Last year, the US Department of State issued more than 9.9m non-immigrant visas. These documents allow foreign nationals to visit the United States for a variety of reasons (business, pleasure and education being the most popular) and stay for a few weeks up to many years.
When their visas expire, if these foreign nationals are ineligible for an extension, they are expected to return to their home countries. Until then, they live ostensibly as Americans: working, studying and travelling as their visa restrictions permit, but all the while undoubtedly building relationships – and sometimes even falling in love.
The portraits below are of couples who, upon finding their burgeoning love beset by the countdown to a visa’s expiration, did the only thing they could: they got married.
Joshua Harvey from Queens and Inga Rød from Norway
Meeting in July 2014 through a mutual friend at a party in Brooklyn, Joshua Harvey and Inga Rød thought each other cute and got to talking. After two hours of chatting, he made his move.
“I kissed you,” he recalls, “and you hated that kiss.”
“It was so bad, like cigarettes,” Rød adds, laughing.
The two have been a couple ever since.
Things moved quickly: he met her mother and sister when they visited New York from Norway that October, and she celebrated Thanksgiving with his family in North Carolina. They both decided to move into a Brooklyn apartment together in December.
They planned on traveling to Norway that Christmas but needed to wait on Rød’s student visa. She had switched schools and her visa wasn’t transferred, so she filed new paperwork that September. They waited for the visa, and waited, and waited until Christmas came and went.
“I still don’t have my student visa,” says Rød. “If I leave this country now, it looks like I’ve been here over a year illegally.” Should she leave, Rød fears she would have no chance of obtaining another visa to return to Harvey. As if this wasn’t difficult enough, last winter she also received news that both her grandparents in Norway were hospitalized with pneumonia.
Soon after, over breakfast at a restaurant, Harvey mentioned that the venue might be perfect for a wedding. They discussed marriage in the past, Harvey first bringing it up when Rød pointed to the apparent futility of a relationship whose end date was stamped in her passport. Although she was initially hesitant – “I didn’t want him to marry me because he wanted me to stay,” she says, “I wanted him to marry me because he loves me” (to which Harvey replies, “I wanted you to stay because I love you!”) – Rød eventually came around.
The date was set for 1 May, the ceremony was convened at the Norwegian Seamen’s Church in Manhattan. His family travelled up from North Carolina, her family flew in from Norway, and besides an unseasonable chill, everything was beautiful.
Rød’s documents remain another matter. The couple filed green card paperwork, but it had a sputtering start. With their first marriage certificate lost in the mail and their second suspected of being trashed by a surly former roommate, the third was submitted with Rød’s application in July. It was returned for typographical errors, but a corrected one is now with the government. As for how long it will be before the couple can to travel to Norway, it’s still tough to tell.
“Our lawyer told us two months to a year, so I’m hoping two months,” says Rød, “But I’m being realistic.”
Samuel Lenherr from Switzerland & Stephanie Parker from Manhattan
“For the first nine months we spoke Spanish,” says Lenherr of his conversations with Parker, whom he met at an Argentine language school in October 2010. His grade-school English instruction had slipped and she knew no German, but they were both studying Spanish, so in the language of their adopted country, they flirted.
“There wasn’t any ambiguity because we couldn’t afford that,” Parker remarks, panning their Spanish. “Everything we said was direct, like ‘I like you!’”
They caught each other’s eye during an outing with fellow students and spent their remaining weeks in school together. At the conclusion of classes, Parker planned to travel to Colombia and Lenherr to Patagonia, but they put that off through New Year’s. In January, Parker relented, but the couple remained in touch online, planning their next meeting in February in Peru. She stayed three weeks before running out of money and returning home to New York.
A blitzkrieg of jet-setting followed: after travelling South America through May, Lenherr followed Parker to the United States; a month later, the couple travelled to Switzerland, where she met his parents; they then flew to North Carolina, where he met her parents; afterward, the couple returned to Switzerland, where they stayed until Parker’s three-month visa expired, whereupon they headed to North Carolina once more, Lenherr now with a six-month visa.
“We could technically live together six months of the year in America and six months of the year in Switzerland,” Parker explains, “but that’s not economically feasible ... It was going to be hard, if we didn’t get married, to have a normal life.”
The couple legally wed in Chapel Hill in December 2011, which allowed Lenherr to remain in the United States until May, when they threw a celebration with friends and family.
Before the year was out the newlyweds moved to Montana, though at the time of this writing they are in Switzerland. They intend on flying to Chapel Hill for a friend’s wedding, then trying to settle down in Asheville – oh, but they’re going to Uganda first. Everything suggests that wanderlust, rather than being an impulse to overcome, is a condition of their relationship.
Marcos Mercado from Lima, Peru & Brianna Mills from Sparks, Nevada
One night in 2012, Mercado was driving to Mills’ home in Minneapolis when he was pulled over. It was a routine stop, but the officer discovered that his driver’s license was expired. Further investigation revealed his student visa also lapsed. He was taken to jail, where he sat for three days until his father posted bail.
The son of a pastor, Mercado came to the United States in 2007 under a visa covering religious workers’ families. He became ineligible for an extension upon turning 21, but then obtained a student visa. This, unfortunately, could not be renewed after he left school.
“He could have applied for a family visa,” explains Mills, “But he didn’t take care of it.”
She met Mercado in 2011 while they were working at a restaurant. They started hanging out, joined by a common interest in physical activities like yoga. A year in, they began dating; eight months later, Mercado was pulled over and the couple was considering their options: moving or matrimony.
“I was hesitant,” Mills says of marrying, “But at the same time the thought of his life being ruined by having to go back to Peru when all of his family lives here ... In the moment, [marriage] seemed right.”
“I thought it would be weird because we weren’t dating for a long time,” says Mercado. “But we wanted to stay together, so we decided to get married.”
A month after Mercado was released, the couple wed. He received his green card a year later – just when things were souring. The interests which first brought them together were now driving them apart.
“We, at the end of the day, didn’t have that much in common,” Mills explains. “I was fond of being outdoors and going to concerts, and he wanted to do jujitsu and lift weights.”
“I was more into active stuff; she was more into hanging out with friends,” echoes Mercado.
The couple separated, Mills moving to Montana and Mercado staying in Minnesota. After two years apart, they decided to formalize the divorce, which took months. While the legal process between him and Mills was civil, making the case to US Citizenship and Immigration Services was trying. Mercado has his two-year green card, but his next 10-year one is now in jeopardy. The couple provided proof (photographs, tickets purchased together, letters from themselves, family and friends) attesting to their marriage being in good faith, although now in the shadow of their divorce.
“It was a very strange process, especially after we separated,” says Mills. “I don’t have any pictures of us being happy right now.”
Mercado has submitted to the government all of the documentation he can provide. Any day now he expects to receive a letter casting the final judgement. When asked what he will do if he is denied, Mercado says he will return to Peru. And if he’s approved?
“Just keep living.”
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