Michael Ferschke met his future wife Hotaru while he was stationed in Okinawa, and later married her by proxy while on deployment in Iraq. For those unfamiliar with the term, a proxy marriage occurs when two people are married while physically separated geographically. The US military recognizes and facilitates this situation, but there is a snag concerning the US Citizenship and Immigration Services.
According to the agency, the Ferschkes’s marriage isn’t legal because it wasn’t consummated, even though they already have a child. Currently, Hotaru is staying with Michael’s parents in Tennessee on a temporary visa, which expires in January. “She’s like my daughter,” Robin Ferschke said. “I know my child chose the perfect wife and mother of his child.”
It seems incredible that the letter of the law is being upheld when it ought to be the spirit of the law that’s recognized. Clearly, there is no marriage fraud here, which is what the Immigration Services Act was designed to prevent. Furthermore, Hotaru’s son Michael will grow up never knowing his father, who was killed last year during a routine house search.
This country seems to have serious issues surrounding the concept of marriage. It’s amazing that the military, a much more strict and rules-governed organization than the federal government, should recognize the legitimacy of the Ferschke’s marriage while the mainland government doesn’t. If our laws aren’t governed by our humanity, then we need to rethink our approach to matters like these, in which good people are being treated poorly by the very nation they went to war to protect.
