Douglas M. Lightman, Esq. is the founder and principal attorney of Lightman Law Firm.  Mr. Lightman has extensive experience in immigration law and international matters through both work and personal experience. On the personal end, Mr. Lightman is a proud citizen of both the United States and Canada.  He is the son of green card holders, and is also the loving fiancé of a non-immigrant visa holder. Drawing upon his legal and personal experience, Mr. Lightman shares what a foreigner needs to know about obtaining a green card for marriage to a U.S. citizen:

One of the great perks of marrying a U.S. citizen is having the ability to apply for a green card based on marriage to your U.S. citizen husband or wife. As many are aware, applying for a green card through marriage to a U.S. citizen (aka “marriage green card”) is one of the quickest ways for a foreign individual obtain a green card (legal permanent residency).

Unlike many other immigration benefits, you can apply for a green card through marriage to your U.S. citizen spouse even if you have unlawful presence in the U.S. or you have overstayed a visa. However, there are limited circumstances where it’s not possible, for example, if you entered the country illegally, i.e. without being inspected by a customs officer, or entered as a crew member.

The marriage green card process entails numerous forms, legal issues, filings, receipts, supporting materials, government correspondence, and finally an interview. The process can be lengthy, not just in terms of applying and waiting for notices and an interview, but also in terms of preparing the forms and supporting materials. Some supporting documents that may be necessary are passports, birth certificates, a medical exam, tax returns, job letter, pay stubs, marriage certificate, divorce decree, and criminal records, if any.

Some additional items to consider in connection with the process:

• Is my marriage a real marriage? Marriage fraud is a serious offense and is punishable by deportation, 10 years in jail, and/or up to a $250,000 fine.

• Unless you obtain advance parole or you have an H-1B or L-1 visa, you cannot travel outside of the U.S. while the green card application is pending without abandoning the application.

• The foreign spouse needs to have a medical exam conducted.

• An affidavit of support will have to be completed by the U.S. citizen spouse contracting him/her to support the foreign spouse for a certain period of time and under certain conditions. If the U.S. citizen spouse doesn’t meet the income requirements, a joint sponsor will be necessary.

• You and your spouse will have to go to an interview together to prove the validity of your marriage and that the foreign spouse qualifies for a green card.

• “Bona fides” proving the validity of your marriage will be very important for the interview (photos, joint bank account, joint lease or deed, joint credit card, info indicating that you reside at the same address, etc.)

• USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigrations Services) filing fees for the entire application total $1,365 to date.

Every green card through marriage application is different and therefore it is strongly advised to work with competent legal counsel experienced in immigration matters throughout all parts of the process. A green card is a highly sought after U.S. immigration benefit and something that should be pursued with great care.

If you have any additional questions regarding obtaining a marriage green card, I am happy to answer them in the Jewish Wedding Network Forum.

Image by Sari Victoria

Sarah Lefton is a digital media producer, Executive Director and Producer of G-dcast –a cartoon series depicting the parsha of the week, and designer of the T-Shirt line Jewish Fashion Conspiracy. On her way home from a Shabbat dinner in March 2006, Sarah randomly decided to stop off at a friend’s house for dessert. That’s where she met Bill Selig, a stage director who was to become her husband. Bill proposed to Sarah on a sailboat in the Red Sea off of Eilat, in Israel and the couple wed in an egalitarian Jewish ceremony in February of 2008 at the Swedish American Hall in San Francisco, California. This is Sarah’s wedding story in her own words:

I still can’t believe I met Bill, let alone married him! I went out every night to parties, classes, mixers, shul, and yeah, on JDates too. For all the care and thought and unbelievable extroversion and energy that I put into meeting my beshert, it still kind of drives me crazy that I met Bill by accident.

Pre-Wedding
Our wedding date fell during President’s Day weekend. Thursday before the wedding, we went to services with our parents at the Mission Minyan, where the shaliach tzibbur honored us by singing Shabbat melodies to the tune of wedding songs.

Saturday morning was our auf ruf. Bill and I were up early, hurriedly practicing our aliyot for the Torah service. Shul was packed! We couldn’t believe how many people came to celebrate with us, which only upped the ante for our leyning! It was so fun to get pelted with candy by friends, family, coworkers and fellow congregants. At the huge catered lunch afterward, our friends from the Minyan surprised us with a giant sheet-cake that read “Marriage: Someone’s gotta do it!” (San Francisco is notoriously a great place to be single!)

