I Married an Immigrant

As much as my husband's European pride doesn't allow him to admit it, he is indeed an immigrant. Yes, you read that right, he is a resident alien. How cool is that, I am married to an alien. Fun times right?
Sure when you think about the fact my 1 year old daughter understands French and English, that I get a "french" version of Ricky Ricardo when he gets mad at me and starts jumbling his English, I get awesome vacations traveling about Europe, and a great European outlook on life, but it's totally sucky when it comes to paying the freaking immigration fees! Are you kidding me! As discussed in a previous post they raised the immigration fees like a million percent. What used to be around $200 is now close to $600.
So anyways, here is where the fun part comes into play.
Jon and I both thought his residency expired on August 15th. I had printed off the petition at work and had brought it home on Friday. I wasn't planning on doing anything with it that weekend, but it was sitting on end table and I grabbed the folder and randomly decided to grab his residence card so I could fill in the number on the application.

WELL LO AND BEHOLD THE FREAKING EXPIRATION WAS JULY 15TH! THAT IS TOMORROW PEOPLE!

I seriously almost had a heart attack.
You see if we would have missed this deadline, Jon's residence would have immediately been revoked. I could have appealed, but the reason "I forgot" probably wouldn't have gone very far.
Jon would have had to immediately leave the country. Which means he couldn't work. We would have had to start the process over from the very beginning, which due to the hikes in the fees would have cost several thousand dollars.
I wouldn't have been able to float all of our bills on just my income alone, which would have left us in dire financial straits. Plus the simple fact that my husband just had to leave the country without me and I don't know when he is coming back and I am pregnant with our 2nd child would have not sat well with my emotions. Jon said that if this would have happened, we would have immediately put the house up for sale and moved to Belgium as it would have ruined us financially for me to try to stay here without him and try to keep everything together. He said he would have rather just started back over in Brussels.
I can't believe we came within 2 days of this happening to us. How totally crazy! But God is in control and I know that he gave me one of those silent urgings to look at his card in just enough time to get it all done.
So today I had to take a 2 hour lunch to run around and get affidavits from Tiffani and Nathan both attesting that we are married, have been married and are living in the "married life" basically saying "No, Jon didn't marry her for a green card".
Tiffani is going through a STRESSFUL audit this week (just 3 weeks before her wedding), but still managed to get me the affidavit (you rock!).
Then I had to get copy of our tax returns (I didn't have a copy of 2006), bank statements, our deed on our house, our home loan, Lyric's birth certificate, copy of her passport, and other misc. stuff. It wasn't difficult because obviously we are happily married and truly are living as man and wife. It was just kind of stressful getting everything together so last minute.
With US Immigration, you never want to make a mistake as it can be detrimental to your case. I normally like a lot of time gathering all my info to make sure that I am submitting everything that needs to be submitted. I did the best I could do with a 2 day notice, I'm just feeling nervous.
Oh plus I had to dip into our Belgium fund for the $550 filing fee. Fun, fun!

Anyways, the good news is Jon picked it all up and got it overnighted. It should be in their hands tomorrow at noon.

Crisis is indeed averted, but my nerves are shot. Thankfully this is the LAST immigration issue we will have unless Jon decides to become a dual citizen, which I don't think he is going to do.
My little temporary permanent resident will be a permanent resident very soon! :)

Now if only I could get him to wear an American Flag tshirt on July 4th! :)

Ok, in honor of our immigration issues today, I will leave you with some funny political cartoons/pictures:

Raise in US Immigration Fees

Jonathan and I got married almost 3 years ago and filed for his US residency in August of 2006. WELL, since we were married less than 2 years when we filed, then you have a conditional residency for 2 years and then we have to submitt a document to show that we are still married. We have to submit birth certificates of our kids (if any), copies of lease/mortgage to show we live together, bank documents to show we share finances and 2 affidavits of people who have known us the entire two years and can attest under oath that we are married and that we love eachother and that Jonathan didn't just marry me for a green card. :)
How funny is that!?!
But here's the kicker. When we did this process in 06', the fee for this was $170. Well we had heard that immigration fees were going up and I just checked today and the fees are now $465 plus an $80 fingerprint fee. But he already had his fingerprints taken... I guess they want to make sure his fingerprints didn't change in 2 years. You never know what marriage can do to you I guess :) That's an almost $400 increase in price!
So ya, add an extra $600 to the list of crap that needs to get paid for! :) It has to be done by August, so I have some time to work it all out.
So I just felt like complaining about the outrageous immigration fee hike, oh well!
I think they may be trying to discourage immigration, but I wish there was a way that those of us already in the process could get grandfathered in with the old fees. We were thinking about getting Jon dual citizenship, but not anymore. It's too expensive.
Well we are going to the Lowries tonight, so I better go.
Later!