After 26 years of living in Australia, first as an Air Force officer and then as a civilian contractor for the DOD, Dave Ives and his family decided in 2022 to leave Australia and return to the U.S. Australia had slid into an authoritarian state during COVID, and they were looking forward to returning to Florida, where they owned property and could live in relative freedom.
Dave's wife, Marieta, is a former U.S. permanent resident.
Her green card expired in 2003 because her husband Dave stayed in Australia too long working for a U.S. defense contractor.
No one seems to be able to break through the bureaucratic tape, not even Dave's U.S. congressman in Florida.
Then the USCIS handed them off to the NVC for further red-tape processing, including police clearances from every place Marieta has lived, and uploading many of the documents they had already uploaded to USCIS. It took almost another year to finally get the NVC to approve their documents and schedule the interview appointment with the U.S. Consulate in Sydney-approved on January 10, 2024, via email.
Our government is obstructing the efforts of the wife of a U.S. veteran and previous green card holder to legally enter by requiring her to get proof of no criminal record in every place she's ever lived.
If Marieta had only been a basketball star, perhaps she would have been considered important enough, as the wife of a U.S. citizen, to also be allowed to return to the U.S. quickly.
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