As soon as Shabbat ended that night, we had a rehearsal at our venue. We used the opportunity to teach some niguns to our family who were unfamiliar with the mystical wordless songs, and the energy was very beautiful. Then we had a festive rehearsal dinner complete with a musical number from our college friends and a toast from my aunt Marcy that made my cry. She gave me a watch on a necklace that her mother had always worn; it’s now my most precious piece of jewelry. [Read more →]

This post is part of Jewish Wedding Network’s ongoing series documenting a bride’s experience visiting the mikvah before her wedding day. Mayim Bialik previously blogged about her Jewish wedding and now she shares her mikvah story:

I am a good student. I know that sounds like I am bragging; but I’m not. I am just being honest. My parents are both teachers and I was raised with an immigrant philosophy: study hard and succeed. So when I planned to “study” with a bride teacher before my wedding in 2003, I decided I was going to be a good student. No matter what.

I approached this study sort of anthropologically: What have thousands of years of Jewish history been teaching women about being a “good wife?” What does that mean to me now? Will this tarnish my feminist sensibilities beyond repair?

I studied for several months (nearly half of our engagement!) with an excellent and very hip modern Orthodox woman, herself the wife of a Rabbi, a licensed therapist, and mother to 3 beaming and brilliant daughters. I mostly learned the rules of Niddah, which was daunting and kind of intimidating. The customs of not touching one’s husband for almost half of every month seemed, frankly, archaic and outdated. I was not at all sure if I even wanted to pursue this line of exploration. Not for me; no thank you.
[Read more →]

This is part of a series of posts on Jewish Wedding Network exploring a woman’s name change after marriage.

I was born five months after a “shot gun wedding.” The marriage ended before my first tooth came in and my mother remarried when I was five. My half-brother was born shortly thereafter, and the four of us lived together for my entire childhood—the three of them with one last name, and me with my father’s.

When I was eleven,  my father stopped coming to see me, leaving me feeling utterly abandoned, but at age 16 I was legally adopted by my step father, and got a new last name. Four people under one roof with the same surname at last. I was back to having “a real dad”.

Four years after the adoption, I was thrown out of the house by my unstable parents.  For the second time in my life, I felt abandoned. If you’re counting, that’s three parents that let me way down, all by the age of 20.  I  had considered changing my last to reflect my new loner status, something all my own. I didn’t have the guts to though, which is regretful; it would have helped me make peace with the situation.

I learned to accept and love my parents with distance, and having their last name was something I stopped thinking about altogether, for a while…
[Read more →]

This is the first in an ongoing series of posts on Jewish Wedding Network exploring a bride’s name change after marriage.

On October 7, 2007  I walked down the aisle flanked by Annette and Bill Friedson, my amazing (and teary-eyed) parents.   After seven dizzying circles, seven prayers and one big stomp, I emerged as Rachel Friedman, a 23-year-old newly-wed, glowing with happiness as I walked hand-in-hand with my husband.

If you didn’t read that carefully, you may not have even noticed the difference. Friedson to Friedman. Those two tiny letters have served as the ultimate pain-in-the-butt and resulted in a lifetime of mispronunciations and misnomers.

Imagine going to the DMV – quite possibly the most inefficient and awful hellhole to have to go to in the first place – wedding license in hand and on a mission to change your name. The story goes something like this:

Me: Hi – I need to get a new license, because I got married and I’m changing my name.
DMV Employee: (glancing at paperwork in hand) What are you talking about? – the names here are the same.
Me: Nope – check out those last three letters.
DMV Employee: Ooooh – hahahahahaha.

Now reenact that story with the Social Security office, the bank, the credit card company, my employer, and all the other people who inevitably had to be notified, and let me tell you, that joke got old fast. “Are you going to hyphenate?” No. “Are you sure you’re not related?” Yes. “How about merging the two to become Friedsonman?” Mmm – no.
[Read more →]

You may recognize Mayim Bialik for her lead role in the early-1990s NBC television sitcom Blossom, and her many other acting roles since.  After starring in Blossom she earned a BS from UCLA in 2000 in Neuroscience and in Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and went on to earn a Ph.D. in Neuroscience, also from UCLA, where she was also an active student leader at UCLA Hillel.  Bialik is currently a board member, co-founder, and chair of Jewish Free Loan Association’s Genesis branch, and is an avid student of all things Jewish. She studies Torah on a weekly basis with a study mentor through Partners in Torah, and continues to act in television and film.

