In Real Life, Sandra Bullock Would Be Deported

Dear Ms. Bullock,

I have been a fan since Speed back in 1994 when I was barely 9. So it pains me to see one of my favorite actors make a movie that doesn’t paint a fair picture of U.S. immigration policies.

I took my mother out to see The Proposal yesterday–she had fun but even she recognized that it is not so easy to gain legal residency through marriage.

Forget the fact that this option is not even available to bi-national same sex couples for a second.

First, you wouldn’t be allowed to ‘jump in line’ ahead of the so-called gardeners and construction workers. “They are looking for terrorists, not book publishers” is just a line in the movie.

Second, the immigration official would have asked tougher questions, called your bluff within a minute and charged you with marriage fraud. Even if you wanted to return to Canada, you would be placed in an ICE detention center on taxpayer money to serve time for the felony. For meals, you would get peanut butter and jelly and that too, quite infrequently. You would also see people in the center that have been kept there indefinitely. You might even see children who should be in school, rather than locked away in detention.

In the meantime, ICE could lose your paperwork so even if you wanted to go back to Canada, you might not be able to do so voluntarily. Then you would wait for months more at the detention center to get a new passport or prove that you really have Canadian residency.

Finally, after many months, you would be allowed to go back on your own money.  But once outside the United States, you would not be able to come back for another 10 years, due to the 10-year ban for accruing illegal presence. The only way to circumvent this would be an I-601 waiver that no one could have filed for you.

So there is really no happily ever after here, except for the fact that Canada is just like the United States, only with free health care, a better banking system and same-sex marriage.