Married for five years, Nina and Andy Highfill have gone through the first steps of process in applying for citizenship through a marriage between an immigrant and an American citizen. Nina, English as a Second Language Instructor from Taiwan, came to the United States on a study visa to Arizona Fellowship Baptist School, a center where all are allowed the opportunity to study, fellowship and grow with one another in a Christian community. Andy, current director of aquatics/wellness at Seward, and Nina met and fell in love. The first year of their marriage was the hardest because due to Nina’s legal status she could not work. Andy would not allow her to, leading to financial difficulties for the married couple. In that time frame, Andy applied for Nina to gain a legal status so that she could start working. Nina and Andy followed the process, by first getting the conditional green card for two years, meaning that a social security was given to Nina, giving her the ability to stay in the United States, legally, for only two years. “You have to keep up with the laws because they are always changing,” Andy said. That conditional green card was given to Nina because the government wanted to make sure that the marriage was real. They didn’t marry just to give Nina her citizenship and call it quits after she received it. After the two years of marriage, and the couple has gone through the Fraud Marriage Interview, having the same bank account, still living in the same house and everything of that manner, they could then apply for the permanent green card: legal residency. Once immigrants obtain permanent green cards, they are set for life, with the exception that they have to renew residency every 10 years. The application for the residency does not require the immigrant to take a Citizenship test, it is only when applying for the citizenship that a person has to pass the Citizenship test that is given, and vow to turn down other nationality and become an American citizen. Studies show that immigrants might be willing to pay between $5,000 and $10,000 to get an American to marry a foreign national who wishes to live in the United States or already does, but needs to regulate his or her legal status. (cis.org) Too often, society blames immigrants for wanting to gain legal status but fail to realize that Americans too are selling out their hand in marriage. It takes two to tango. Pacific Ram reports that many willing immigrants pay up to $20,000 to marry an American. Obviously there have been success cases on the immigrant’s part to find believable matches for them and go through the process. If a citizen is willing to sell their hand in marriage, and an immigrant is willing to pay the amount, there are going to be billions of cases such as this. Which undoubtedly, there is. There are different pathways that immigrants come and receive citizenship. Marriage and having a baby on U.S. soil are the most common. But they’re not the only ways, there are countless others that society doesn’t acknowledge. “There are many Chinese who come to America to have their baby, but they are wealthy. They don’t need benefits from America, they have the money to pay for school, medical expenses and all of that; there’s a lot of cases like this,” Nina said. Those are known as Baby Tourists, relative to anchor babies. Baby tourists are usually much wealthier, affording their own expenses; they come on prearranged programs where mothers pay $15,000 to $45,000 per child according to sources. That is another way to bring an immigrant child over to the U.S., and marriage has nothing to do with it. Because they can marry within their own culture in their own country, and they still want to bring their child to the United States because it’s through these specialized programs that give their child a chance to come to an American university. But Nina does not see her children as a ticket to become an American citizen. Her original plan when she came abroad to study in the US was to go back to Taiwan and teach English, but she fell in love, and ultimately wanted to start her own family. So those immigrants who come on a study visa do abuse the privilege and come already pregnant and have their children here. Cases prove that. “And that’s wrong, people should not come here illegally and get all the benefits which are paid by our taxes. We really want people to know what legal immigration should be and hope people choose to do the right things,” Nina said. Aside from all the legal issues involved, immigrants who come not only face a geographical change, but also culturally. “Some people may call it compromise, but we really have to just build our own culture,” Andy said. Barriers such as language, food, holidays, and medical expenses are all a part of this change that immigrants face every single day in the United States.

“I don’t take my children as a ticket to become an American”