Thread: Trump travel ban won't keep engaged couples apart after all

Trump travel ban won't keep engaged couples apart after all

By colleen long and matthew lee, associated press

NEW YORK — Jun 30, 2017, 3:51 PM ET

Paul Gottinger, who applied nearly a year ago to bring his Iranian fiancee to the United States so they could be married, went to bed feeling hopeless.

The Trump administration's travel ban, as first outlined on Wednesday, required people from six mostly Muslim countries to have a business or close family relationship with someone in the U.S. to get a visa. Siblings, parents or spouses made the list; fiances didn't.

But then government officials abruptly changed course, just hours before the new rules went into effect Thursday evening. The travel ban would not keep engaged couples apart after all.

"This one more crazy twist on the roller coaster," Gottinger, a 34-year-old journalist from Minnesota said by telephone Friday from Istanbul, Turkey, where the couple go to spend time with each other. "We're relieved, but we have a long way to go."

Before the State Department relented, immigration lawyers said it made no sense to exclude fiances because there is already rigorous vetting aimed at rooting out marriage fraud.

Foreigners engaged to marry a U.S. citizen have long had to provide detailed documentation of the relationship's authenticity and undergo background checks to get a fiance visa, known as a K-1.

Scrutiny of such visas increased after the 2015 San Bernardino, California, massacre that left 14 people dead. Tashfeen Malik, who carried out the attack with her U.S.-born husband, came to this country in 2014 on a fiancee visa. (She was from Pakistan, a country not covered by the travel ban.)

The K-1 program is one of the smallest visa programs managed by the government. Out of the more than 10.3 million non-immigrant visas issued in fiscal 2016, just 38,403 — roughly 0.3 percent — were fianc?e visas.

Government officials gave no explanation for why fiances were omitted in the first place but said the decision to allow engaged couples to be together was based in part on language in the Immigration and Nationality Act, the law long used to determine what constitutes a close relationship.

Gottinger said he met his 32-year-old fiance, who is a food engineer, online. He said the pair traveled to Istanbul to meet in person in 2016 and decided to marry a month later. The couple applied for the visa nearly a year ago but are still waiting on a decision from the U.S. government.

"It's a very unconventional and trying process," he said. "But for us, we're in love and we're going to do this."

He said they have talked about moving to Iran, but there are concerns for his safety as an American.

"We're really just kind of trapped between both of our countries," Gottinger said. "We're not going to give up and just stop loving someone."

Shukri Abdul, a 34-year-old medical interpreter from St. Paul, Minnesota, who has been planning to fly to Malaysia on Monday to meet her fiance ahead of his interview for a K-1 visa. After hours of uncertainty and anguish, she is still planning to go.

The pair have known each other since they were young children growing up in Somalia. While Abdul later moved to the United States and became a citizen, they reconnected last year on Facebook. She went to see him in Somalia, and they got engaged, but Abdul said she didn't want to run off and get married without her five children there to support them.

"That is why we were doing the wedding here, not there," she said. "They were excited for me to get happiness."

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Associated Press Writers Amy Taxin in Santa Ana, California, and Deepti Hajela in New York contributed to this report. Lee reported from Washington.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/t...uples-48379710

Our immigration system must be minimized and reduced by huge margins. Our country can't sustain all this immigration. You're either bringing in people with good educations who steal jobs from our well-educated or you're bringing in poverty that can't sustain itself while at the same time stealing jobs from American Workers and deflating wages, the end result of which is just a bigger pie of people who can't sustain themselves, the immigrants and the Americans they diminished.

We need a 10 to 20 Year Moratorium on All Immigration, and we need it now.

"but Abdul said she didn't want to run off and get married without her five children there to support them"

---------------------------

Ahhh...yes...the FIVE children who will soon be a burden on the BACKS of US taxpayers!

Go LOVE her in Somali

No...do not bring any of them here!

San Bernardino shooting: Couple radicalized before they met, FBI says

By Michael Martinez, Catherine E. Shoichet and Pamela Brown, CNN
Updated 8:20 PM ET, Wed December 9, 2015

(CNN)The husband-and-wife team behind the San Bernardino attacks had developed extremist views before they even met, the FBI director said Wednesday.

"They were actually radicalized before they started courting or dating each other online, and online as early as the end of 2013, they were talking to each other about jihad and martyrdom before they became engaged and then married and lived together in the United States," FBI Director James Comey said at a Senate oversight hearing.

"We also believe they were inspired by foreign terrorist organizations," he added. "We're working very hard to understand exactly their association and the source of their inspiration."

