Ekaterina Atanasova said she and her husband “have always been together.” They were neighbors in Bulgaria, went to college together and dated for eight years before marrying in 2004. But because of changes in immigration law, Atanasova, now a legal U.S. resident, may have to wait five or more years to be reunited with her husband, Nikola Nikolov.

“It’s not much of a choice,” she said. “We want to stay here and raise our kids here, but we want to find a way to be with each other for the next three years.”

Atanasova is classified as a legal permanent resident, or LPR, of the United States. She received her green card in September 2003. The following year, she married Nikola Nikolov, her boyfriend of eight years, in Bulgaria. She petitioned to have him come to the U.S., but due to visa limitations and the gargantuan backlog of visa applications facing U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, it will take at least five years before Atanasova’s husband can come to America.

The long wait came as a surprise, Atanasova said.

“I knew we’d have to wait, but I didn’t imagine five years. I thought it might be six months to a year, but not five years,” she said.

Atanasova took to the Internet to find others in a similar situation. That’s how she connected with Unite Families (www.unitefamilies.org), a national grassroots effort that’s lobbying for changes in immigration laws to make it easier for legal residents to bring their families into the country.

Atanasova lives in Eliot, Maine, and works as a civil engineer in Portsmouth. She flew to Bulgaria last April to see her husband; she plans to see him next around Thanksgiving. Though it costs roughly $1,000 for her to fly round trip to Bulgaria, it’s the emotional costs, not the financial hardships, that are tough to bear.

“It’s painful when you (come) back here, because you know you’ll be lonely,” she said.
The couple talks on an Internet phone line for a couple of hours every night, but it’s not the same as being together.
Dawn Alley, a spokesperson for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Portland, Maine, said the State Department does not issue visas to people who’ve filed an intention to immigrate because “they feel they’ll just come in and stay.”

Only 114,200 visas are issued each year, according to Alley. CIS divides visa applications into five separate areas, depending on the applicant’s country of birth—China, India, Mexico, the Phillipines and a fifth category for other countries. Waiting times vary for each country; Alley pointed out that CIS is just now processing some visa applications filed by Mexican citizens in 1991.

“That can change month to month,” Alley said. “What we tell people is this usually moves a month for every month; sometimes it moves faster, sometimes it won’t move at all. There’s no way for us to know.
For someone in Atanasova’s and Nikolov’s situation, Alley said Nikolov could possibly have an employer petition for him to come to the United States or apply at an American school and come here as a student. Otherwise, “Pretty much, they have to wait,” she said.

Azad Abul is a volunteer with Unite Families. Though Unite Families started as a small Internet-based group about three years ago, Abul said that in the last year, UF’s ranks have swelled to about 500 members. According to estimates by UF, there are about half a million legal permanent residents waiting to bring their spouses and children to America, according to Abul.

Much of the problem lies in America’s labyrinthine immigration rules and regulations, especially for those in the midst of trying to establish citizenship. There are rules in place for immigrants applying for a green card to bring their spouses to the country and there are rules for U.S. citizens, but there aren’t really any clear-cut rules for LPRs that aren’t yet citizens. This is not the case in other countries like Canada and the United Kingdom, according to Abul, where immigration rules allow spouses and children of legal residents to join their families at any time.

“When you fall in love with someone, you don’t check your immigration status,” Abul said. He married his wife, Nursat, six months ago in Bangladesh and is waiting for her to come to America.
Abul explained that if he had married the day before he received his green card, his wife would have been granted the same status as him. Or, if he were in the country on a student or temporary worker visa, his wife could have joined him within three months. But because he’s stuck in that in-between zone, not a new immigrant, but not a citizen either, he must wait.

For a while, there was some hope for people like Atanasova. In 2000, Congress passed the LIFE Act, which allowed the spouses and minor children of LPRs seeking to immigrate to obtain a V-visa, which would allow them to come to the U.S. while their application was in process. However, the V-visas were only available to those whose applications were pending for three or more years. The V-visa provision of the LIFE Act expired in 2003.

Unite Families is lobbying to get the V-visa reinstated and to reform immigration policies so that families aren’t split up. But it’s been difficult, Abul said. A bill that would bring back the V-visa, HR 1823, is currently in the House of Representatives, but according to Abul, there doesn’t seem to be much support for it. Abul and Atanasova have scheduled meeting with Maine Sen. Susan Collins for Sept. 15. The two hope to urge Collins to introduce similar legislation in the Senate.

“We’re a very small group,” he said. “We don’t have a lobbying firm or anything like that.”

Though members of UF have met with lawmakers, Abul said the overall feeling is that Congress is “pretty reluctant” to address immigration issues. Because so much of the rhetoric surrounding immigration is about illegal immigrants, Abul thinks legal immigrants like himself and the members of UF are lost in the shuffle and ignored.

“We must choose a family or choose a country we dreamed about becoming a citizen of,” he said.
Despite being separated from her husband and the difficulties in understanding immigration policies the couple has had to navigate, Atanasova said she is glad she came to America.

“There is no doubt for me what I’m doing here, why I’m here,” she said. But she hopes a solution to her and her husband’s problem will come soon. “We want to solve this thing so we can go on with our lives.”