Love Without Borders
By Cari Crosby

Have you ever had to prove a serious romantic relationship in your life exists?  That’s exactly what I’m in the process of doing right now for immigration purposes, and it’s been a very interesting process.  It not only involves telling the tale of how you first met, but also including proof of how and where you met.  We have had to provide proof of every trip we have taken together, and how we have communicated while apart by printing out old emails, and copying letters and phone bills.  And the most complicated of all – we are to prove that we are in a “serious and committed relationship.”  Sure, we have emails.  We have letters, and yes, we have lots of phone bills.  We even have a joint bank account.  But how do you go about “proving” your relationship is serious?  Can anyone ever really do that, unless you truly know two people and what they are feeling?  It seems like such an absurd duty to me, that a government agency can somehow dictate who is and who is not in a serious and committed relationship.  True, some people would simply get married to avoid the hassle of proving it, but marriage for the sake of immigration purposes seems similarly absurd.  Marriage is not something the government should force (or forbid, for that matter) to prove something as abstract as love.  And besides, who says that everyone who is married is in more of a “serious romantic relationship” than everyone who is not?  You can’t prove love.

Now by no means am I suggesting that I don’t think the government should have immigration options for situations such as ours – we realize how lucky we are to even have it as an option.  What I’m suggesting instead is that a romantic relationship is so impossibly intangible that it cannot be proven with such minimal things as emails, letters, or phone bills.  Bureaucratic barriers to keep people apart are rarely a good idea.