| Username |
Post |
| mabi |
Posted
on 24-Oct-00 11:42 AM
We wanna go to America
Hundreds of Nepali women are waiting to join their husbands in the United
States. The humiliation of visa procedures has made many of them give up
hopes of a normal married life.
Idon’t even wish it on my enemies to marry Nepali men who come from America,” says a
Kathmandu woman who got married recently, but couldn’t get a US visa to join her husband
despite repeated tries. Intelligent, smart and skilled, she married a Nepali who came from the USA
seeking a bride here. A few days after the wedding, the man went back to America, and the
woman feels lost and is suffering separation anxiety.
The story of many women who marry Nepali men staying in the United States is the same: a few
questions are asked because an eligible bachelor living in America is a temptation for many
parents who want their daughters married off. Parents forego the ritual of checking the man’s
anteced-ents, and brides accept the offer blindly in the hope of making it to the land of
opportunity.
I personally know 14 married Nepali men living together in the same place in America, and all of
their wives are still in Nepal. Many of them wished to take their wives along, but because the
American Embassy denied them a visa they have not been together since their wedding day. For
some the wait has lasted ten years. Samjhana is one of them. A few years ago, her husband had
gone to America on a programme and had returned after it was over. Since he had a multiple
entry visa, he went back again. Since then, she has been trying to join her husband with help from
an American businessman who is trying to get the couple green cards. But after three visits to
the American embassy, she still hasn’t got her visa. The first time she took her husband’s letter
and details of his bank holdings there. She felt that the embassy people sounded positive,
although they asked her to come back with her bank balance and property statements. With help
from her father-in-law, Samjhana returned to the embassy armed with everything that the
embassy had asked for. This time the visa officer said her husband’s letter was old and that she
must get a new one. She got that too, and went again. This time they were straight, and blunt:
“You will not return. We won’t give you a visa.”
Samjhana is a post-graduate student at the Padmakanya Campus as well as coordinator of the
Amnesty International chapter of the college. She doesn’t want to go to America and lose herself
there. She only wants to stay in America for a while, look around, understand the country and
return. But the embassy denied her a visa three times after making her run around for paperwork.
Feeling humiliated, she says:“It is not good to humiliate Nepalis in such a manner. I don’t want to
go to America now. Why go to a place where there are people like this?”
Buna Ghimire teaches at Tribhuvan University. Three years ago her husband, who has a
post-graduate degree and is pursuing further studies, went to America. He has sent her the
papers necessary for Buna to join him, but she doesn’t even want to go to the embassy because
she knows women like her have been denied a visa. Fearing humilia- tion, she doesn’t even
bother to try. She says all she wants to do is stay there for six months or so, see what it’s like,
and return to her Tribhbuvan University job. The daughter of a renowned Nepali profes-sor, Buna
says: “We are not pleading for mercy. I only want to join my husband and see what it’s like with
him.”
Sushila Gyawali’s husband has been in America for the last one and a half years. Here, she runs
her husband’s print-ing press. She too wants to join her husband and see what this place
America is all about. Her husband has promised to send the necessary papers. Although afraid
that her press work might suffer, it is the fear of being rejected that has kept her from even filling
out the visa forms. Says Sushila: “We can have fun here. There is no way we are going to live
there. My husband will be back in a few years. If there was a guarantee of getting a visa I might
have thought about going there for a few months even if I had to leave the children here. But there
is no guarantee. I do not wish to be humiliated by the embassy.”
Only three women out of the 14 I know have consented to their names being pub-lished, but the
story of the rest is painfully similar. Some husbands went there as students, some now have
green cards and are working there, and some are in the process of getting it. Most of them can
take care of their families. When their spouses are denied a visa, it is a huge embarrass-ment for
the husbands. What will the in-laws and relatives think? What trauma must a newly-wed couple
bear when they cannot live together after getting married, and how is a wife to bear the nagging
suspicion of society that her husband has abandoned her.
The American Embassy may have its own criteria for granting a visa, but they seem to treat all
applications with suspicion. Could it be that the wrong people are getting visas, and the right ones
are not because of this tendency to treat everybody as guilty until proven innocent? There are
examples of Nepalis living illegally in America who work at slaughter houses, skinning cattle and
pigs, and who come here and take Nepali women back as their brides. These men boast that
even if they are working in positions most Ameri-cans wouldn’t think about as a job, they can
come to Nepal and take educated high-class brides. When these girls go over and realise that
they have been fooled, they run away with other men and some end up working as domestics.
here are only a few really strong women who dare to fight back and maintain their dignity.
Consider these real-life stories:
• A man who had been living in America for a long time married the very young daughter of a rich
and famous businessman in Kathmandu. After a few days of enjoying life he went back, and the
wife waited anxiously for years so that she could go and live with her husband. She hasn’t heard
a word from him since he left Nepal.
