Married by Phone: Marine Widow to Get Legal Status After Congress Acts
Hotaru Ferschke allowed to immigrate to U.S. after rare act of Congress.
Dec. 16, 2010— -- When Hotaru Nakama and Marine Sgt. Michael Ferschke tied the knot in July 2008, they weren't even on the same continent.
Nakama was in Okinawa, Japan, where the couple met and spent 13 months together, and Ferschke was in Iraq on deployment with his unit. Thousands of miles apart, the couple read their vows over the phone and signed affidavits simultaneously.
Then, one month after their proxy wedding, Ferschke was killed while on patrol north of Baghdad. And Hotaru, who was pregnant with their child, applied to move to the U.S. to join her husband's family and raise her child.
For the past two years, the U.S. government has repeatedly denied the widow's applications for legal residency, under an unusual provision in immigration law designed to prevent citizenship by marriage fraud.
But Congress took the highly unusual step Wednesday of rectifying the case, passing a private law in Ferschke's name to grant her a special exemption and pathway to legal residency in the U.S. The bill now awaits President Obama's signature.
"We're thrilled," Mike Ferschke, the father-in-law of Hotaru, told ABC News. "She'll be coming home for Christmas, and we can't wait to see her and Mikey."
Ferschke described the years-long ordeal as an "injustice" to a military widow, and slap in the face to a family who lost their son.
Federal law requires marriage between an American and foreign national to be "consummated" in person after the ceremony in order to be eligible to apply for legal residency and a path for citizenship. The marriage also needs to last for at least two years.
"They wouldn't let her work, she couldn't go to school, so she had to go back to Japan," he said. "She really wanted to raise her son here."
Hotaru's son, "Mikey," who turns two next month, was born on U.S. soil after several Tennessee lawmakers intervened to get Hotaru a temporary visa to enter the U.S. to give birth. But then Hotaru was forced to return to Japan with her child.
"This is something that everyone has wanted to support all through this process, and it is a great moment for this family," Rep. John Duncan, R-Tenn., who sponsored the bill, said in a statement. "Helping people caught up in extraordinary circumstances like the Ferschke's is one of the most basic and important jobs of Congress, and I am so grateful for all the bipartisan support in the House and Senate."
Ferschke said Hotaru has been working for the Japanese government at the U.S. airbase in Okinawa and will likely reunite with the family in Tennessee soon.
"I would love it if they came back to the states," he said. "Since my son got killed and stuff, she called here and tried to do the paperwork to move. But now it could finally come true."
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