Opinion: I'm a Veteran Exiled to Canada to Keep My Family United

“But you’re a citizen! When you get married, doesn’t your wife become a citizen, too?”

It’s a common misconception, even held by some legislators who ought to know better. It’s close to what I believed before having to live the reality of my wife being barred from the U.S. because of excessively punitive immigration laws that hurt millions of American families like mine. That’s why I recently traveled to meet with our lawmakers in D.C., to tell my story and advocate for my family and immigration bar reform.

Before that trip, I was back in metro Denver. It had been eight years since I had last returned to my hometown, but when I visited with my son a few weeks ago, I realized how much I still think of the Colorado high plains as home. And yet, since 2011, my wife, son and I have lived in Ontario, Canada, as it is the only option to keep my American family together.

During our week-long trip, I reconnected with my former neighbors, friends from church, and one of the stepsons I had kept close contact with over the years. My son and I also met with an immigration case worker from my congresswoman’s district office to tell them firsthand how our country’s immigration laws are negatively impacting my American family and separating us from our true home in Colorado.

When I married my wife 21 years ago and we sought to adjust her immigration status together, I was aware that marriage did not automatically confer citizenship — but I never imagined that there would be immigration laws that force U.S. citizens to choose between our loved ones or our home country.

I naively believed that my citizenship and Navy veteran status might hold weight as we sought to adjust my wife’s immigration status. What I learned instead is that penalties are severely harsh for individuals like my wife, who are deemed "inadmissible" due to reasons like entering the country without inspection. These outdated policies can be implemented for dozens of reasons and can block undocumented immigrants from returning to the U.S. for multiple years or even permanently, even if they qualify for existing legal pathways to residency through their U.S. citizen spouses or U.S. citizen children.

The sad irony is that the remedy could be a minor tweak in a law that would give immigration judges their discretion back on a case-by-case basis when one of the subjects of the case is an American spouse. Presently, there is little room to override these extreme punishments.

My wife is not a criminal nor a security threat to the U.S. Until we were forced by my government to abandon my home country to remain together as a nuclear family, my wife was a member of our foothills community. She was a cafeteria assistant at Rooney Ranch Elementary, an active sports mom, a nursery aide in our Applewood Valley United Methodist Church, a helpful neighbor, and beloved by members of these communities.

The laws of the U.S. are what bind Americans together and, in our case, immigration laws have been broken, and that is wrong. No one understands this more clearly than my wife and me.

However, the draconian fallout from this violation of U.S. code puts me in exile and does nothing to protect U.S. citizens. How can it when it forces people to hide, who might ordinarily participate in the community and add to the economy? And if immigration law aggrieves our own citizens, of what value is U.S. citizenship, anyway?

As U.S. citizens, we should be able to live without fear that our families will be torn apart. We need Congress to pass legislation that meets the needs of mixed-status families like mine.

Bipartisan legislation in the House was introduced into this 118th Congress. HR 1698, or the American Families United Act, was first introduced in 2013 and has been in each successive Congress since. This legislation would create the presumption that family separation is a hardship and allow for cases to be reviewed individually when an American citizen is involved. My representative, Congresswoman Brittany Pettersen has signed on to co-sponsor the measure; in bipartisan spirit, I call on Representative Ken Buck to support this critical legislation, too.

Our Colorado senators, Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, must also act on this issue. The American Families United Act has only been introduced in the House, so I urge our Colorado senators to work across the aisle to introduce and support this critical legislation. Coloradans need real solutions for mixed-status families impacted by harsh immigration bars.

Ed Markowitz is a Navy veteran, U.S. citizen and longtime Coloradan.

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