I posted this on Quora but it seemed fitting to post it here. Future posts will add some detail to this series of events. It is enlightening and will shed light onto the current immigration debates taking place in the media.
The chain of events started when we arrived at the gate in Heathrow after an 8 hour red-eye from Boston in February of 2015.
“Can I see your UK Visa?” we were asked after the customs agent looked at my wife’s Jamaican passport.“We don’t have one,” I replied.“I’m afraid I can’t let you in,” was the reply.
Our worst fears were realized.
As a US Passport holder this wasn’t an issue. I was good to go. For my wife, a Jamaican citizen and US Green Card holder, this was not to be. We had the Schengen Visa which had taken us on some late night, rapid fire trips to New York, Washington DC, Cleveland and Chicago to obtain. With the Schengen Visa arriving the Wednesday before our departure, we thought we were finally good to go.
The following night while surfing the Web I found a site that mentioned the need for a UK Visa as the UK is not a part of the Schengen countries.
Curiously, my wife overheard a conversation about the need for a UK Visa as she was filling out papers for the Schengen Visa while we were in Chicago as I drove around the block several dozen times waiting for her. One was not needed was the consensus on the subject.
That was apparently not true. I had a meltdown. We were were flying out early that Saturday.
I called my wife’s sister-in-law who is a British citizen who had worked for Customs twenty plus years ago when she lived there and she said that sometimes the agents have latitude as to who they’ll let in.
With airline tickets, train tickets and a two-week itinerary planned canceling just didn’t seem like an option. With the feeble hope of her words we decided to brave it.
We got through Boston without incident so thought maybe, just maybe, we’d be ok.
At 7 a.m. in the morning (2 a.m. eastern US time) in Customs at Heathrow my wife was denied and escorted away. I went out to face my wife’s sister and her husband and tried to explain what had just unfolded.
Several hours later, a canceled Euro Pass and the purchase of a pair of plane tickets to France (hundreds of dollars on such short notice) our stay was extended.
We were able to experience the vacation of a lifetime through England, Wales, Belgium and northern France with her sister in Bristol and a good friend in Lille, France.
On the last leg of the journey, a p.m. return trip from Charles de Gaulle to Heathrow after our two weeks were up we were met with words that sounded very familiar when we presented our tickets to board:
‘We can’t let you board,” said the gate agent.
Denied again, this time at the gate. The transit visa through Heathrow expired at midnight on the day of travel, not 24 hours upon landing. The flight was held, our luggage removed. Add a hotel room to the bill.
So very grateful for Isabella from Air France who booked the hotel for us and changed our flight times to the next morning or we would have had to book new tickets as well.
After a whirlwind night, an early flight from CDG to Heathrow and a scramble and last minute decision to avoid having to go through security and missing a flight, we ditched our luggage at Heathrow and headed back overseas, elated at being free.
Upon arrival in Boston, we were once again met with words that were becoming hauntingly familiar:
“Please come with us,” my wife was told by two individuals who approached her at the booth where her passport and biometrics were scanned.
I was left dumbfounded. She was, once again, detained. You’d think my wife was a universally wanted criminal.
Hours later we learned that immigration law is different than US law and ‘did the crime, did the time’ does not apply. Petty crimes from thirty years ago in the moral purity of immigration law as it applies to those deemed worthy to be in the US are still relevant today and have the potential to make a green card holder inadmissible and, ultimately, removable.
Four years and thousands of dollars later (and still accumulating) we are still dealing with the trip with an immigration court date looming in January of 2020.
What have we learned? Aside from the particular ‘how not to travel' advice of that trip and more about immigration law than I can ever have imagined, we have felt at a deeper level than the media narrative at least one of the ways in which immigration law is broken.
We met incredible people through this journey, from the initial customs agent to those customs agents at Heathrow we talked with, to Isabella at Air France at CDG, to all the people we met through our doing it wrong travels and through all the people we’ve met navigating immigration law.
Though it is not easy, we have learned to find joy, hope and celebration in the midst of trials.
Systems fail and bad decisions are often made but people remain awesome.
P.S. Our luggage that we assumed was lost forever showed up at Pittsburgh the Tuesday after our return.
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