American Border Bureaucracy
I feel for Kief:
My wife and I were looking forward to visiting my family in the US for the holiday season. She's never been to the US, and there are quite a few relatives who weren't able to come to our wedding in Istanbul, including both of my grandmothers, so we were looking forward to it. Unfortunately, we can't go, thanks to Visa rules.
The bottom line is, my wife is Turkish, but we don't live in Turkey, and in fact we have only recently moved to London. Unlike applying for an immigrant visa, to get a tourist visa to visit for two weeks the fact that she's married to a US citizen isn't taken into account. The fact that she doesn't have a job and isn't enrolled at a school means she is, according to the checklist used by the US State Department, probably going to stay illegally in the US and take jobs away from American citizens, preferably while burdening the generous US welfare and health systems.
There is no appeal, no human interaction, so we can't explain that, having just moved here, she figured she'd wait until after the holidays before going to work. So we'll have to wait until she gets a job, then apply again, and visit my family at some non-holiday time.
Joy.
This stuff sucks. And it's just getting worse. Bleh.
-Russ