Apart

I am a European national who studied in the United States for a year. I was doing my first year in a PhD program in Las Vegas and met my current partner online. We visited each other frequently and given that my program could not fund my studies anymore, I had to quit. Since I am foreign national, I had to stay in school in order for me to remain legal in the United States. I, along with my partner, decided that I would move to his place and go to a community college in order to stay legal.

Before starting school, we both realized that this was putting a very big financial burden on us, given that I was not entitled to work in the United States, therefore my schooling was depending entirely on my US partner. Having not been able to afford school and/or to get any type of financial help from the US government, I had to leave the country in order for me not to become illegal. I tried to look for a job, but unfortunately I was not given the time of the day to even go to an interview since all the companies I applied to said that they did not sponsor foreign nationals. I felt really discriminated against.

I possess a BA and an MA in linguistics and would have been able to contribute to a company. However, due to my lack of luck on being sponsored by a company and the government’s unwillingness to grant us anything, I decided to move to Canada, as close as possible to my partner, where I am going to school. He plans on coming to visit me in December and we are getting married, even though the US government is not going to legally recognize our union. We have been apart for a month now and will only be able to see each other twice a year, due to financial restrictions.

Had my partner been able to sponsor me, I would have been able to work and I would have been able to afford my schooling in the US. We are suffering a great deal from this separation and consider it to be inhuman to allow people to go through such an emotional hardship just based on the conviction that marriage is supposed to be between a man and a woman. Our whole life is on hold and we cannot plan anything. We feel that the government is trying to destroy our relationship. However, with determination and hope, we really wish that one day, all this is going to change and we will be able to live together in the United States