• The same man’s elder brother came to Nepal posing as a doctor, married a young girl and took
her to America to live with him. But when his bride discovered the truth she divorced him and is
now living there doing odd jobs. .. ..
• Another of Kathmandu’s rich and famous families married off their educated daughter to an
uneducated man who actually worked as a security guard in America. When the bride went to
America she was forced to share a room with three other men besides her husband. With her
husband out working 18 hours a day, she got lonely and returned to Nepal.
• In bigger US cities there are up to 14 Nepali men living Samjhana Buna illegally and sharing one
room. One Nepali woman who couldn’t live with her husband in a cramped shared room ran off
with a man who lived alone. There are many Nepali women who find themselves in a similar
situation after reaching America and so elope with Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, or
elderly Americans. Nepalis should be warned about men who live illegally in America and come
here to get married, lying about their work and their lives. Parents ought to thoroughly check the
antecedents of these men before giving their daughters in marriage to them. Women must be
cautious and not just blinded with the dream of going abroad. For the Ameri-can Embassy visa
section, a piece of advice: a few cases of visa abuse does not mean that everybody who wants to
go to America will never come back. Countless well-intentioned Nepalis have now been
humili-ated, permanently turned off, and their lives ruined.
(Adapted from Himal Khabarpatrika.)
|
| ashu |
Posted
on 24-Oct-00 10:48 PM
The author of this article, originally published
in Nepali-language ko Himal, is Durga Pokharel,
who, by the way, had spent a number of years in
the Greater Boston area, when she was a student
at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
What I find strange about this article is
that Durga seems to have made NO attempt to
contact the Visa Section of the American
Embassy to find out their reasons, in
their own words, for why they do what
they do (i.e. reject visa applications!).
Rather than be fed Durga's palpable
biases against the Visa Section (biases that
resonate loud and clear in public in Nepal), I,
as a reader, would have appreciated her work more
if she had tried to contact the Visa Section,
and let the story speak for itself.
Then again, in a larger scheme of things,
Durga Pokharel has always been one helluva
interesting/amusing character to watch
quietly from a distance!!
oohi
ashu
|
| Biswo |
Posted
on 25-Oct-00 10:43 AM
Hi mabi:
Please write the writer's name when you post.It was
pretty much confusing, I really thought this article
to be your own.
Btw, though I think some of the concerns the writer
raises are valid, she has presented the banal case
study type article.Some of the case studies are
confusing because I can't understand how a person
living illegally in US can go and come back to US
again?See this statement:
>>There are
examples of Nepalis living illegally in America who work at slaughter houses, skinning cattle and
pigs, and who come here and take Nepali women back as their brides.
The US Visa section is really a dreaded office
throughout the third world.I have once met an old
couple whose son was in US since ten plus years, and
the couple were denied visa for more than ten times.
The couple, from China, were really really lovely
people, the father was almost seventy something, and
I couldn't see any way he could be detrimental to US.
A person working in US Consul, Shanghai used to live in the same building that I was living, so when asked
about such cases in generalities, he said with somewhat
embarrassment(as nice he was as all average Americans)
that majority of decisions were based on the whim of
the consular.
Probably.Still, we know that it is not as dicey as/ or
as ghastly as the article suggests.
|
| mabi |
Posted
on 26-Oct-00 10:45 AM
Hi Biswo,
Thanks for your suggestion and sorry for the confusion.
I am a "cut and paste" addict without much creativity. Next time when I do that I will surely mention the writer.
regards,
Mabi
>Hi mabi:
>
> Please write the writer's name when you
>post.It was
>pretty much confusing, I really thought this
>article
>to be your own.
>
> Btw, though I think some of the concerns
>the writer
>raises are valid, she has presented the
>banal case
>study type article.Some of the case studies
>are
>confusing because I can't understand how a
>person
>living illegally in US can go and come back
>to US
>again?See this statement:
>
>>There are
> examples of Nepalis living
>illegally in America who work at slaughter
>houses, skinning cattle and
> pigs, and who come here and
>take Nepali women back as their brides.
>
>
>
> The US Visa section is really a dreaded
>office
>throughout the third world.I have once met
>an old
>couple whose son was in US since ten plus
>years, and
>the couple were denied visa for more than
>ten times.
>The couple, from China, were really really
>lovely
>people, the father was almost seventy
>something, and
>I couldn't see any way he could be
>detrimental to US.
>A person working in US Consul, Shanghai used
>to live in the same building that I was
>living, so when asked
>about such cases in generalities, he said
>with somewhat
>embarrassment(as nice he was as all average
>Americans)
>that majority of decisions were based on the
>whim of
>the consular.
>
> Probably.Still, we know that it is not as
>dicey as/ or
>as ghastly as the article suggests.
|
