My guess for Obajego is that his wife will keep making difficulties and being unappreciative even while he keeps making sacrifices. But that’s just my two cents. The point in that particular case is what Lucy Mo pointed out: separate addresses PLUS an uncooperative spouse equals a recipe for disaster.
My point was what happens in the particular case of a marriage with separate addresses PLUS a cooperative spouse. You don’t need to read any further if you don’t want to: I’m just expanding below.
Immigration in my definition is a benefit within the provisions of the law. If I provide the documentation specified under a certain law, then I entertain a reasonable expectation to qualify for all the benefits specified under the same law. If you wish to define immigration as a privilege, that’s exercising your right to free speech.
Immigration is, however, a give and take. It’s a two-way street and not a unilateral gift to the immigrant. The immigrant pays immigration fees and travel fees to the district office, takes time off from work to be fingerprinted, photographed and interviewed, compiles a voluminous file, submits to a close scrutiny of his professional and personal/romantic life, and waives part or all of his/her privacy. In exchange, the immigrant is entitled to expect prompt and courteous government service from the part of government employees, unless the immigrant lives in a Kafkian society where one wouldn’t want to immigrate in the first place.
Family immigration is indeed about family and living happily together ever after. There is no perfect family. Happiness and self-fulfillment in a couple consist of many elements:health, finances, home, children, pets, commute, vacation, career. Good luck with superimposing your (apparently) model of the ideal family (i.e. the one in which the home is in the same zip code, the commute is brief, the husband is more educated and earns more than the woman, there are 1.9 children consisting of a first-born boy and a girl on the way, and they all have dinner together every night) on the myriad families existing today and consisting of professional couples juggling harsh realities.
That’s not an ideal family, that’s an old-fashioned family. That’s how it (mostly) used to be. It’s not right or wrong. It’s just outdated. It does not say anywhere in the USCIS interview letter you are obligated to follow living recipe no. 17 bis. It says to bring documentation proving that you think you have a good family. That letter doesn’t say what a good family is and isn’t. That’s because they haven’t figured it out yet.
Family immigration is about mutual love and support. Spouses support each other in building a better credit history, getting a better interest rate for a mortgage, battling infertility issues, battling cancer, and yes, advancing each other’s career goals. Kids shouldn’t be the only ones who get to go to Harvard and Stanford. Sometimes parents get to go too. It’s called Ph.D. s, residencies, fellowships, tenure-track positions etc. The stuff dreams are made of for immigrants in their twenties and thirties. And it’s also part of becoming a productive American citizen.
I don’t get it - if you are on H-1B you get to stay at Harvard as long as you marry someone at Harvard, while if you’re on H-1B at Harvard AND you marry a USC at Stanford whom you’ve met a conference in Minneapolis, either you or he have to downgrade and work at Wendy’s for the following three years to prove you live in the same zip code?
Please substitute Wendy’s with any national chain. If you’ve been a chemist on H-1B at Harvard, chances are they’ll hire you based on your EAD at any CVS in California. Your heart may not be in it, however. Frustration is not the basis for a good family.
National chains are not the point either. There are physicians who downgrade to nurses in order to live in the same zip code with their spouse. There are lawyers who downgrade to accountants in order to live in the same zip code with their spouse. There are architects who downgrade to housepainters and movers for the same reason. It’s their choice. And they may have a good family. Another couple has a longer car commute and still a good family. Someone else has a plane commute and still a good family. If their spouse has a car accident or a plane accident on their way home, they’re going to grieve the same. Now that’s over-dramatizing things for you.
What’s most likely to happen is that the person at Harvard will take a sabbatical in the first year to be in the same zip code with their spouse, in their second year they’ll live apart, commute and keep gas, train, bus, plane, phone, e-mail, IM and fax receipts, the person at Stanford will take a sabbatical in the third year to be in the same zip code with their spouse, and so on until in the X th year one gets a position in Minneapolis, requests a spousal appointment for the other and both live happily ever after. Because over time, this translates in better retirement benefits that Wendy’s and CVS. Yes, I call retirement a benefit, not a privilege. Like immigration, maybe?