Anita Maddali walked down a Catholic church aisle in the white dress she had always envisioned wearing on her wedding day. She wore a long mantia, a lace veil passed down to her by her mother. She said her vows and kissed her groom, but the day’s ceremonies were far from over.
Anita still had to change into her other dress: a sari. It was six yards of red and orange silk fabric, flecked with gold threading from Bangalore, India. She wore dozens of bracelets on her wrists and repeated prayers told to her by the priest in Sanskrit. Anita’s husband, Chaitanya, wrapped a thin gold chain around her neck -- the sacred thread that bound the couple in Hindu matrimony. Then the couple exchanged thick leis of marigold flowers for good luck.
Anita had two more dress changes. Back into the white gown for the couple’s first dance at the reception. And finally into a silver-sequined, turquoise cropped top and long skirt -- another traditional Hindu ensemble known as the Gagra choli.
On the dance floor Anita and Chaitanya’s families -- hers of Spanish and Italian descent, his from India -- swayed to Bollywood music and American classics like “This Magic Moment.” At dinner, guests ate steak and mashed potatoes as well as dishes catered from India House, one of the couple’s favorite Chicago restaurants.
“We describe it as the separate but equal wedding,” Anita jokes.
But after the August 2007 nuptials were over, Anita had something else to plan: getting her new husband a green card.
Nice to meet you
Anita and Chaitanya met at a party in February 2006 through a mutual friend. Anita was being set up with someone else at the time, but Chaitanya says he and Anita hit it off from the start. He called a colleague of hers at Northwestern University, dropping hints about how much fun he’d had with Anita. “I think you’re going to be getting a phone call from him,” Anita’s friend teased her.
“We had a connection from the start,” says Chaitanya. Both he and Anita were lawyers -- he settled disputes about intellectual property for a large Chicago firm and she worked at Northwestern’s Bluhm Legal Clinic, specializing in immigration law. Chaitanya was so smitten he even bought a car so he could drive Anita on dates. “I didn’t need a car,” he laughs. But he wanted to impress her.
But even without a car, it was hard not to be impressed. Chaitanya moved to the United States from Mumbai at age 14 in 1994. Chaitanya’s father, who specialized in internal medicine, gained entrance for the family on a special work-exchange visa. As dependents, Chaitanya and his mother and sister also had visas good for three years of temporary residency. The Maddali family lived in Brooklyn, N.Y., where Chaitanya attended the nearby and prestigious Bronx High School of Science. Chaitanya applied for a student visa and was accepted to Washington University in St. Louis where he studied English and political science. He extended his student visa and stayed at Wash U., where he received his law degree in 2005.
A standout student, Chaitanya had several job options when he graduated. Winston & Strawn’s bustling Chicago law office won him over -- it was a large firm and could sponsor Chaitanya on a visa for highly skilled workers, which gave him three more years in the U.S. He says it was one of the best decisions he ever made. “I love Chicago [because] that’s where I met Anita, Chaitanya says. “Sometimes we think fate leads us to places.”
And as fate would have it, the couple hit it of with one another’s families too. “They said they knew when they moved to America it’d be unrealistic to expect him to marry [another Indian woman],” says Anita of her husband’s family, who Chaitanya describes as liberal and open-minded. Chaitanya’s parents took to Anita right away -- his mother even traveled with Anita to India to go sari-shopping before the wedding.
Making it official
Chaitanya always knew he wanted to apply for U.S. citizenship. He wanted to be active in government -- vote, donate to political campaigns -- but as a visiting worker, he couldn’t. “This is basically my home country,” says Chaitanya, who at 29 has now lived one year longer in the U.S. than in India.
Because Chaitanya and Anita, who is 30, were both lawyers and knew the process to get Chaitanya’s green card would be long and difficult, the couple decided to seek representation. Chaitanya had three possible ways to become a citizen -- through his parents, through work or through Anita.
