How my Japanese wife became a criminal day one in the U.S.

I should start out by saying my wife is a Japanese national. She’s had a green card for 30 years and has lived with me here in Las Vegas since our marriage in 1995. When I started hearing word of random people being deported, I was initially calm, thinking our long history and lack of criminal records would keep her safe from the immigration dragnet that defines this current administration. But since then, I’ve seen stories that have me thinking otherwise. One is particular story is a recent one of a Japanese man living in Utah. With only a year left from obtaining his PhD from Brigham Young University, suddenly his student visa was cancelled and he’s now facing deportation.

What crime has he committed? For such drastic measures certainly, he must be part of the Yamaguchi Japanese crime family, or maybe he’s been secretly creating a potent form of meth only rivaled by a fictional TV character. No, nothing like that. It seems that Mr. Ondo, had his student visa cancelled because he overfished while fishing with his church group five years ago. The add insult to injury, it seems he himself didn’t even catch any of the fish he supposedly overfished. Any sane person, and perhaps even the deepest cult member in the largest cult, wouldn’t label this man a terrorist worthy of deportation. That is unless catching too many fish while being Asian is more diabolical than we all think. And this is a part of the problem, humans don’t seem to be making these decisions.

There is speculation that AI is scanning for any criminal infractions whatsoever for any immigrant and then automatically dropping the deportation hammer. As a result, a seemingly innocent father of five children has been deemed a criminal and, regardless of the end result, has had his entire life upended.

And this leads to why I’m concerned for my wife. According to the same standards imposed on Mr. Ondo, my wife too became a criminal on day one of her arrival to the United States. You see, we naively got married while she was still on a tourist visa. Immediately after getting married, we set an appointment with INS to change her status and apply for a green card. We spent hours prepping documents for our interview as we had heard horror stories of the INS not believing marriages were real during the interview process. In 1995, a thick folder containing all of our love letters (pre-internet) and a year of phone bills proving our love sat on the desk in between us and the INS agent. In that moment, all that was on our mind was proving we weren’t marrying for any other reason than that we loved each other. After a series of routine questions, I was certain things were going great. Then the agent asked my wife WHY she entered the U.S. on this trip where we had married.

She said something similar to this, “Because I love him, and we wanted to get married.”

This is where the interview changed dramatically.

His face lit up, at least it did in my memory, as he said, “So, you deceived the U.S. government?”

This was a catch 22 I hadn’t expected. You see, many countries, including the U.S., has a program that allows tourists to just show up without the need for applying for visas. Everyone is granted a 90-day visa waiver as long as their passport is valid. And this was how my wife entered the U.S. prior to our getting married. In the eyes of the government, when my wife said her purpose was to marry me, she had lied.

Now in a tone more appropriate for recommending a movie to a friend, the agent casually said, “at this point it’s within my power to deport your wife and ban her from coming back to the U.S.”

Recalling these words still send chills throughout my body, imagining what would and could have happened. If the agent had followed through with his non-chalant threat, I would have lost the most amazing 30 years of my life, and it’s quite possible my two beautiful daughters might never have been born.

The agent relented, saying we would just have to pay a $100 fine for this horrible crime my wife had committed. The reality is, our marriage wasn’t planned, and we were solely focused on proving our love. I had constantly moved the date of when we would hypothetically get married as I was young, and I guess afraid of the commitment no matter how much I loved her. My wife’s answer was the result of her wanting to prove that we were indeed in love, and she wasn’t in America for any other reason. As a result of this answer, my wife was made to sign a document admitting she had purposely deceived the United States government.

It’s this document that worries me. AI scouring immigrant records for any infraction, and then, regardless of their standing in the community or the level of said infraction, cancelling visas, and beginning deportation proceedings has me very concerned to say the least.

In this case, my wife is very practical about the whole idea that she might get her green card cancelled. She says she would just leave and go back to Japan. And that I could eventually follow her there. But I’ll be honest, I certainly don’t want to unravel 30 years of life in America alone. I’m much too lazy for that, so I’m preparing for the day when I have to decide to leave the country I love. So far, I’ve obtained 3 copies of my birth certificate and have begun digitizing all of my files here in the America. I have quite a large Blu Ray / DVD collection that I don’t want to part with but also don’t want to ship to Japan. Next up is rabies shots for my cats and a six month wait to do a follow-up check for the proper antibodies. And at that point and time, I’ll have more information on whether I’m willing to risk my wife being forcefully uprooted from her home of 30 years. It’s crazy to think that all of this anxiety is simply due to a nervous answer to INS by a young couple three decades ago.

Wish us luck.