What if the only barrier between you and the people you love was your government?

For two Christmases — Thanksgivings, birthdays, and all the rest — my wife and I have been alone. Stuck. Renting a closet sized apartment. Far from the people who matter most. We’re innocent of any crime, but we‘ve been sentenced to indefinite political purgatory anyway.

If we were free, we'd be living next-door to my parents, in the house that I helped design and build with my dad. We'd have them over for dinner, we'd have family movie nights, and our holidays would be full of hugs and face to face conversations. 

If we were home, we'd be preparing the house for babies, which we are eager to have before age becomes an insurmountable obstacle. I also wouldn’t have to wonder if my children will ever get to play in the yard that I cleared and shaped myself.

Instead, our holidays and birthdays are celebrated by phone. And family visits are too difficult, and too expensive, for more than once a year. 

My wife has been separated from her parents, siblings, and extended family for more than nine years. Visiting with them is no longer an option.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

- “Family is not an important thing. It’s everything.” - Michael J. Fox

 

This woman that I married loves a sundress. Even in a scorched wasteland, she’d want to go for a walk and take her shoes off. She’d point out the only patch of blue sky, and (somehow) find a flower to smell. Her unguarded joy can obscure the clear-eyed judgment and moral backbone that move her, but you can always feel her generous spirit. She is my favorite person.

She has a PhD in engineering, multiple peer-reviewed scientific articles, and she trains AI models to help protect infants. She’s devoted to freedom, and to protecting the innocent. This is why she came to the Western world, and why she works to save babies.

I don’t know a better person (which is why I wanted her to be my wife).

 

Shaping my yard with a tractor is more satisfying to me than the "fun" available in any city. At home, there are shelves of scrap wood to browse, saws for cutting, and random solutions to everyday problems can be glued together as needed. It’s difficult to feel like a good husband, or someone prepared to be a father, without the tools that have been a normal part of life for as long as I can remember.

I’m 41. My wife (who’d like you to know she’s very young for her age) will be 37 this year. Outside of my time with her, I’ve lived in rural eastern North Carolina my entire life. My roots in the state go back four generations. Even after a lot of travel, my favorite places are still in eastern NC.

One day I hope to share those places with my wife. I hope we’ll get to finish our house and use the furniture my grandparents left us. But houses and furniture and places to see will always be less important than family participation and children; biology says our time is limited. Life would be infinitely easier for my parents and for us if we weren’t forced to be a thousand miles away in a place with seven months of winter.

This exile, the family separation, the lack of any clear path for planning, the waiting, the pain, is all because my wife was born on the wrong patch of dirt.

If our work and moral courage cannot free us from the burdens of our birthplace, then we’ve made nationality a prison rather than a circumstance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

- “What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?" - George Eliot

 

My wife is from Iran.

People who know nothing about the country say a lot of things, but Iranians generally love Americans. My new relatives in Iran — mostly engineers and teachers — are proud to call an American (me) part of their family.

Like everyone attending school in Iran, my niece was forced to listen to religious propagandists. This past semester she was told that Americans have no family values, that Americans do not care for people the way Iranians do.

"Why are you saying this?" she said, "My uncle is American, and he has a wonderful family. They love my aunt, and they love us.”

My niece is right about our love for her and for the rest of our Iranian family. But could the Iranian propagandist be correct — not about the American people, but about the American government? Would a government that cared about family values keep good people apart?

Actions speak louder than words. US officials have the power to prove that Iranian propaganda is only propaganda, by letting us come home.

Again, is nationality a prison or a circumstance?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

- “That's a crooked tree. We'll send him to Washington." - Bob Ross

 

I’m a pretty handy person. I can do a lot of things, but my family is currently broken apart in a way that I can’t repair.  Feeling helpless is not something I’m used to feeling. Natural obstacles and setbacks generally carry with them some spark of excitement related to what I can learn. But the irrational labyrinth of arbitrary and changing political policy is like quicksand. Worse, it feels like some sort of evil that has already touched us, and we now cannot escape.

I just want to take my wife home, have kids, and love my family.

Government officials hold arbitrary power over our lives that I alone cannot do anything about, which is why I need you. There is an indefinite ban that prevents me from ever bringing my wife home simply because of where she was born. She is my other half, I’m not going anywhere without her. So our future depends entirely on whether we get enough attention for some sort of waiver or exception. 

If you care about family and want to help ours…

If you would like our future kids to have at least one set of grandparents they can hug… 

If you want people who are supposed to work for us, to actually work for us…

If you believe forcing an innocent US citizen into exile is wrong… 

If you'd like to help end our undesirable circumstance… 

Please sign our petition