While Chaitanya’s parents and sister had applied for and received their own green cards, Chaitanya was over 21 when they filed their paperwork. Unmarried children over 21 are in a different preference category for green cards, and considered lower in priority than spouses and children under 21. Due to a backlog of foreign-born Indian nationals seeking green cards, the couple estimates it would have taken at least six years before Chaitanya got permanent residency through his family. And if he tried through work, he would have to stay at his firm until the process was over -- a limiting option Chaitanya didn’t want to take.
So the couple took the path that looked the shortest: through Anita. Martina Keller, an immigration lawyer in Chicago, helped the couple as they prepared the necessary documents -- a marriage certificate, photos, birth and employment records, evidence they lived together and had shared finances, among others.
Keller says the number of couples who pay for a lawyer to help one of them apply for a green card has increased dramatically in the last two decades as immigration law has become more complex. “When I started practicing [in 1991] it was very, very common for couples to do this on their own,” said Keller. “Think of it as filing your own taxes. [A lot of people say,] ‘I could do this on my own, but I don’t want to.’”
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While not everyone can afford a lawyer -- Keller says it can cost clients thousands of dollars to hire one and pay for the $1,365 green-card-through-marriage application fees -- many find it’s better to be safe than sorry.
“It gave us more peace of mind,” Chaitanya says, looking at his wife. “You want to be sure.” “And I didn’t want Chaitanya getting sent back to India,” Anita adds.
Keller says each year she takes on a few cases she calls “jump ins” -- couples who started the green card process themselves, but botched it along the way. Having a lawyer who knows which documents better prove a marriage is real can help in the process, says Keller, who has about 500 to 700 open cases, about half of which are related to family immigration.
For example, Keller says a common mistake many couples make is using photos of themselves anyone could take, such as at home. She recommends to her clients that they bring photos of themselves traveling to other places on vacation, or with other family members. Anita and Chaitanya took one of Keller’s more unusual suggestions -- they adopted a dog because owning a pet together helps to validate a marriage. “Chaitanya got this big smile on his face,” when Martina suggested getting a pet, Anita laughs. He had always wanted a dog.
Finally, green card
Keller says in the 1990s the process to get a green card for a U.S. citizen’s spouse lasted about three months from start to finish. According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency, the processing goal for immediate relatives, such as spouses, is now six months. There are currently more than 189,000 cases pending, with a backlog surpassing 59,000 cases.
Anita and Chaitanya filed their paperwork in December 2007 and it took four months to get a 15-minute interview with an immigration official. Anita and Chaitanya were surprised -- and relieved -- that their officer asked many questions about their dog.
Immigration officers vary in how they question couples, Keller says. If they suspect the marriage was made for immigration purposes and not love, they will probe more deeply, ask to see more documents or request a second interview. Questions range from identifying who family members are in photographs to when and how the couple met.
It was an “uneasy process… to go in there and defend the fact that you’re married and you didn’t get married for immigration reasons only,” Anita remembers of her interview. “But anyone who has two [wedding] ceremonies in one day is not faking it,” she jokes.
Chaitanya got his conditional green card in October of last year, 10 months after filing his initial paperwork. He has to stay married to Anita for the next two years, or his green card could be revoked. By July 2011 he is allowed to apply for his U.S. citizenship.
At their apartment in the Loop, Anita and Chaitanya are glad to be done with the long process, they both say. Anita has since started work at the Mexican American Legal Defense & Education Fund in Chicago and she and Chaitanya recently worked together on a case about a Guatemalan woman seeking asylum. Now they are excited to begin the next chapter in their lives together -- starting their own family.
“They’re going to be Hindu and Catholic,” says Anita of the children she and Chaitanya hope to have someday. She smiles at her husband who has crossed his legs so they touch hers. “We’re planning to teach them about both faiths.” Chaitanya nods in agreement with his other half, as their beloved yellow lab, Duchess, meanders her way toward them, begging to be petted.