If Your View on Immigration Fits in a Tweet, It’s Probably Wrong

It's amazing to me how many people bitch about immigration here in Ireland, in Europe, and in the US, but have no idea what it takes to immigrate to a new country legally. You can’t just pack up all your stuff, show up wherever you want, and say “I live here now!” – there’s a process (unless you’re an EU citizen moving to another EU country). This is true whether you're an asylum seeker, a refugee, or you just want to live somewhere new. Having been through the process twice, I can tell you that it's a very grueling and expensive process, both financially and mentally.

The first country I immigrated to was Switzerland, which, compared to my later experiences, had a relatively easy entry process. I still had to get an FBI background check, an official copy of my birth certificate, official copies of our marriage license, copies of my passport and driver's license, and pay fees. I was also lucky that we were moving there through my Wife's employer, so they were able to make sure we had all the paperwork in order and made it easier to get the FBI check. Technically, I was supposed to stay out of the country until I'd gotten my temporary visa, but because it was done through a company, and we needed to be there by a certain date so my Wife could start work, Switzerland allowed us to travel there anyway.

Two weeks after I got there, though, I had to travel to the Swiss consulate in Germany to present all my papers and get the temporary visa in my passport. This required 6 hours on a train and about a 6 hour wait in Stuttgart during a heatwave.

I learned later that is it much harder to obtain Swiss citizenship. You have to apply for, and get, your Swiss C permit (equivalent of a US Green Card), then wait for 10 years, take a test, and achieve a B1 level of fluency in German or French (depending on Canton). Even if you go through all of that, the Canton or community or city you live in can still refuse you citizenship, even if you've been there for 20 years or more.

While we liked Switzerland in general, we decided to move to Ireland. This was for a number of reasons, but we did the math, thought about it, and knew it was the right decision for us.  My Wife was able to work through the Dublin office of her employer, but this time, while they would give us access to immigration lawyers, we had to pay for the move ourselves. The immigration process for Ireland is much more invasive, and because this time my Wife's work wouldn't sponsor us, we both had to go through the immigration process. My Wife, being a UK citizen, had the right to move here with an abbreviated process. As an American, though, I had to apply for my residence while I was outside Ireland. Since my Wife’s start date was coming up fast, we decided that it would easier to stay with my parents in Florida while we did my visa application.

However, what we thought would only take a few months turned into a nearly 2 year ordeal.

In order to sponsor me to come to Ireland, my Wife had to sort out her own residency status (relatively easy for her), buy a house (we planned on that anyway, but she also needed to prove I had somewhere to live when I came), and ensure all our taxes were current (our tax people were slow). I left Switzerland in July 2023 to stay with my parents in Florida, while my Wife moved our belongings to Ireland in August. All of the things that my Wife had to take care of didn't get sorted out until the the end of November in 2023, and because of the Christmas holidays, we weren’t able to start organizing my application paperwork until January of 2024. It took 2.5 months to get all the paperwork together, even with an excellent lawyer from a major law firm to help us.

What did we have to put together for my application? I'm so glad you asked! Here’s the list:

• Copies of my and my Wife's passports, both paper and digital.
• Copies of our wedding certificates, both paper and digital and apostilled (officially confirmed as legitimate copies) by the state of California.
• My birth certificate, paper and digital, apsotilled by the State of Massachusetts.
• Certified FBI background check, paper and digital, apostilled by the FBI.
• A literal photo essay about how my wife and I met, 5 pages paper and digital, with as many photos of us together as we could find (which was harder than we thought).
• Bank statements for both of us going back 6 months, paper and digital.
• A copy of my seminary diploma and a letter from my undergrad college certifing that I got an undergrad degree, paper and digital (I couldn't find the digital copy of my diploma).
• Swiss police background check for my Wife, paper and digital.
• Swiss documents for both of us proving we've left the Switzerland, paper and digital.
• Copies of the deed to our new house in Ireland, paper and digital.
• 2 European sized passport photos
• 3 years of tax documents for both of us, paper and digital.
• My actual physical passport (which meant I was stuck in the US until it was returned).
• Letter of authorisation, notarized, for my lawyers to act as my agents, paper and digital.
• A written document detailing my travel history for the last 5 years, paper and digital.
• Proof of medical insurance coverage for at least 1 year when I get here, paper and digital.
• The Irish immigration’s application form (paper and digital) AND two certified checks: an $81 processing fee and $13 for fedex to return my passport and official documents.

