Yes, absolutely. Buying through the exchange costs us each around $100/month. When I started my PhD program, insurance will be free to me and spouse/dependents.
The ACA was a great fix but not a magic bullet.
ETA: And insurance is why we’re putting off getting legally married. Getting new insurance plans is a royal PITA so we’d rather just get married in August and get our new insurance in September rather than switching to a family plan in July and to the U’s plan in September.
The corporate plans are a lot richer than what you can get on the exchange. They have better coverage for things like physical therapy, which can really run into some bucks for athletes.
The couple I mentioned-the young lady is in a graduate program and it’s her insurance covering the two. I don’t know if it’s free, but it’s better than what they were getting individually.
Snowball, congrats on the happy event.
I wish for you that it could be worked out that the parents could be invited to the civil ceremony. I’m sad that the grandparents wouldn’t understand as there are very valid reasons for this.
To me, it would be hard for me. As it is a wedding even if it will be celebrated later.
I would be disappointed if I wasn’t at my D’s marriage.
Maybe, a signature at the registry isn’t quite a wedding, but is is a marriage. Perhaps it hasn’t occurred to her yet, but it’s important to present herself to her UK friends and colleagues as being married.It may raise suspicion at her residency application that if no close friends or relatives can vouch she is married, the authorities may view it as a sham marriage, denying her application.
My D married a Canadian who came to the US 11 years ago as a student and afterwards has a TN work visa sponsored by his company. They just went through the green card application interview where they saw most couples were accompanied by their immigration lawyer. My D and SIL went on their own, brought their wedding photo album with them and their interviewer spent most of the time looking through the album. 5 days later, he received his approval.
Cbreeze, your grandmother was incorrect. An American citizen does not lose citizenship by marrying. For her to be a citizen of a new country, giving up her US citizenship may have been required but that would have been up to the other country. The US does not revoke citizenship because of marriage or because a person becomes a citizen of another country.
twoinanddone,
Her grandmother was probably CORRECT. The rules changed over time. Here is a brief summary of the rules in effect at different times. http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/104346.pdf
Bottom line: At various times in US history, a woman DID lose her citizenship when she married an alien. See this language at p.2 of the link above:
The Citizenship Commission of 1906 recommended and
Congress enacted the Expatriation Act of March 2, 1907 (34 Statutes at Large
1228), Section 3, which provided by statute that a female U.S. citizen
automatically lost her citizenship upon marriage to an alien.
Seconding jonri.
It is not uncommon to lose citizenship for a woman marrying outside of her nation- even in Western societies before women’s lib. I am not familiar with the exact history of women and immigration in the US but my grandmother lost her UK citizenship when she married my non-British grandfather.
This may not necessarily be the case. In the UK, it is quite common to use the word “partner” whether one is married or not. People may not know whether they’re legally married but are probably quite aware of an existing relationship.
This is a good point.
The wedding photo album is a good idea.
The mentioning of immigration lawyer reminds me of this interesting event:
30+ years, when I and my wife had an interview (on the west coast), the immigration lawyer that I got through my company gave me the choice of whether I wanted to hire him to be there during the interview and I decided to hire him (the company did not help cover this interview event.)
One interesting event was: We had a baby already and we took our baby to the interview (now we think of it, it could be not appropriate - we should hire a baby sitter but we did not know what to do then.) The baby was very well-behaved (sleeping) during the whole session, except for the last 3 minutes. Our immigration lawyer, who really had nothing to do during the whole interview session, suddenly had a very important job to do. He rocked the baby and the baby finally calmed down. The lawyer himself and had his young children so he must be an experienced father.
Personally, I wouldn’t worry about the wedding photo album for immigration purposes, unless the couple wants to do it anyway. As this is a couple that is truly in love and been together for awhile, I can see them having any issues. The immigration interviewers are pretty good at figuring out who is a real couple and when it is just a marriage of convenience.
