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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   11749 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026

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almost nobody thinks that deporting military spouses over paperwork issues is a good idea

Caveat: if you've been in the US illegally for several years, get married, and then immediately try to move onto a military base without adjusting your immigration status first... well, I can see how some people might describe that as a "paperwork issue", but I don't think it's an unfair result. And if it isn't a "paperwork issue" in your estimation, sadly, it'll be conflated with those cases that are by people trying to gin up negative publicity, and so I have to eye every story with suspicion that there's more going on behind the scenes than a sob story.

Yeah, I think this is FAFO dumbassery biting them in the rear. Being married to a US citizen, with the aid of a competent immigration lawyer(which military personnel have access to) is pretty much a shoe in for residency.

Yeah, I was thinking of one case in particular:

the woman’s work visa expired around 2017, and she was marked for removal from the United States a few years later. She and the Coast Guardsman were married early this year [...] when the woman and her Coast Guard husband were preparing to move into their on-base housing on Wednesday, they went to the visitor control center to get a pass so she could access the Key West installation. During the routine security screening required for base access, the woman’s name was flagged as a problem.

I saw a lot of people referring to it as a paperwork issue or ICE targeting servicemember spouses, but this case seemed... well, what did anyone expect? The timing of the husband's ship was such that the marriage must have taken place only a few weeks prior to this event, at most. All I can think of is that either the husband didn't know her status (and maybe she didn't, either, somehow, despite having lived and presumably worked in the US illegally for nearly a decade?), or that they assumed (erroneously) that marriage would automatically resolve any status issues. In which case... well, I can forgive her for not knowing the law, but a USCG man should presumably at least think to speak to base counsel or his CO prior to marrying any foreign national, let alone one who has immigration status issues?

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