Change in forms slows process for foreign spouses seeking visas
Tuesday, June 13, 2006; Posted: 7:40 p.m. EDT (23:40 GMT)
WASHINGTON (AP) -- True love waits for no one -- except maybe the Homeland Security Department.
Red tape has put weddings on hold for about 10,000 U.S. citizens seeking visas for their foreign brides and grooms as the department works on new paperwork for their applications.
The form change was required as part of a law, enacted in March, to protect foreign mail-order brides from abusive American spouses. But Homeland Security missed its deadline three months ago, putting the visa applications of thousands of law-abiding lovers in limbo.
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Advocates estimate that as many as 15,000 foreign women annually meet their American husbands through for-profit marriage brokers. That number, provided by the Virginia-based Tahirih Justice Center, marks a sharp rise from a 1999 estimate by the former Immigration and Naturalization Services of 30,000 women who came to the United States through a marriage broker during the previous five years.
Spurred by stories of foreign women -- largely from Eastern Europe and Asia -- being abused or even murdered by their American husbands, Congress in December approved new protections for mail-order brides. They included amending the application form for fiancee visas with two new questions: Whether the romance was arranged by an international marriage broker, and had the U.S. citizen ever been accused of a violent crime or convicted of three or more alcohol- or drug-related crimes.
President Bush signed the law on January 5, putting Homeland Security under order to draw up the new paperwork. But the forms weren't finished by March 6, when the law took effect, resulting in the department shelving all fiancee visa applications written on the old forms that were received after that date.
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more:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/06/13/homeland.wedding.delays.ap/index.html