In 2003, Bialik married a fellow graduate student who she met in calculus class at UCLA. She and her husband Mike now reside in California where they live with their two young sons. This is Mayim Bialik’s wedding story in her own words:

Mike and I had a short engagement. We had dated for four years so we were ready!  We got engaged Dec 2, 2002 and married August 31, 2003.

The Engagement Party
Three months prior to our wedding, we held a vort (legal engagement party) at our UCLA Hillel.  It was a Sephardic themed party, including an Indian Jewish sugar sealing ceremony (in which the parents of the bride place sugar on the tongue of the bride for good luck), and a signing of the tena’im (legal engagement contract). Both our tena’im and ketubah were Victorian replicas that I found in a vintage jewish wedding book. I basically had them photocopied, blanked out the middle, and had a skilled artist write our text and insert it. She printed them out on nice paper, and voila!

In Preparation
Prior to the wedding, I had studied with an Orthodox kallah teacher, to learn everything there was to know, and decide later what I wanted to take on.  Surprisingly, I got a lot out of it and I ended up taking on pretty much all of the customs and traditions.  During our engagement period, we were not touching at all (we had not been shomer negiah prior) and that was actually neat. We also had an aliyah at our Hillel before the week of separation.  We were under a tallis, so it was like a chuppah warm-up!  We did not see each other, speak, text, or email seven days prior to the wedding, and we didn’t live together until after our wedding night.  The night before our wedding I went to mikvah and Mike went to the ocean.

During the period of time that we were not seeing each other, I also had a henna ceremony (again, I love Indian Jewish traditions) performed by a Persian girlfriend. Mike and his best friends came, and I was hidden in a room as they painted his hands.  The photographer took some great photos of me in my Yemenite headpiece, with my hands and feet painted.

Pre-Chuppah
We had a tisch for Mike,  and I greeted people all hysterical at my bedecken. (I fasted and prayed all day, so I was pretty emotional!) My mom knit a white blanket for my “throne,”  which was really special. We had an Egalitarian signing of the ketubah – Mike signed first and then it was brought to me to sign.  The Rabbi then took it back to Mike and the men danced him to me through the gardens. It was really emotional when Mike and I saw each other for the first time after our week of separation.

The Ceremony
Our wedding was held at at Descanso Public Gardens in Pasadena, California.  Our ceremony was in an opening in the forest part of the gardens near a natural fountain. The chuppah was constructed from a tallis that I got Mike from Israel complete with p’til t’cheylet which are the biblically referenced blue-dyed fringes made of ink extracted from snails from the Dead Sea.

Mike’s childhood best friends and his brother held the chuppah. We had a Victorian themed wedding–they wore Edwardian suits, and Mike wore a top hat. My cousin and childhood best friend were my ladies, and they wore black lace dresses of their own choosing.  I got my Victorian and European lace dress at a vintage clothing store in Santa Monica called Paris 1900.  It wasn’t originally a wedding dress, but a party dress that reached my ankle.  My veil, which was waist length, cost more than the dress, and  was made of Irish lace.  I am very much into DIY and therefore had no florist.  I made all the bouquets and boutonnières out of vintage flowers and velvet ribbon, and made my own corsage the same way, with a hankie of my Grandma’s. We also used my Grandpa’s tallis to wrap around us. I wanted to incorporate some special family heirlooms into our wedding because I’m super sentimental.

The band was comprised of four musician friends who played two of my favorite Klezmatics songs for the processional. Our parents carried candles down the aisle, and we did all the traditional stuff—I circled Mike seven times. Mike placed a ring on my finger under the chuppah, and I gave him a ring and recited the harei line as well. Our family and friends recited the sheva brachot (seven blessings). We wrote no vows– the rabbi knew us for years, and he conducted a great service.

After the ceremony we had yichud inside my family’s camping tent, which the groomsmen had covered in ethnic fabrics.

