Stop the isolationist Attitudes...

I met my wife through an international dating site. After 2 years of visiting her and getting to know her we were married. She is Russian I am American. We are going on 3 happy and wonderful years. Her parents came to the US and had a wonderful time visiting. My sister-in-law applied for a tourist visa to visit us and we warned her that the US presumes immagration (even for tourists) so she had to have quite a bit of documentation to prove ties back to Russia. She had all the documentation, the biggest of which was her marriage certificate since she was leaving her husband behind to come visit us. The immagration officer asked her a few questions about me (the american citizen) and then simply said denied. The officer would not even look at the documenation.

You want ideas on how to understand our differences, start by being a bit more open and truly exploring why people want to come to the US and not assume everyone wants to live her or blow the place up.

One of the biggest things I have leanred about being married to someone from another country is that everyone is the same; we all want a loving family, raise good kids, put food on the table, a roof over their head. If you could get the politicians out of the way the regular people would probably get along just fine.