In the UK, one can get a partner’s visa after being together for an amount of time, I believe two years. My daughter and her fiancee started creating a paper trail so to speak almost two years ago. They opened a joint bank account in addition to their personal accounts, mail to the flat was addressed to both, etc… While they had though about the partners visa back then, getting married is what my future SIL wanted the most.
Regarding the paper trail, the following is what the couple who immigrated to Australia had to say about this topic. (Although it is not about the immigration to UK, was Australia a colony of UK in the long past? They may still have something similar here. BTW, I heard UK (and a couple of other west European countries) and Australia have a better healthcare system for their citizens in than US - in the opinions of the majority of Europeans, not necessarily in the opinions of quite a many Americans though.
UK ranks the first. Canada and US ranked the last two among the 11 industrialized countries:
http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-80498255/
"What evidence do I need to provide?
There is a pretty long list of evidence you need to provide to prove that your relationship is genuine and ongoing. You can find more info here, in the partner migration booklet issued by the department of immigration and border protection, but here is a quick summary.
Statements about the history of your relationship
Statutory declarations by people you know
Financial aspects of your relationship.
The nature of your household
The social context of your relationship
The nature of your commitment to each other.
By the end, we compiled over 260 pages of evidence. We printed it all out and bought a cheap ring binder to hold it all. We probably went a little overboard with supporting evidence, but considering the application fee is over $3000, I didn’t want to take any chances. I just went through the check list and included everything it asked for. This was the result. "
I would try to convince your daughter to allow you to be there for the civil ceremony. It may not feel to her NOW that the civil ceremony will be the “real” wedding but AFTER that ceremony is performed and she is legally married to the man she loves, she may find unexpected significance in that first, civil ceremony. I would want to be there.
personally, I think that it is most important for the two people getting married to be there, and the officiant and a witness of course.
But while I think weddings are beautiful, I don’t feel any different about my son in law and daughter, than I would have had I participated.
It isn’t the wedding that’s the thing- it’s the marriage.
The daughter may feel different, but many couples I know, myself included, felt married long before the ceremony.
The ceremony was just the way to make it legal.
My daughter was smart. She wore a dress she would wear again.
I think that is a lovely idea.
Will the UK do better job than us? (Hopefully, this link that I cut and paste from my phone will work.)
I haven’t read the whole thread, so apologies for any repetition. Unlike in the US (where we talk about the separation of church and state), in the UK that is a real thing. Even in a ‘church’ wedding there is a separate part of the ceremony where the couple go ‘sign the register’ - that is, do the civil (state) marriage. It is not at uncommon in many European countries to have the civil and religious ceremonies days or months apart - usually, as with your daughter, for practical reasons. Most people don’t refer to the legal part as their ‘wedding’. One is the marriage, the other the wedding- not as their first and second weddings. Work on changing your language and it should help: your daughter will only have one wedding!
@snowball - H and I were married at City Hall and had our wedding a year later. Like some others have mentioned, we married hastily because I needed health insurance. Our parents were a little upset that they couldn’t be there for the civil marriage but they came around, and my future MIL was happy to help me plan the wedding - which would have been quite bare bones if we’d had to throw it all together in 6 weeks or so.
The only people who groused about the wedding not being “real” were people no one liked anyway (and it was only one guy). The wedding was a blast and I think we said “I have” instead of “I do” or something like that. I had already been to one wedding like that before and a few since then.
My insurance emergency had to do with being unexpectedly pregnant with twins. The babies were born and the MOB and MOG each carried one down the aisle when taking her seat before the ceremony. Fun times!
ETA - H and I also have very fond memories of our civil ceremony. It is very romantic to essentially elope and only have each other.
Update- My daughter received a job offer for after she completes grad school in September. This is the same company you had an offer from before she had to leave the UK last year, but at the time, they could not give her a visa that would allow her to stay in the country. This time, they are able to secure her a visa after her student visa. What this means is no secret wedding!!!
If this company could not secure her visa, she would have gotten married this summer in a civil ceremony, but not we can wait until the wedding ceremony in the states. Once she has the visa in hand I will believe it; the company has had their legal team working on this for a few weeks. They are confident it is all a go.