[ElSapo]

I was involved in an "INS marriage." I'm certain that's a bad term for it, but ah well ...

I married my girlfriend on our lunch break at the courthouse in Arlington, Va. She was from Ecuador, we'd been together several years intended to get married but weren't sure how to cope with pressure of her student visa and so on. We'd just gotten back from a few months in Barcelona, graduated college eight months before...

There are no good "stories." For the vast number of couples who do this, it's all about waiting in lines, praying the INS paperwork makes it through, being harassed in airport customs and waiting years for everything to go through. We got married only briefly before September 11, so what should have been like a two year process stretched to five.

The most interesting story I have is about waiting in 20-degree weather at 5 a.m., trying to see someone at the INS office when it opened. The line forms early.

The most boring stories are the everyday squabbles couples have. We didn't work out - we seperated, the paperwork was still pending so we just waited until it went through to divorce. We'd been together something like seven years at that point, we just got caught in a bad timing situation, didn't know what to do, and so on.

That's life. She's a wonderful girl, and sometimes I wonder what it would have been like if it had worked out differently. But I hate our immigration system - it's hell for people who want to be here legitimately. It shouldn't be this hard.

Our country has strayed far, far from the ideals we claim to be based around. I love what this country stands for, on paper. But what it's become is something entirely different.