job back in California and started this summer, and you would think that with my aunt’s dual citizenship and the fact that Peter is American, there would be absolutely no issue with them moving to the States with my cousin. Because my aunt and Peter only just got married this summer, however, the US government doesn’t recognize my 13-year-old cousin as being his dad’s son, which would automatically make him an American citizen.
My aunt, having dual citizenship, should easily be able to bring her son over, even with this challenge, but here again there are issues. She has an American birth certificate and an American passport, and yet still they want someone who was there when she was born to sign a document saying they were there when she was born in the US. Not a huge problem for someone around my age, but my grandparents and most of the people who were around back then have either passed away or moved from her original hometown.
All this boils down to an extremely convoluted and complicated situation that has my family frustrated to no end. Things have since worked out to a small degree, but there are still difficulties going through all of this. Looking at what has happened from my position on the outside, I see no point at which there should have been an actual problem with my aunt’s family being able to move to California. Do any of you have interesting/bizarre experiences? Please share them in the comments!