Photos: San Bernardino shooting




Investigators are also looking at whether Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik had "other plans either for that date (last week) or earlier," Comey said.

When asked by the Senate panel whether a terrorist operative or group arranged the couple's marriage, Comey stated: "I don't know the answer to that yet."

When pressed whether such an arranged marriage would be a "game changer" in the FBI investigation, Comey added, "It would be very, very important thing to know."

New details emerge on visa interview



Tashfeen Malik and Syed Rizwan Farook were photographed at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport in 2014.

If Malik had already radicalized years ago, how did she get the go-ahead to immigrate to the United States in 2014?

A senior State Department official told CNN on Wednesday that Malik was not asked about jihadist leanings when a U.S. consular official interviewed her in Pakistan for her fiancee visa application last year. That's because no red flags were found in the Department of Homeland Security application that was submitted and checked before the interview, the official said.

The consular officer who did the interview reported that Malik was able to answer enough questions about Farook to prove that she knew him well and that they had a personal relationship, a main focus of the consular interview process, according to two senior State Department officials.

After the interview, Malik passed two other security database checks before her visa was adjudicated. Records show the visa was decided on the day after the interview: May 23, 2014. Malik came to the United States on July 27 of that year. According to California marriage records, she married Farook just one month later.

San Bernardino killers: What we know, and don't, about their radicalization

Past plot with former neighbor?

As federal authorities attempt to piece together the circumstances surrounding the San Bernardino attack, they've been questioning Enrique Marquez, a former neighbor and friend of Farook.

Marquez bought two AR-15s years ago that were among the weapons Farook and his wife used in the shooting. He's also told investigators that he plotted another attack in California with Farook in 2012, U.S. officials said. The pair abruptly abandoned their plan, according to the account Marquez gave investigators, because they were spooked by unrelated FBI arrests of four people charged with attempting to travel abroad to carry out jihad.

Marquez has told investigators he didn't know about the plans for the San Bernardino shooting attack. He has not been charged with a crime.

Officials caution that Marquez's claim of a 2012 attack could turn out to be false and an attempt to deflect his role in helping buy weapons that Farook later used in the San Bernardino attack.

Opinion: ISIS perversion of Islam is a mortal danger to Muslims

Combing online communications

Officials: San Bernardino shooter took out $28,500 loan 01:23

Investigators are still trying to piece together profiles of the Farook and Malik, who killed 14 people at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino last week and died the same day in a gun battle with police. They're also working to pinpoint whether anyone in the United States or abroad helped finance and shape the plot.

The FBI has found online communications between the two killers from late 2013, before they began dating, indicating the two discussing jihad, Comey said.

Investigators have found data on a tablet computer and other cell phones at the couple's home. The FBI also has the benefits of data from U.S. intelligence agencies that collect foreign communications and from service providers for the accounts they used to communicate.

Hate incidents against American Muslims unabated; political rhetoric not helping

The final post on a Facebook page believed to be associated with Malik used the word "we" and pledged allegiance to ISIS, an indication, a U.S. official said, that it was a statement on behalf of both killers.

Investigators are working to determine whether the pair ever met or took orders from ISIS leaders, or if anyone outside the United States had a hand in or knew of their plans. Officials say it's possible the husband and wife did everything, from becoming radicalized to planning and executing the attack, on their own.

Opinion: What else can besieged American Muslims do?

CNN's Evan Perez, Shimon Prokupecz, Faith Karimi, Scott Glover, Ana Cabrera, Dana Ford, Brian Todd, Kyung Lah, Sophia Saifi, Saima Mohsin, Adeel Raja and Joe Sutton contributed to this report.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/09/us/san...ing/index.html

She got in through a bribe. It was reported soon after the attack that she had no interview before getting her visa. How does that happen without a bribe? Our system is rotten to the core. It's not just the records and mechanisms in other countries that can't be trusted in proper vetting, it's our own system that can't be trusted.

TWO QUESTIONS:

1. Who do you think works in the various sections screening people from Muslim Arabic countries? It's not Americans from Kansas, Kentucky, Alabama or Nebraska, I can tell you that. Our immigration system is being run largely by immigrants with the foreign language skills to communicate with these people. I'd bet my last dollar on it.

2. Why do you think USCIS is self-funded with fees collected from the people they let into the country with no oversight by the US Congress?

Congress needs to revoke this self-funding of USCIS, restore Congressional oversight, and do both immediately, because this is an incredibly stupid and high risk national security issue.