The Reception
Since Mike had proposed to me in the Japanese Gardens, we decided to hold our reception at the Japanese Teahouse. Although the Gardens provided their own caterer, we had to bring in our own because we wanted our affair to be kosher. We basically had to pay for two caterers!

The reception was held by a koi pond. There were no seating arrangements.  We had a buffet with Asian style food, and no wedding cake. Instead we had a tiered chocolate babka and vodka shots (an Eastern European custom).

For the table centerpieces, we had fish-bowl style vases filled with water and plain rocks, which was very symbolic since my name is Mayim, meaning “water” in Hebrew and Mike’s last name is Stone. Another special touch was the silhouette artist that we hired to do portraits of our guests.

Our wedding was small and modest, but a true expression of our covenant!

Photo Credits: Beth Beljon

This is the second in an ongoing series of posts documenting a bride’s experience visiting the mikvah before her wedding day. Hadassah Sabo-Milner is an observant Jew, and a thirty-something mother of four who writes honestly about her experience of visiting the mikvah before her second trip down the aisle:

The mikvah is a necessary part of a religious married woman’s life. I must admit to loving the whole idea of ritual purification, of being spiritually cleansed so that I can “be” with my spouse on all different levels – physically, emotionally, and spiritually. When I was married the first time I enjoyed taking the time to prepare for immersion, not just physically, but mentally. I also enjoyed the “me time” I was able to snag that one night a month––to go to the mikvah and prepare there without any of my kids banging on the bathroom door.

Now that I have returned to the state of holy matrimony, it is once again incumbent on me to use the mikvah. I now bring a different mindset to the whole thing. Marriage takes on a different meaning once you have experienced the pain of divorce. Some people never recover enough to be able to trust again; I was so worried that I would be one of them. But once my new husband entered my life, enabling me to once again trust, he inspired me to be both a better person and a better Jewess.

When I prepared for the mikvah before my wedding it was a true celebration – not only was I cleansing my body and soul in preparation for my marriage, but I also was renewing my sacred bond with the One Above, washing away the anguish, the sadness and the raw pain of the years that intervened between my last immersion and this one. I was always taught that the waters of the mikvah aren’t there to wash away dirt–for we are physically clean before we enter it–but that they are there to wash away spiritual impurity.
[Read more →]

Ketubah designer Daniel Sroka of Modern Ketubah shares his tips for safely transporting a ketubah to your wedding site.

When my wife and I got married, we were living in San Francisco, but our wedding was closer to our family in New Jersey. Let me tell you, planning a long distance wedding has its challenges! One of which is how to safely bring your ketubah on the plane with you. As a ketubah designer, I get asked about this a lot, so I thought I’d share some advice with you. First, have your ketubah shipped directly to you, not to the site of your wedding. It is really important that you see your ketubah in person, well before the ceremony. This will allow you look it over carefully, and make sure that it is exactly what you ordered. G-d forbid it gets accidentally damaged in shipment, it will give you time to replace it.

Packing Your Ketubah

Most ketubah companies will ship your ketubah rolled between sheets of acid-free tissue paper, and placed in an extra-strong shipping tube. Experience has shown that this is the safest way to ship unframed fine art. (If this was not the way your ketubah was shipped to you, be sure to pick up these supplies to re-package the ketubah.) So the best way to travel with a ketubah is to reuse this shipping tube. Place your ketubah between the tissue paper provided, and carefully reroll it and place it in the tube. You now have a safe and portable package to carry with you to your wedding location. If you are traveling by plane, be sure to bring it with you as a carry-on, or stash it safely deep in the middle of your suitcase, surrounded on all sides by clothing.

When You Arrive

When you get to the location of your wedding, take your ketubah out of the tube, and let it unroll. The paper will keep its curl for a while, but don’t worry. The paper of your ketubah should easily “forget” the curl over time. When you remove it, you could gently use the tube to roll it in the opposite direction to remove the curl more quickly. If you feel uncomfortable doing this, just lay it flat like I suggested for a day or so to get rid of the worst of the curl. For my own wedding, I used an inexpensive poster frame to flatten the ketubah, and then protect it throughout the wedding and reception. When you are ready to have it framed, your framer can make sure that any remaining curl is removed.