What took the longest was getting all the apostilles from the FBI and the states for my birth certificate and our wedding certificate. Once we had all the documents together, these documents were submitted both digitally by my lawyers and physically by me. I literally sent an 8 POUND BOX OF DOCUMENTS to the Irish Consulate in NY at my own expense.

The Irish Immigration website, and our lawyers, at the time said it would be a 4-6 month wait for the "Family Unification of a Partner of a UK National" visa. It's actully a 2 part approval process-- the UK government also had to approve my application. We sent it all in on 20 March 2024 and proceeded to wait.

In reality, it took until March 2025 to approve. What I didn't know was that the Irish Immigration service was going through a major restructuring process, and was implementing it in 2024. For whatever reason, this meant that all of my type of applications, and other family reunification visas were essentially halted. It took a letter through my lawyers asking for expedition of my application (because of personal family medical issues) in February and several companies complaining about the back log of applications for their employees around the same time before they even looked at my application.  AND STILL, they came back and asked for a transcript of chat messages and emails from the beginning of our relationship until now to prove that we really had been together for as long as we’ve said. Luckily for us, we've used Google mail for all these years: we had 3000 emails and 1000 pages of chat logs. We only sent a representative sample of the emails (including the very first email we sent to each other) which was about 1000 pages, and all the chat logs. They also asked us to rescan our marriage certificate because I guess they didn't like the scan I originally sent (they returned the paper copy to us before I left Florida).

Thankfully, the letter worked, and I got my visa approval letter almost exactly one year from when I sent the original enormous box of documents.

What you haven’t seen in the story thus far, is the mental anquish of being apart from my Wife for most of those 2 years. You don’t see the mental heath struggles I had being in the US during the election, helping my parents through two major medical crises while being away from my Wife, and my Wife’s struggles being alone in a new country. This was hard on all of us. In September, because of my mental health, we decided to have me travel to Northern Ireland on holiday so we could finally see each other after 1.5 years, but to also to get me out of the US before the election.

I arrived in Northern Ireland on Halloween of 2024. To say I broke down when I finally saw my Wife in person again after all that time is an understatement. We were still mostly apart while I was in Northern Ireland, but we were now in the same time zone and the house down south was only 3 hours away. But Northern Ireland had a time limit, since an American can only stay 6 months in the UK on a tourist visa. We had to have backup plans to keep me out of the US (since I'm queer and trans) just in case my visa didn’t come in time. My anxiety was through the roof. It was so bad that I had to take Xanax on the plane from Florida, and take it a couple of times while in NI. The threat of possibly being deported and messing up my visa application was very real, and we had to be really careful about what I did and didn’t do in Northern Ireland.

This is the reality of immigration. It’s a horrible, difficult, and stressful process. Most immigration processes are like Ireland's: it costs money, time, and sanity. It’s not just filling out some paperwork and waiting a few weeks. It’s waiting months and years. The US is even worse, actually, and I know this because I watched my Wife go through the wringer when she got her green card, which also took several years to complete. And I'm lucky: I'm white and my Wife and I, while not millionaires, had the money and resources for lawyers and fees and travel. I’m lucky that my application was approved and I didn’t have to appeal a rejection. Even then, it had a real mental and physical cost for both me and my Wife. Compared to many immigrants of color, I had it easy.

I can guarantee that if you're a white person reading this, your first thought is probably "Oh, but you're different! You did it legally!"

No. I'm not. Especially not to the governmental authorities.

So, when you're sitting there bitching about immigrants, you're also talking about me and all of the things I’ve gone through to live where I want to live and be with my Wife. Yes, I did do it legally, but so do all those asylum seekers and refugees. Granted, their process is a bit different, but the Sword of Damocles of Deportation make all of us who immigrate the same. It’s terrifying, and you constantly worry if anything you do will get you deported until your application comes through.

I get folks want to blame someone for crime or housing or a host of other ills in society, but blaming immigrants and refugees makes you look both ignorant and racist. Many of you have no idea what it takes to immigrate to a new country and the mental toll the process takes on people and families, mostly because of constant barrage of mouthing off on the internet about how horrible we are and then influencing policies that make things even more difficult out of misplaced fear. Maybe before you go after the man from Pakistan at the chippy, or the lady from the Ukraine at the nail salon, or the refugee from Africa at the grocery store, or even come after me online, remember my story. Remember that you haven’t had to prove you are worthy enough just to exist.

And remember that I am white and had it easier than most.

Honestly, me and my fellow immigrants are just people are trying to live our lives in our new home. Instead of bitching about it, why not take a good hard look at yourself and find some Gods-damned compassion for your fellow humans?

Bloody hell.

This essay is an expansion of a thread I wrote on BlueSky.