Starting This Blog And The Reason Behind It

Starting a blog can sometimes feel as overwhelming as starting a master's thesis: In the beginning there is just a blank page staring back at you.

But soon, if you just start typing, you see a story develop in front of your eyes. I have always loved telling stories... and this one happens to be my favorite:

I fell in love with an American.  

"What's the big deal?" you may ask. I was born and raised in Germany, but I lived in the U.S. for a total of about 7 years after high school and for many reasons, I could see myself moving there permanently one day. But there is a problem: It is very hard to get a work visa in the United States. Friends of mine have often joked, “Kat, you should just marry an American. That will solve everything.” A funny thought, but I believe in love and commitment and the idea of marrying someone for any other reason nauseates me.

Then something crazy happened…

I was in Grand Rapids last year for only a few weeks to visit college friends. Meeting a boy was the last thing on my mind, but when I met Jon, we instantly clicked. We quickly became friends and when I had to return back to Germany, we continued to spend hours on the phone.

After a couple months of long Whatsapp conversations and endless texting, an opportunity arose for me to travel back to Grand Rapids to help friends of mine move into their new house. I was in between contracts at my work back home and therefore I was able to spend 3 months in Michigan with my friends, and hopefully see about a boy :) Within weeks of my return to the U.S. and 5 months after initially meeting, Jon and I knew, and we officially started dating. However, getting a Green Card was the last thing on my mind, especially since thinking about marriage seemed to be years down the road. Instead, I vigorously sought to find a job as a German teacher in the Grand Rapids area so that we could be together. Soon, I was having interviews with colleges for German professor positions. The problem each time was the same: I didn’t have a work visa, so I was turned down. I then sought the counsel of an immigration attorney. His advice: “Stop trying - During the current political situation, this will not be an option.” His agency had even stopped trying to get people work visas because the success rate had become so low.

Talking about options…

With that, and sooner than expected, Jon and I found ourselves talking about the option of marriage.  But after consulting a few more attorneys we learned that even getting married would be a most difficult route.

Option 1: We could apply for a fiance visa which is expensive and not guaranteed to be granted. The fiance visa could take 6 months to a year to obtain, and once obtained we would have exactly 90 days to get married. That means if we want to get married in the summer but the visa is granted in November - too bad. We also discovered that I would not be permitted to work in the U.S. for quite some time. Further, it is highly advised that once getting married and waiting for the Green Card to finalize, that I don’t leave the U.S. The process for finalizing the Green Card takes up to 2 years! The ramification for leaving the U.S. once married, but without a Green Card is the strong possibility of not being permitted to re-enter the U.S. If something happened to my parents in Germany before my paperwork was finalized, I would have to set priorities: not visiting my parents or not being able to return to my husband.

Option 2: We get married in Germany. Sure, this option is less expensive, but then the Green Card could take even longer to process, and I would not be permitted to enter the U.S. until the paperwork was finalized. Currently, Jon is part of a program for his nursing licence that will tie him to Grand Rapids for another year, until July 2019. Therefore, getting married in Germany would mean that I would only get to see my husband for about 2 weeks every 3 to 4 months.

Thus, marriage is not an easy cop-out to solve our tricky situation. But this story is just as amazing as it is tricky: Every day, we are learning from each other what it means to be in a committed intercultural relationship: Why it's worth it; Why being together (even through distance) is better than not at all. We are learning about compromises. We are learning to be patient. We are getting to know not only each other, but also ourselves. And while everyone around us these days seems to be meeting online, we did it the other way around. We met, and then turned to online dating.

With this blog, we want to reach out to others who are in similar situations: to share our experience, strength and hope. We are eager to get advice from those of you who have gone this way before us. We are also delighted to use this blog as a way to keep our loved-ones updated on our relationship and to bring a smile to you by sharing some of the funny differences we keep running into - some of which only come with dating a foreigner 😋