Legal immigrants face citizenship hurdles

This story about legal immigration procedures explains why so many people choose to come in illegally. Not many citizens realize the difficulties. This country can handle more immigrants and we need immigration reform. DP

By DEEPTI HAJELA, ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

Seattle Post-Intelligencer : NEW YORK -- Kshitij Bedi recently marked his fourth wedding anniversary, but it wasn't much of a celebration, just a long-distance phone conversation.

The Long Island resident has barely seen his wife, Shweta, in the past four years. She is in India, waiting and waiting - and waiting - for the visa that would allow her to join her husband, a legal permanent resident, in the United States.

Bedi applied for the visa in April 2002, less than three weeks after the couple's wedding. He tries to visit India as much as possible, but essentially, "I've been a bachelor since then."

"There's nothing we can do," he said. "We're so helpless."

In all the recent talk about immigration reform, most of the focus has been on the millions of people in the United States illegally. But part of the problem, legal experts and immigrant advocates say, is a complicated legal immigration system in which the demand for visas far outstrips the supply.

"People aren't choosing to walk through the desert; they're doing that because the front door is closed," said Benjamin Johnson, director of the Immigration Policy Center at the American Immigration Law Foundation. "The only way to get in is the back door."

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